Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake Review

It is probably honest to begin with a disclaimer: Finnegans Wake is not a book that can be reviewed in the ordinary sense, because it is not a book in the ordinary sense. It does not have a plot that can be summarized or characters who can be described with confidence. It is written in a language that is recognizably English but is also — simultaneously — dozens of other languages, folded and punned and compacted into a prose that can be read on multiple levels at once or none of them. Joyce spent seventeen years writing it, published long extracts during that time under the title “Work in Progress,” and completed it in 1939, the year the world he had spent his life observing was about to be destroyed.

The premise, insofar as there is one: HCE — Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, also Here Comes Everybody, also a great many other things — lies sleeping in his Dublin pub near Chapelizod. What we read is his dream. The dream draws on his family (his wife Anna Livia Plurabelle, his twin sons Shem and Shaun, his daughter Issy), on Irish history and myth, on the Viconian theory of historical cycles, on a hundred mythologies and folk traditions, on hundreds of languages, and on Joyce’s inexhaustible appetite for wordplay. The book circles back on itself: its final sentence is grammatically incomplete and connects back to the opening words.

The experience of reading it cannot really be described to someone who has not tried. Passages of extraordinary beauty appear without warning — the Anna Livia Plurabelle section, which Joyce read aloud and recorded, remains one of the most beautiful things in the English language when heard rather than read. Passages of broad comedy sit beside passages of genuine pathos. The puns, of which there are thousands, range from groan-inducing to genuinely illuminating — a single word can carry meanings in six languages simultaneously, and when all of them are relevant at once the effect is unlike anything else in literature.

There is no shame in not finishing it, or in approaching it as a book to browse rather than read linearly. Many serious readers have spent years with it and report that it keeps yielding new pleasure. Others have tried and found no purchase. Both responses are understandable. What is not defensible is dismissing it as a hoax or a failure of judgment: the ambition is real, the craft is real, and the sections that work — and there are many — work in ways that no other prose has managed. It is the least read major work in the English literary tradition, and it is also, in some genuinely arguable sense, the most ambitious thing that tradition has produced.

A Book That Resists Reviewing

It is only honest to admit that Finnegans Wake (1939) cannot be reviewed in the ordinary way, because it is not a book in the ordinary way. It has no summarisable plot and no characters who can be described with confidence. It is written in a language that is recognisably English and simultaneously dozens of other languages, folded and punned and compacted so that a single word may carry meanings in six tongues at once. Joyce spent seventeen years on it, publishing extracts as “Work in Progress,” and finished it in 1939, on the eve of the war that would destroy much of the world he had spent his life observing. To approach it expecting the satisfactions of a novel is to guarantee frustration; to approach it as something stranger is to give it a chance.

The Dream of HCE

Insofar as there is a premise, it is this: HCE — Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, also Here Comes Everybody, also a hundred other things — lies asleep in his Dublin pub near Chapelizod, and what we read is his dream. The dream draws on his family (his wife Anna Livia Plurabelle, his twin sons Shem and Shaun, his daughter Issy), on Irish history and myth, on the Viconian theory of recurring historical cycles, on countless mythologies and folk traditions, and on Joyce’s inexhaustible appetite for wordplay. The book famously circles back on itself: its final sentence breaks off incomplete and connects to the opening words, so that the whole is a loop rather than a line — a structure meant to mirror the cyclical view of history on which it is built.

What Reading It Is Actually Like

The experience genuinely cannot be conveyed to someone who has not attempted it. Passages of extraordinary beauty surface without warning — the Anna Livia Plurabelle section, which Joyce himself read aloud and recorded, is among the most beautiful things in English when heard rather than seen on the page. Broad comedy sits beside real pathos. The puns, of which there are thousands, range from groan-inducing to genuinely revelatory; when a single coinage activates relevant meanings across several languages at once, the effect is unlike anything else in literature. This is why reading the Wake aloud is so often recommended: the sound carries sense that silent reading misses entirely, and the ear catches connections the analysing eye overlooks.

How to Hold It

The sensible posture toward Finnegans Wake is permission rather than obligation. There is no shame in not finishing it, or in treating it as a book to browse and sound rather than read linearly from cover to cover. Many serious readers have spent years with it and report that it keeps yielding new pleasure; others have tried and found no purchase at all. Both responses are reasonable, and the book’s enormous apparatus of reference — the hundreds of languages, the dense mythological and historical substrata — means some form of annotation is effectively required for sustained reading. The best advice is often to read for the music and the comedy first and let comprehension follow at its own pace, if it follows at all.

The Defensible Claim

What is not defensible is dismissing the Wake as a hoax or a failure of judgment. The ambition is real, the craft is real, and the passages that work — and there are many — work in ways no other prose has matched. It is the least read of the major works in the English tradition, and it is also, in a genuinely arguable sense, the most ambitious thing that tradition has produced: a book that treats language not as a transparent window onto meaning but as a material substance to be worked, and that makes that substance, rather than any character or plot, its true protagonist. Whether one finishes it or not, it stands as the furthest extension of what Joyce had been doing all along — pushing prose past the limits of what anyone had thought prose could do.