Comments on: Finnegans Wake a bestseller in China

By: karl_jones

karl_jones — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 19:22:00 +0000

Cronenberg. His Naked Lunch succeeds as a movie and -- this is all-but-unimaginable trick Cronenberg has pulled off -- has something to say about the book. Naked Lunch the book, while it has some funny/sad/wicked scenes, is not very readable -- Burroughs saw to that with his randomized cut-up technique.

By: Zachary_Bos

Zachary_Bos — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:23:00 +0000

The over-long dinner scene will feature a raucous performance of The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOX8cXn-Sq4. The widow of Tim Finnegan will grow increasingly irate as the guests at the wake raid her pantry, but will be made content again when 1) they wash the dishes and 2) her husband leaps from his casket when someone splashes whisky on ‘im.

By: leonsp

leonsp — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 16:16:00 +0000

By way of parallel, Lewis Carroll’s quasi-nonsense poem Jabberwocky has also been translated into many languages:
http://www.waxdog.com/jabberwocky/translate.html

By: Zachary_Bos

Zachary_Bos — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:52:00 +0000

Indeed you are not alone! I go to a weekly Finnegans Wake reading club / drinking society. Irish pub, near to campus. Five years in, we’re just over 100 pages in. We do a lot of very careful drinking, er, thinking, over each page.

By: Paul Renault

Paul Renault — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 23:56:00 +0000

I must be the only one here that thoroughly enjoyed it. I laughed out loud in a few places.

Makes sure you’re not reading the original version typeset by Parisian typesetters but rather the recently re-edited version.

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 23:55:00 +0000

Despite the reviews, Campbell’s key still has to be a useful guide to Joyce’s work. In 1983 I listened to Campbell speak non-stop for 3 hours introducing, and expanding on the allegory and metaphors found in Finnegans Wake.

So I understood then that FW wasn’t something I was going to get through in a weekend.

By: fivetonsflax

fivetonsflax — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 21:53:00 +0000

Looks like at least one member didn’t even make it to the end of the title.

By: steve849

steve849 — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 21:42:00 +0000

Seems from the article it’s a bestseller in Shanghai, not China.

By: mat

mat — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:39:00 +0000

I heard that, due to its sudden popularity, Peter Jackson has acquired the rights and is actually going to turn it into a movie in 5 parts or chapters. Stay tuned!

By: Zachary_Bos

Zachary_Bos — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:20:00 +0000

These some Chinese in there, sure:

https://www.google.com/search?domains=http%3A%2F%2Ffinnegansweb.com&num=50&q=chinese&btnG=Search&sitesearch=http%3A%2F%2Ffinnegansweb.com

By: Hanquiatius

Hanquiatius — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:15:00 +0000

But isn’t it already in Chinese?

By: Zachary_Bos

Zachary_Bos — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:53:00 +0000

For dems dat don’t fare well readin, the artist Stephen Crowe is illustrating the entirety of the Wake, with a gorgeous graphic for each page: http://wakeinprogress.blogspot.com.

By: Awesomer

Awesomer — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:50:00 +0000

“Pure chingchong idiotism with any way words all in one soluble. Gee each owe tea eye smells fish. That’s U” (p. 299).

By: David Pescovitz

David Pescovitz — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:26:00 +0000

Fixed, thanks!

By: karl_jones

karl_jones — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:24:00 +0000

The verb “to read” does not apply to FW.

FW demands some other verb — a verb that means:

“Looking-at-the-pages-of-Finnegans-Wake-now-thrubbada-dubbada-thunda-gunda-languarhumbanumba! All night long, Baby!”

(Or words to that effect.)

Every several years, I have another go. Haven’t looked at all the pages yet. I get about halfway. Maybe I should skip every other page?

PS update: Dubliners, very sweet, read Dubliners instead.

By: Boundegar

Boundegar — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:17:00 +0000

Or maybe both.

By: yoshua

yoshua — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:06:00 +0000

I could never get into anything Joyce beyond Dubliners.

By: KeithIrwin

KeithIrwin — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:59:00 +0000

The bottom half of the article is correct, but the top half is flawed. There is no apostrophe in the title. (And thus, the second word in the title is a verb rather than a noun.)

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:53:00 +0000

The clue is in the word barely. If it is not quite in English then it is in almost any other language as well.
Reading Finnegans Wake gives the sense that words are not permanent and fixed, that they can dissolve in space and time and re-emerge elsewhere in any form.
The disorientation felt is an essential part of the process in reading the text.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:50:00 +0000

Well, that explains why Finnegan’s Wake doesn’t make sense in English.

Several years ago I read an article about a group of Joyce fans who’d never read Finnegan’s Wake and decided to tackle it together. The number of members rapidly declined. Only one reportedly made it to the end.

By: Boundegar

Boundegar — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:46:00 +0000

Finnegans Wake is just barely in English. How the hell do you translate it into any other language, let alone Chinese?

By: jandrese

jandrese — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:43:00 +0000

8,000 copies in a month is a #2 best seller? That seems really low to me. There is a badly written bondage fanfiction book that sold 65 million copies last year.