While in college, I became dangerously enamored of
Finnegans Wake. I had been tricked by otherwise reputable folks like Ellmann and Burgess into thinking it was something other than the literary wanking of a modernist master running short of real inspiration, and I could only get 5% of what was going on even with the aid of annotation books aplenty. It turns out not much was going on. For all the mirth and musicality, there was precious little in the way of characters amid the philosophical constructs and symbols. And it's easy to make a multilingual pun, folks, watch:
day loose, d luz, des lus, geddit? Me neither.
Years later, I read
Ulysses and was so astounded by the book that I regretted having wasted all that time with the
Wake. It had characters, it was profound, comical, and rewarding. Pumped full of literary valor after the triumph, I attempted the
Wake once more, but it was every bit as opaque and insufferable as ever.
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I would not let the chickens cross the antidote road because I was already hospitlized for trying to say this!-Brad McFall