Comment by 9nGQluzmnq3M | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 9nGQluzmnq3M | Hacker News Reader

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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 )

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.

I love Jabberwocky as well, but that's a single page, not 500.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42916/jabberwocky

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

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.

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.

Probably also helps to read it in an Irish accent.

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

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!

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.

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.)

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/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

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. Also, the Earl of Tristram changed his family name to Lawrence (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.

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

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. 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.

> penisolate: combination of pen, peninsula, penis, and isolated

I presume this makes Pikotaro the modern avatar of Joyce then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct6BUPvE2sM

> the short sea: the English Channel

> North Amorica: North America

Are you sure? The quoted text says "North Armorica", which is in northern Brittany, just across the English Channel from the British Isles.

Writing it like that certainly evokes "North America", but I guess this is what Joyce does: mix multiple different but similar words and names into one in order to confuse the hell out of the reader.

Yeah, you're probably right.

Jesus that sounds tedious.

Now I think that Joyce : English :: Programmers : Brainfuck. It was meant to be a fun experiment to see if and how it's possible to get anything meaningful out of it, but it's perfectly OK to look at it and shudder.

If Donald Knuth wrote TAOCP in Befunge as a thought experiment, I'd regard it much the same: kudos to you for pulling it off, but even if it's a work of genius, I'd rather do literally anything else than try to make sense of it.

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