Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Had a weird moment of anxiety this morning when I realised that I could very well be halfway (or more) through my life and it looks like I'll never read Finnegan's Wake (or even Ulysses!)
 

woops

is not like other people
just think of that glorious moment when you are 100% through your life and you can look back on how you conquered the hardest book ever and transformed your life through a single dissensus post
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
The thing is i was reading a piece by Anthony Burgess comparing Hopkins and Joyce the other night:

"Hopkins and Joyce wanted genuine sonic simultaneity, and they could achieve it only by compressing more than one meaning into a single word or phrase.

When
[Hopkins] writes ‘treads through, prick-proof, thick, thousands of thorns, thoughts,’ he evidently sees the thorns and thoughts as one thing, but he dare not write ‘thornts.’ That kind of refashioning had to be left to Joyce in Finnegans Wake."

And I thought 'oh wow that's really interesting'. But then Burgess quoted one sentence from FW and I couldn't understand it at all.

So the idea of reading 700 pages of stuff I can't understand at all seems like very hard work.
 

woops

is not like other people
there's an imprseeive bit in Burgess' A Mouthful of Air where he breaks down the first paragraph or so of Wake line by line and language by language and makes it into very clear sense
 

catalog

Well-known member
I have to credit dissensus for motivating me to read ulysses and doing it is one of the things I'm most proud of during lockdown.

My technique was to treat it like going to the gym and basically force myself to do at least 30 mins a day and then of course I sometimes read way more than that. But it did mean I read it really fast which means I literally have no recollection of about 300 pages.

I'm also a bit scared of the wake but RAW gives me heart, he says he's read it 30 times and is still finding new things.

He also said he listens to ulysses, apparently there's quite a good RTE version from the 80s where they got all the top actors of the day to read it. I think it's like 40 hours or something.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Yes looks like it. It was good to hear luke reading a bit of prediction tablet last night, you do get a lot from a good reading cos the reader can emphasise here there, pause and so on. Before the book comes the chat as well.
 

jenks

thread death
Yes looks like it. It was good to hear luke reading a bit of prediction tablet last night, you do get a lot from a good reading cos the reader can emphasise here there, pause and so on. Before the book comes the chat as well.
I have used the audiobook version in the past. Definitely recommend it. I have become more of a fan of audiobooks recently - as long as the voice is right. I’m currently listening to The Leopard that is perfect, just the right pace to pay attention to the language without feeling like things are being spelled out for the reader.
 

luka

Well-known member
It's not just the voice it's the ability to pick out rhythms etc. Very difficult to read aloud. I'm good at it of course. But it's not easy. It's good fun to try and read Hopkins aloud actually seeing S he's been brought up.
 

luka

Well-known member
A lot of famous Actors even famous English actors make a real mess of Shakespeare for instance
 

woops

is not like other people
finnegans w is much more fun aloud and you don't need to be luke or lord olivier to enjoy it, recommend
 
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