First Published 1939 – This edition 1975
My real-time review of this book starts HERE.
An extract: [[There is a plot to this book that several have tried to adumbrate over the years, a special Joycean language that others have tried to nail down with a single word of description, characters that chop and change, themes and threads that also chop and change, all of which elements the critics have tried to plumb (see the book’s Wikipedia if you must)…..But I contest that any attempt to plumb these things will come back to choke you. So I won’t. I just know there is an experience to be had here and I hope by the time I reach the end such an experience will have become the whole of me rather than a part of me that I try to examine from outside.
Examining life from within the same life, the mind from within the same mind, all doomed to failure – but Finnegans Wake itself is the only ‘death’ we shall know retrocausally. Our own death experienced after it has happened? We shall see or, at least, I hope, I shall see:
“For dear old grumpapar, he’s gone on the razzledar, through gazing and crazing and blazing at the stars.” (Page 65)
Now reached page 69.]]