I know many people—deeply serious, scholarly people—have never managed to make it through James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Perfectly reasonable. Life is short, art is long, and FW is impenetrable. Howsomever: I recently discovered an online resource that might make it less task-y and more joy-y. It’s the entire text of the book with glosses for every sentence, sometimes those given by Joyce himself, so you know it’s not some grad student in a carrel somewhere in the womb of Alderman Library making stuff up in a notebook.
Try it on for size here.
For a long time I didn’t have my own copy, because I had given it to Robert Pollard from the band Guided By Voices, of which you may have heard. He plunders it on occasion for song titles and lyrics. For instance.
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- James Greer's books on Goodreads
Guided by Voices: A Brief History: Twenty-One Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Rollreviews: 24
ratings: 195 (avg rating 3.70)
Were that grad TA in a barrel instead, would that improve things?
(Let's see: "more fun than a barrel of grad students!" Hmm, dunno . . .)
I was pretty shocked when I came across "Our Cube House Still Rocks" … I really couldn't tell you what exactly I was reading when I read it but I sure like what it did to my brain, especially when read whilst enjoying a pint or two of Guinness!