Are you tired of your more learned friends lording their book knowledge over you like some sort of pop-culture-loving rube? Do you often find yourself pivoting conversations away from works of great literature into the safer terrain of a sci-fi film you’ve watched a thousand times? Do you sometimes worry you’re kind of dumb? Well, cast those concerns aside, because some enterprising blogger out there has edited James Joyce’s impenetrable classic Finnegans Wake to be more palatable to the layman. Meaning, of course, that it’s now about Return Of The Jedi.
While only a few paragraphs long, “Finnegans Ewok” perfectly mimics Joyce’s stream of consciousness, idiosyncratic style. The onomatopoetic phrases and portmanteaus are similar to those the author used to phonetically recreate an Irish brogue, but now they’re mixed in with mentions of “ewokky-gods” and “Bygmonster Annakin.” Honestly, we’ll need a modern lit professor to tell us exactly which part of the movie is being described here, but it’s a fun read nonetheless. Here’s the first chunk:
movierun, past new and hopes, from strike of back to bend of jeday, brings us by a commodius lucas of recirculation back to forestmoon and endor.
Sir Kywalker, violer d’amores, fr’over the short stars, had passen-core rearrived from North Dagobah on this side the scraggy isthwamp of yoda Minor to saberfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the Duney Tattoee exaggerated themselse to fraherberts county’s Jabbios while they went doublin their muppets all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartspaceoperatick not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old threepeeo: not yet, though all’s fair in Leiaessy, were in-sistie smoochers wroth with twone famromance. Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhed or Sithen duelwed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the bewithyouforce.
And here’s the comparable portion from Joyce:
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bendof bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back toHowth Castle and Environs.
Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passen-core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggyisthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: norhad topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselseto Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumperall the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe totauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had akidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s fair invanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot apeck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and roryend to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.
So, next time you’re at a fancy cocktail party and find yourself struggling to keep up with a highbrow conversation, just drop a reference to the pivotal role the “Falconmilleniums” played in Finnegans Wake. We doubt anyone will challenge you on it, considering no one knows what the hell that book is about anyway.
You can read the rest of the parody here.
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22 Comments
always here for more Finnegan’s Wake based meme content.
Nope, nice try but this is still not incomprehensible enough. I had a Joyce professor once say he used Wake to get to sleep at night. One page and he’d be out like a light.
I wonder if he was really that big of a dumbass or was just pretending to be one to get on his students’ good side
Meesa thinkin’ this be stu stu rocksinhead.
Not enough nub nub.
A writing prof of mine once described Finnegan’s Wake thusly:
“You try to read it, and you can’t read it. So you get a Gaelic dictionary and copies of all the annotations and read what Joyce said about it in interviews, and you go in with all that so you can make sense out of it. Halfway through, the book ends. Then it begins. Then the last words of the book are the same as the first words, so you read it again. Then you go insane.”
I can read maybe a page of that book and I start feeling like I am having all the worst parts of an acid trip.Still, I read this very affecting biography of his daughter that theorized the book was sort of (in addition to everything else of course) his way of trying to understand/channel/communicate with her through her mental illness. And that makes it both sorta sad and also more touching than it would appear at first glance.
i read it cover to cover; it’s pretty fun actually if you arm yourself correctlyonce you get a sense of the structure of the books and learn HCE, ALP, Shem, Shaun, Issy, the 4 codgers and the 12 bar patrons you can usually find themhaveth childers everywherehircus civis eblanensishere comes everybodythey attend recirculating events as the Viconian cycles of 4 play through the books and episodesgood foot wetter by an admittedly problematic author: skeleton key – joseph campbelledit: agree with everything ron said but i might not have called your prof incompetent
Folks, we’ve found the nadir of literary analysis: calling James Joyce “trippy”
Obviously shouldn’t feed the troll but, for the record: I quite like Ulysses, have read it multiple times, and I would call that “trippy” too. Yes it’s a stoner word, but if you’re such a fucking snob/misanthrope that you can’t apply a broader, more open minded sense to it and try to expand your sense of empathy to other sorts of people and their experiences (and how they consequently use words) then I would argue that you are exactly the sort of person that Joyce was writing against, that is, the closest thing his books have to a villain: small minded, parochial bullies.
Your professor was incompetent. Finnegans Wake is not that hard, just read it aloud in an Irish accent, following the annotations on finwake.com, then read it aloud again (still in an Irish accent) without looking at the annotations, and the meaning pops out like a pointillistic painting. Joyce was very considerate to the readers, and took his time with each image and scene to let you get the sense of the events. The book is by far the greatest work of human literature, book 3 is especially shocking, because it upends the hero-story of book 2 ch 3 and the paranoid narrative of book 1, and the titanic shem/shaun conflict through the most stunning reveal in all of literature, in book 3 ch 4. It’s like a detective story, you are figuring out the identity of the dreamer, and then, it is revealed, and it’s nothing like you constructed, but it makes sense anyway. The final chapter is the greatest love-soliloquoy ever written.
Your professor sounds simply le epic. Seriously though, what a depraved and stupid thing to tell students about that book
In the 90s, Random House put out “the corrected text” of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and all I could think was – how can they tell?You want an author named Joyce, try William – A Day With Wilbur Robinson is a day you only want to last forever.
How fucking stupid can you be not to be able to read James Joyce… everything non-standard about it is either an easy-to-find reference to something in Western culture, or it’s stream-of-consciousness, which has saturated fiction so thoroughly that readers nowadays should be like fish in waterThe only thing keeping people from reading authors such as Joyce is irrational fear of having to think hard while reading to understand the narrative, and that’s not even something you have to do with Joyce. If this comment thread is to be believed, though, there’s a whole bunch of literature professors out there who aim to be “lit” and “funky fresh” for the kids by whining that Joyce is too hard for anyone to read
I got a Shem the Penman notification for this?
AVClub has become as bad as Splinter. NO APPROVED COMMENTERS LEFT, except the ones that toe the SJW line! EVERYONE ELSE? TO THE GREYS!!
Still doesn’t beat Tales From Vader’s Castle #4, which is basically Ewok Wicker Man.
Fuck off to a place very far away from here
The A.V. Club
Do you sometimes worry you’re kind of dumb?
James Joyce wrote a whole book about an early Dropkick Murphy’s song?
Our species doesn’t deserve to survive
Sounds even better when one realizes that in Finnegans Walkę, James Joyce foresaw (foreheard) the Star Wars music: http://www.waywordsandmeansigns.com/news-bartnicki-star-wars-finnegans-wake/