3 ms·

> What makes you think there is anything there to appreciate? As best as I can tell it's just random sounds and words. It isn’t "random sounds and words". Whil

> What makes you think there is anything there to appreciate? As best as I can tell it's just random sounds and words. It isn’t "random sounds and words". While Joyce chose to make the surface of the book a constant stream of puns and other wordplay by drawing on a large number of languages, Finnegans Wake has a character, story, setting, etc. like any other novel. I personally find the Wake tiresome – who was the contemporary of Joyce’s who called the book something like an “electrified punning machine”? – but "Emperor’s new clothes” it definitely isn’t.

ars 9y ago
Take a look at this line: "growing hoarish under his turban and changing cane sugar into sethulose starch". I understand the words. hoarish means hairy, and sethulose is an obvious misspelling of cellulose. Good. Lots of wordplay as you say. But the actual sentence doesn't make any sense. That's the issue. Growing hair has nothing to do with cellulose, and humans don't make cellulose anyway. Plants make cellulose out of sugar - but why specify "cane"? Because it sounded cool to him, but not because it actually makes any sense. You are finding "character, story, setting" only because you are ignoring any parts that don't make sense, then finding meaning in the rest. It's a form of pareidolia. The fact that someone made pareidolia in written form? Pretty cool. But don't think there is anything there to study, other than wordplay and sounds. There isn't. And that's why it's the "Emperor’s new clothes”.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  > Take a look at this line Extracting a single line out of a book that (like human communication in general) depends on the wider context of the diction, and then attacking the whole book as nonsense, is fallacious. Come on, l'arbitraire du signe has been well-known for a century now. > You are finding "character, story, setting" only because you are ignoring any parts that don't make sense, then finding meaning in the rest. It's a form of pareidolia. A number of commentators on the Wake reached the same agreement on the book’s character and general plot independently of each other in the years immediately following its publication. In any event, even if the Wake were merely “inventing sounds” (which it isn’t), that still wouldn’t make it “Emperor’s new clothes”. Nonsense poetry has been an established literary genre since the mid-19th century, well before the era of modernism. That ranges from work that obeys the general syntax of the language even if certain words are nonsense, to poems that are outright written in what might as well be a foreign language unintelligible to the reader but attractive because of the words’ inherent musical quality to speakers of the poet’s language. Some of these poems, like Lewis Carroll’s "Jabberwocky" [1] or Sándor Weöres's "Kínai templom" [2] are practically part of their countries’ respective literary canons and commonly read in schools. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky [2] http://www.okm.gov.hu/letolt/retorika/ab/szoveg/komm/kinai.htm http://www.okm.gov.hu/letolt/retorika/ab/szoveg/komm/kinai.h...

ars 9y ago

Take a look at this line: "growing hoarish under his turban and changing cane sugar into sethulose starch". I understand the words. hoarish means hairy, and sethulose is an obvious misspelling of cellulose. Good. Lots of wordplay as you say. But the actual sentence doesn't make any sense. That's the issue. Growing hair has nothing to do with cellulose, and humans don't make cellulose anyway. Plants make cellulose out of sugar - but why specify "cane"? Because it sounded cool to him, but not because it actually makes any sense. You are finding "character, story, setting" only because you are ignoring any parts that don't make sense, then finding meaning in the rest. It's a form of pareidolia. The fact that someone made pareidolia in written form? Pretty cool. But don't think there is anything there to study, other than wordplay and sounds. There isn't. And that's why it's the "Emperor’s new clothes”.

Mediterraneo10 9y ago
> Take a look at this line Extracting a single line out of a book that (like human communication in general) depends on the wider context of the diction, and then attacking the whole book as nonsense, is fallacious. Come on, l'arbitraire du signe has been well-known for a century now. > You are finding "character, story, setting" only because you are ignoring any parts that don't make sense, then finding meaning in the rest. It's a form of pareidolia. A number of commentators on the Wake reached the same agreement on the book’s character and general plot independently of each other in the years immediately following its publication. In any event, even if the Wake were merely “inventing sounds” (which it isn’t), that still wouldn’t make it “Emperor’s new clothes”. Nonsense poetry has been an established literary genre since the mid-19th century, well before the era of modernism. That ranges from work that obeys the general syntax of the language even if certain words are nonsense, to poems that are outright written in what might as well be a foreign language unintelligible to the reader but attractive because of the words’ inherent musical quality to speakers of the poet’s language. Some of these poems, like Lewis Carroll’s "Jabberwocky" [1] or Sándor Weöres's "Kínai templom" [2] are practically part of their countries’ respective literary canons and commonly read in schools. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky [2] http://www.okm.gov.hu/letolt/retorika/ab/szoveg/komm/kinai.htm http://www.okm.gov.hu/letolt/retorika/ab/szoveg/komm/kinai.h...