wake reading groups

Would you want to do that?

note that i didn't say 'have you ever gotten to read finnegans wake in a group and SRH will you please be in such a group with me'.

Be ye warned that close readings of the Wake can get a little out of hand...

Thank Christ for that!

i'd quite like to be in such a group but get the feeling i would need to clear the decks regarding everything else i might ever like to read in my lifetime first, a little.

are you talking abt that series on the novel scrrened on C4? as i recall that group were together for a few years and were only 60-odd pages in or something...

I am literally devastated!

kyle, that kind of thing might be nice because adventageous, but i reckon i would prefer a group of friends.

julio: yeah i think it got exagerrated in my brain somewhere yes.

If you think FW is the most pretentious piece of crap ever produced in the name of "high art" then you really need to get out of the house more. FW, for all its excesses, is relatively humble.

the secondary lit is fascinating from a critical / theoretical perspective because the book is so singular. it brings out what people claim to be their most fundamental convictions about what counts as art, how to read, the status of the critic, and so on, and then (i think) often calls for creative justification since the more usual supports of critical (or 'lay' reader) consensus or 'literary' evidence are so obviously problematic. sometimes this is worthwhile in itself, but even when it amounts to people throwing their hands up, the way they throw their hands up is interesting.

i am in two minds between trying this again or burying myself in the beckett centenary edition.

This might actually get me beyond page 10, like the last two attempts have resulted in.

(...)

*Finnegans Wake (Compass Books ed., 1959), pp. 534, 542. The novel was first published in 1939, though fragments of Work in Progress appeared throughout the preceding decade. If I dropped the point here I could no doubt leave some readers convinced that I have read Finnegans Wake. But I must confess that I have not; I do read in it, from time to time, with great delight until boredom sets in. Will someone, by the way, someone who has read this unreadable work, tell me whether that first "m" in the first "brimgem" is a typographical error? You don't know? Or care? We are in trouble, you and I."

so, reading group! first i need to do an essay on ulysses. towards the end of may, beginning of june, when i get back from college, that might be best. for me.

The thing is, we can't read it aloud to each other so easily...

These dates sound good to me. I will be in Italy for six weeks starting around that time, so it might be difficult for me to talk over Skype or some such, but it would certainly give me something to read while I am there!

Maybe I can read it while wading in the Fontana di Trevi...with an Anita Ekberg photo reproduction or something.