Now you can be confabbled at at a deluxe rate, Finnegans Wake is being published in a new edition, including a calf-skin one at €900.
Danis Rose said yesterday: "Although it seems like a long time to be editing a single work, in many ways I'm astonished that it only took 30 years when you consider that the typesetting alone took 10."
I did think that all those made-up words had to be mistakes!
More seriously, I guess I should not be so dismissive of the book, it seems many people take it seriously and is getting something out of it. It's just that my own reaction to the book is that of somebody trying to talk to me and deliberately babbling and making up words and jumping all over the place. It just grates my nerves far more than I can go beyond just to read a book.
Here's a random page from the book.
I read once the sensible advice that the more complicated your content/message, the simpler your language has to be. And it seems that the story/content of Finnegans Wake (apparently it's not "Finnegan's Wake") is quite complex indeed. So coupled with the most opaque language in publishing history, it does not make for light holiday reading.
Maybe the price is a typesetting error? I mean, who would know?
ReplyDeleteROTFL.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it was not even written by James Joyce, maybe he meant to write Joan Jones.
... Uh, *she* meant...
ReplyDeleteRose has a terrible trackrecord
ReplyDeleteThe idea of a £900 Finnegan's Wake is appropriate, as few people could honestly say they'd read it, fewer still that they understood it, and probably next to none that actually like it. But it's the kind of book a lot of people like to pretend they like, and understood. Even more so than War and Peace. Maybe still second to Ulysses though.
ReplyDeleteI've read War and Peace. It's good.
ReplyDeleteI was expecting that response from a lot more people.
ReplyDeleteLooks like I'm unique.
ReplyDeleteHate to break it to you Mike but there are plenty of pretentious twats out there, you're not alone. If only you were.
ReplyDelete