7 ms·

I’ve has Ulysses on my shelf for years. Wells may have just put it there for another few years.

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
I managed to struggle my way through Ulysses, which at least has some semblance of narrative structure and mostly uses actual English words, but Wells is commenting on Finnegans Wake, which is thoroughly impenetrable. Here's the second paragraph: Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen- core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface. ( from http://finwake.com/1024chapter1/1024finn1.htm http://finwake.com/1024chapter1/1024finn1.htm )
- briansteffens 6y ago
  Ah, but you left out the first paragraph which clarifies the second entirely! >riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. And you'll just have to read to the end of the book to find out how the sentence begins. Joking aside, I actually love this style of writing even though I get virtually no narrative from it. I read it almost like some sort of abstract poetry, letting my mind wander as the words go by. Also, I find it reads a lot better out loud than silently: easier to notice some of the strange dream-like word mixes. Like `venissoon` kind of sounds like `very soon`. I only saw `venison` until I read it out loud.
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
    I love Jabberwocky as well, but that's a single page, not 500. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42916/jabberwocky https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42916/jabberwocky
    - swimfar 6y ago
      I never realized that was Lewis Carroll. If you want to hear someone else pronounce it, Donovan made a song out of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnqK-1CPxLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnqK-1CPxLk
    - mcv 6y ago
      That is a great comparison. I love Jabberwocky, but you can't read an entire book in that style. Yet Joyce apparently did write that book. I've never read Joyce, but based on these couple of lines I think I understand Wells' letter. It's magnificent to be able to write like that, but please keep it short. Nobody can withstand that for more than a page or two.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    You might also like "abstract comics". Here, Wells constrasts the work of writing for an english audience with the hack value of playing with english itself. In our language, Joyce might've posted a "Show HN" of some reflective lispian tower that self-rewrites at runtime to collapse into monadic machine code, and Wells would comment that it was probably more fun to write than to use, and as for himself, he will keep on plugging along in javascript to produce value for his paying users. There's more than one way to skin a cat.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - empath75 6y ago
    Probably also helps to read it in an Irish accent.
    - lucideer 6y ago
      Unlikely. Firstly, it's definitely not written in eye dialect (it's basically a dialect or language of Joyce's own invention) Beyond that, even if you were to consider accents of Joyce & his contemporaries, along with the changes of accents over 100 years, Joyce—from a Catholic, but well-off background—had an accent[0] much closer to a modern English accent than anything else. He also lived in Italy, Switzerland and France for most of his life. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhW0TrzWGmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhW0TrzWGmI
      - Supernaut 6y ago
        Hmm. I have to say that Joyce doesn't sound like any English person I've ever met! His accent is fairly typical of the educated middle class Dubliner of the era and can be heard in recordings of some Irish politicians from the period. Ireland was a dominion of the British empire during Joyce's formative years, and the influence of English RP is obvious. However, his Hibernian roots are also clearly audible, at least to me!
- CSSer 6y ago
  I’ve only ever met two kinds of people with regards to Joyce; those who hate this and those who love it. I have to admit, however, that I’ve never felt compelled to investigate for myself. I’m glad. Wow, that is astoundingly dense.
- bcbrown 6y ago
  Sir Tristram: Tristran is the hero of Tristan and Iseult, introducing the theme of the two lovers. Also referencing the Earl of Tristram, lord of Howth Castle from the prior paragraph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Howth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Howth, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan the short sea: the English Channel North Amorica: North America penisolate: combination of pen, peninsula, penis, and isolated topsawyer: Tom Sawyer, an American character written by Mark Twain. Also, for lumbermen, the top sawyer stands above log, while the bottom sawyer stands below the log, introducing the theme of a sibling rivalry. Oconee: There's a river Oconee that flows through Lauren County, Georgia, and the county seat of Dublin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin,_Georgia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin,_Georgia Laurens County: during the Anglo-Norman conquest, the archbishop of Dublin was Lawrence O'Toole; Dublin would be "Lawrence's County": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorcán_Ua_Tuathail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorcán_Ua_Tuathail. Also, the Earl of Tristram changed his family name to Lawrence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Howth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Howth) doublin their mumper: doubling their number thuartpeatrick: Saint Patrick. 'taufen' is German for baptize. Peat symbolizes Ireland. The fire references the miracle of Saint Patrick's Purgatory, where he drew a circle on the ground and the earth opened in flame. kidscad ... isaac: the Old Testament story where Jacob, in rivalry with his brother Esau, disguises himself with a lambskin, to steal the blessing of their dying father Isaac. "not yet, but very soon after, Jacob, disguised in the kidskin, duped blind old Isaac". This reinforces the theme of sibling rivalry. Also a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Butt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Butt. Vanessy ... twone nathandjoe: two/one, nathandjoe is Nathan and Joe, another sibling rivalry. Also, an anagram for Jonathan (Swift): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadenus_and_Vanessa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadenus_and_Vanessa sosie sesthers wroth: transformations of Susie/Susannah, Esther, Ruth, the heroines of Biblical stories. In vanessy: Inverness was the castle from Macbeth. Pa's malt, Jhem, Shen: the Biblical story of Noah getting drunk and discovered by his sons, Shem, Japhet, and Ham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunkenness_of_Noah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunkenness_of_Noah. This introduces the theme of the fading of the father into the sibling rivalry. Yeah, it's dense stuff, but I find it fascinating. This paragraph is introducing a bunch of themes that are explored in depth throughout the book. It's impossible to get much meaning without a guidebook; I've used A Skeleton Key by Joseph Campbell.
- lordgrenville 6y ago
  I think of it this way: Ulysses is tough but penetrable; experts understand it and if you go through it slowly with a guide then so will you. With Finnegans Wake, even the experts only understood parts of it, so you might enjoy puzzling it out but shouldn't expect to be able to understand it at all. (Have read the former and not the latter.)
daxfohl 6y ago
Read it! I finally finished it about a year ago after about 15 years of false starts, and am so glad I never have to be bothered by it again. (It's actually just really bad, in every single way, even reading slowly and thoroughly and cross-referencing, unlike the other two of my final three bucket list books I knocked out of the way last year (Gravity's Rainbow, which I'd read once but decided I hadn't followed well enough to count, and which upon the second reading I can't say I loved but it had its moments, and Swann's Way, which was was a bit slow but reasonably good enough once you get used to the pace that I'd consider reading the remainder of the books in the series)). But it's so freeing not to have anything else on the reading bucket list!
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  I agree, it's unreadable - Dr. Zeuss books make more sense. Perhaps if somebody has a motivation different than "I just want to read a classic," then there could be an approach or motivation to invest the time and energy. But parsing gibberish is like reading zero-point SO answer code.

I managed to struggle my way through Ulysses, which at least has some semblance of narrative structure and mostly uses actual English words, but Wells is commenting on Finnegans Wake, which is thoroughly impenetrable. Here's the second paragraph: Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen- core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface. ( from http://finwake.com/1024chapter1/1024finn1.htm http://finwake.com/1024chapter1/1024finn1.htm )

briansteffens 6y ago
Ah, but you left out the first paragraph which clarifies the second entirely! >riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. And you'll just have to read to the end of the book to find out how the sentence begins. Joking aside, I actually love this style of writing even though I get virtually no narrative from it. I read it almost like some sort of abstract poetry, letting my mind wander as the words go by. Also, I find it reads a lot better out loud than silently: easier to notice some of the strange dream-like word mixes. Like `venissoon` kind of sounds like `very soon`. I only saw `venison` until I read it out loud.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  I love Jabberwocky as well, but that's a single page, not 500. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42916/jabberwocky https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42916/jabberwocky
  - swimfar 6y ago
    I never realized that was Lewis Carroll. If you want to hear someone else pronounce it, Donovan made a song out of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnqK-1CPxLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnqK-1CPxLk
  - mcv 6y ago
    That is a great comparison. I love Jabberwocky, but you can't read an entire book in that style. Yet Joyce apparently did write that book. I've never read Joyce, but based on these couple of lines I think I understand Wells' letter. It's magnificent to be able to write like that, but please keep it short. Nobody can withstand that for more than a page or two.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  You might also like "abstract comics". Here, Wells constrasts the work of writing for an english audience with the hack value of playing with english itself. In our language, Joyce might've posted a "Show HN" of some reflective lispian tower that self-rewrites at runtime to collapse into monadic machine code, and Wells would comment that it was probably more fun to write than to use, and as for himself, he will keep on plugging along in javascript to produce value for his paying users. There's more than one way to skin a cat.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- empath75 6y ago
  Probably also helps to read it in an Irish accent.
  - lucideer 6y ago
    Unlikely. Firstly, it's definitely not written in eye dialect (it's basically a dialect or language of Joyce's own invention) Beyond that, even if you were to consider accents of Joyce & his contemporaries, along with the changes of accents over 100 years, Joyce—from a Catholic, but well-off background—had an accent[0] much closer to a modern English accent than anything else. He also lived in Italy, Switzerland and France for most of his life. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhW0TrzWGmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhW0TrzWGmI
    - Supernaut 6y ago
      Hmm. I have to say that Joyce doesn't sound like any English person I've ever met! His accent is fairly typical of the educated middle class Dubliner of the era and can be heard in recordings of some Irish politicians from the period. Ireland was a dominion of the British empire during Joyce's formative years, and the influence of English RP is obvious. However, his Hibernian roots are also clearly audible, at least to me!
CSSer 6y ago
I’ve only ever met two kinds of people with regards to Joyce; those who hate this and those who love it. I have to admit, however, that I’ve never felt compelled to investigate for myself. I’m glad. Wow, that is astoundingly dense.
bcbrown 6y ago
Sir Tristram: Tristran is the hero of Tristan and Iseult, introducing the theme of the two lovers. Also referencing the Earl of Tristram, lord of Howth Castle from the prior paragraph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Howth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Howth, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan the short sea: the English Channel North Amorica: North America penisolate: combination of pen, peninsula, penis, and isolated topsawyer: Tom Sawyer, an American character written by Mark Twain. Also, for lumbermen, the top sawyer stands above log, while the bottom sawyer stands below the log, introducing the theme of a sibling rivalry. Oconee: There's a river Oconee that flows through Lauren County, Georgia, and the county seat of Dublin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin,_Georgia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin,_Georgia Laurens County: during the Anglo-Norman conquest, the archbishop of Dublin was Lawrence O'Toole; Dublin would be "Lawrence's County": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorcán_Ua_Tuathail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorcán_Ua_Tuathail. Also, the Earl of Tristram changed his family name to Lawrence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Howth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Howth) doublin their mumper: doubling their number thuartpeatrick: Saint Patrick. 'taufen' is German for baptize. Peat symbolizes Ireland. The fire references the miracle of Saint Patrick's Purgatory, where he drew a circle on the ground and the earth opened in flame. kidscad ... isaac: the Old Testament story where Jacob, in rivalry with his brother Esau, disguises himself with a lambskin, to steal the blessing of their dying father Isaac. "not yet, but very soon after, Jacob, disguised in the kidskin, duped blind old Isaac". This reinforces the theme of sibling rivalry. Also a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Butt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Butt. Vanessy ... twone nathandjoe: two/one, nathandjoe is Nathan and Joe, another sibling rivalry. Also, an anagram for Jonathan (Swift): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadenus_and_Vanessa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadenus_and_Vanessa sosie sesthers wroth: transformations of Susie/Susannah, Esther, Ruth, the heroines of Biblical stories. In vanessy: Inverness was the castle from Macbeth. Pa's malt, Jhem, Shen: the Biblical story of Noah getting drunk and discovered by his sons, Shem, Japhet, and Ham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunkenness_of_Noah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunkenness_of_Noah. This introduces the theme of the fading of the father into the sibling rivalry. Yeah, it's dense stuff, but I find it fascinating. This paragraph is introducing a bunch of themes that are explored in depth throughout the book. It's impossible to get much meaning without a guidebook; I've used A Skeleton Key by Joseph Campbell.
lordgrenville 6y ago
I think of it this way: Ulysses is tough but penetrable; experts understand it and if you go through it slowly with a guide then so will you. With Finnegans Wake, even the experts only understood parts of it, so you might enjoy puzzling it out but shouldn't expect to be able to understand it at all. (Have read the former and not the latter.)

daxfohl 6y ago

Read it! I finally finished it about a year ago after about 15 years of false starts, and am so glad I never have to be bothered by it again. (It's actually just really bad, in every single way, even reading slowly and thoroughly and cross-referencing, unlike the other two of my final three bucket list books I knocked out of the way last year (Gravity's Rainbow, which I'd read once but decided I hadn't followed well enough to count, and which upon the second reading I can't say I loved but it had its moments, and Swann's Way, which was was a bit slow but reasonably good enough once you get used to the pace that I'd consider reading the remainder of the books in the series)). But it's so freeing not to have anything else on the reading bucket list!

redis_mlc 6y ago
I agree, it's unreadable - Dr. Zeuss books make more sense. Perhaps if somebody has a motivation different than "I just want to read a classic," then there could be an approach or motivation to invest the time and energy. But parsing gibberish is like reading zero-point SO answer code.