Bed-bound for the foreseeable, is now the time to tackle this absolute unit? (Might try the @i_am_mill_i_am approach, 20 pages a day)
I’m finding it helps if I imagine it being read in the voice of Captain Beefheart
My favourite lines so far: “the hour of the twattering of bards in the twitterlitter” and “You can ask your ass if he believes it”
“the wild wishwish of her sheeshea melted most musically mid the dark deepdeep of his shayshaun” ooh-er!
“the false hood of a spindler web chokes the cavemouth of his unsightliness but the nestlings that liven his leafscreen sing him a lover of arbuties”
200 pages in and not understanding a word of what’s going on but weirdly enjoying it at the same time; it’s written with a “meticulosity bordering on the insane”
I’ve got to a bit that I still don’t understand but is very very pretty:
“Look, look, the dusk is growing!”
“Dark hawks hear us.”
(It’s the Anna Livia Plurabelle chapter)
“Look, look, the dusk is growing!”
“Dark hawks hear us.”
(It’s the Anna Livia Plurabelle chapter)
This bit seems to parody the chapters of Ulysses/The Odyssey: Hades, Scylla and Charybdis, The Wandering Rocks. Elsewhere there’s a reference to ‘his usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles’ (Ulysses was first published with a blue cloth-bound cover; Bloom lives on Eccles St).
What is Hogwarts doing in Finnegans Wake? @jk_rowling
I am, as the kids say, back on my BS (attempting to finish the remaining 300 pages of this book of which I can understand less than 1% of what’s going on)
“the Strangest Dream that was ever Halfdreamt”
“Becoming ungoing”
“nitshnykopfgoknob” anyone?
I hope Finnegan wakes soon
Read a couple of great bits this morning:
“I will shally. Thou shalt willy.”
“I was pillowing in my brime”
“I will shally. Thou shalt willy.”
“I was pillowing in my brime”
“And thus within the tavern’s secret booth The wisehight ones who sip the tested sooth Bestir them as the Just has bid to jab The punch of quaram on the mug of truth.”
“King Roderick O’Conor, the paramount chief polemarch and last pre-electric king of Ireland”
“And still a light moves long the river.” I mean that bit’s basically in English!
I'm still technically reading Finnegans Wake. Although I haven't opened it since December, when I wrote this blogpost. 200 pages left! https://robinallender.tumblr.com/post/181587288930/year-i-havent-actually-finished-this-but-i
“Never let a hog of the howth trample underfoot your linen of Killiney.” Words to live by.
“Look on a boa in his beauty and you’ll never more wear strawberry leaves.”
I am reading Finnegans Wake in Subway
“I’d scare the bats out of the ivfry one of those puggy mornings”
You go through page after indecipherable page and then you get to something like this which takes your breath away: “the beausome of the exhaling night”!
And then on the next page: “Isn’t that lovely though?” One of those rare sentences in FW that’s actually in English.
Reviving my FW thread (nope, still not finished it) to post this piece that made it to @theQuietus https://thequietus.com/articles/26727-books-at-bedtime-finnegans-wake-james-joyce-lint-steve-aylett-notes-to-self-emilie-pine
“And there is nihil nuder under the clothing moon.”

"Whoishe whoishe whoishe whoishe linking in?" (first ref to linkedin)
"with all that's buried ofsins insince insensed insides of me" - very Beefheartian:
"There fell some fall of littlewinter snow, holy-as-ivory, I gather, jesse?"
That's right, I'm live-tweeting Finnegans Wake again.
That's right, I'm live-tweeting Finnegans Wake again.
“Suilful eyes and sallowfoul hairweed and the sickly sigh from her gingering mouth like a Dublin bar in the moarning.”
“like an easter sun round the colander”
Two interesting words. “Lludillongi”. No idea what that means, but looks Welsh. And “earwanker”.
Thinking when I finally finish Finnegans Wake I might write a blogpost about it in which I also discuss Larkin’s essay about modernism from the introduction to All What Jazz. Then to sit back... and watch the money roll in.
New EP takes its title from Finnegans Wake (obvs) https://robinallender.bandcamp.com/album/becoming-ungoing
Interesting word in FW: "unpackyoulloups", a play on "apocalypse," a word whose origin is to uncover or reveal, or unpack...! The word eucalyptus apparently has the same root (and means to cover up).
This line is from ages ago but I like it: "Ay, already the sombrer opacities of gloom are sphanished!"
Read one page today. He kept going on about "memes".
And he mentioned Ys, a clear reference to Joanna Newsom (jk, I know Ys was a mythical city on the coast of Brittany).
Read one page today. He kept going on about "memes".
And he mentioned Ys, a clear reference to Joanna Newsom (jk, I know Ys was a mythical city on the coast of Brittany).
"Make me feel good in the moontime."
“stirring up the public opinion about private balls”
"heliotrope ayelips"
"sycamode euphonium"
"clairaudience"
I feel like I've stumbled on the Boards of Canada page.
"sycamode euphonium"
"clairaudience"
I feel like I've stumbled on the Boards of Canada page.