Finnegan's wake
by James Joyce
11% recommend80% neutral9% critical
Why HN recommends it
Valued for its poetic language, imagery, and sheer scope; many suggest hearing it read aloud or using a companion guide, and say it is less about a linear story than about play with sound and meaning.
Common criticism: Several find it very dense and hard to get through without a lot of effort.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
2007–2026Dubliners
James Joyce
Recommended by 32 · mentioned by 4932 recommend · 49 mention32 recommend · 4932 recommend
2008–2026Finnegans Wake
James Joyce
Recommended by 7 · mentioned by 807 recommend · 80 mention7 recommend · 807 recommend
2008–2026Ulysses
James Joyce
Recommended by 46 · mentioned by 21946 recommend · 219 mention46 recommend · 21946 recommend
2008–2026A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce, J Joyce
Recommended by 11 · mentioned by 3311 recommend · 33 mention11 recommend · 3311 recommend
The Baron in the Trees
Italo Calvino
Recommended by 10 · mentioned by 1210 recommend · 12 mention10 recommend · 1210 recommend
2010–2026A Suitable Boy
Vikram Seth
Recommended by 3 · mentioned by 93 recommend · 9 mention3 recommend · 93 recommend
Cosmicomics
Italo Calvino
Recommended by 11 · mentioned by 1411 recommend · 14 mention11 recommend · 1411 recommend
2009–2023Of grammatology
Jacques Derrida
Recommended by 2 · mentioned by 92 recommend · 9 mention2 recommend · 92 recommend
…for the difficulty. Sure, doing hard things is a good thing for satisfaction and character building. That doesn't mean a math book that's harder to understand is better than one that's easy. I think Finnegan's Wake (mentioned in the article) is a good example. It's difficult and good, but for different reasons. Joyce was being expiremental. He wrote from inside a characters head, a POV style that's very common in…
on “Why We Need Difficult Books” ↗For anyone struggling with Joyce, I recommend Finnegan's Wake. You are guaranteed to find Ulysses easier to read after this.
on “James Joyce’s Ulysses reviewed (1922)” ↗There is a way to find great pleasure in Joyce, it does require effort and education, but so do many other pleasures. Terence McKenna's "Surfing Finnegan's Wake" is a good way in, especially if you enjoy McKenna's weirdly-similar-to-George-Bush's voice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpeq91hK1Gk
on “Stephen King: Can a Novelist Be Too Productive? (2015)” ↗>What prepares one to read Finnegan's wake? Listening to Joyce read it aloud: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kFqiv8Vww&pp=ygUcam95Y2UgcmV.... I had so much trouble trying to read him before understanding the intended pacing. It's more poetry…
on “Short Little Difficult Books” ↗This was my experience, too. A Skeleton Key To Finnegan's Wake by Joseph Campbell helped me understand the overall themes of the book, and hearing Joyce read it helped me appreciate the language and the rhythm of the words. I found it more approachable once I saw…
on “Short Little Difficult Books” ↗…extremely oddly trained gpt-3 model. I don't mean that to be an insult to the book, it's just the best comparison I can think of to characterize it's contents in modern terms. This is how fascinating Finnegan's Wake is as a literary work.
on “Love the smell of old books? This bookseller would like you to leave” ↗My favorite way to read Finnegan's Wake is to get some friends and perhaps some drinks, have everyone pick a random spot from the book and read it out loud. The book is a circle so it doesn't really have a proper beginning, and the way the…
on “The Banning of Joyce's Ulysses” ↗Finnegan's Wake absolutely exists to be read, or even sung, out loud. If you've never gotten the appeal, just try listening to the start of an audiobook version. There's a Youtube series that covers the first few chapters…
on “The Banning of Joyce's Ulysses” ↗On the contrary, I find Finnegan's Wake easier because it's more "fun". It's filled with silly word-play and funny sounds, and I don't feel compelled to try to make any particular meaning out of it or find a coherent story inside it, though…
on “James Joyce’s Ulysses reviewed (1922)” ↗Finnegan's Wake is easier to read, in my opinion, because it isn't a linear novel. By its very construction, the non-deterministic "narrative" implores the Reader to leap, skip, and jump about as though lucid dreaming.…
on “Ask HN: Whats the most challenging book you have ever read?” ↗…poetic language and imagery, and the incredible scope of it. I don't worry too much about the allusions and puns, they are kind of a bonus. I first read the Wake with Joseph Campbell's "A Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake" as a companion, and I've used other texts, too. Maybe I should revisit Ulysses.
on “Joyce Project” ↗I'd be curious to hear how either "Ulysses" or "Finnegan's Wake" compare to Samuel Delany's "Dhalgren". I've yet to read anything by Joyce, but thanks to the University of Adelaide[1] and European (and Australian) copyright terms, I now have both in epub-format, and…
on “Finnegans Wake: the book the web was invented for” ↗…book, or Stephen King or whatever. OTOH, if you're not that kind of person, you can force yourself to grind through mechanically reading the words of Infinite Jest or Gravity's Rainbow, or Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake or whatever, and wind up no better off at the end than if you'd read from a random word generator for the same period of time.
on “What to Make of Finnegans Wake? (2012)” ↗…importance to the committee evaporates" So let me get this straight, you think think Dylan's lyrics are gibberish but you understand Joyce just fine? This is patently absurd. Are you just trolling? Finnegan's Wake is perhaps the most famous piece of gibberish ever published. It's widely thought to be incomprehensible even by scholars. Lets take a typical passage from Finnegan's Wake: "Otherways wesways like that…
on “Former Columnist Jailed for Facebook Criticism of Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi” ↗> has a strange looping narrative that starts and ends in the middle of the same sentence James Joyce did that with Finnegan’s Wake back in the ‘30s.
on “The 40th anniversary edition of Codex Seraphinianus” ↗