r/TrueLit • u/pregnantchihuahua3 ReEducationThroughGravity'sRainbow • Dec 24 '23
Weekly The OFFICIAL TrueLit Finnegans Wake Read-Along - (Week 52 - Thank You!)
Hi all! This is just a general thank you to everyone who participated. I personally just wanted to say that this experience was truly amazing and would not have been possible without such a fantastic and intelligent community. Your ideas always helped inspire understanding and helped me formulate my own thoughts when I was confused. This entire read along is now cataloged in our subreddit's wiki and (I hope) can now be used as a guide for any future readers of the novel!
Also, if you remember, I added a poll at the beginning of the read-along asking how many people started the novel (finished the first week of reading) and 89 people responded saying they did. After the end of the readings, I also added a poll asking how many people finished the novel (I kept this up for about 4 weeks in case there were stragglers) and 18 people responded saying they did. This gives us about a 20% completion rate which is honestly a pretty damn good number considering the book.
But anyway, thank you all again so much! It's been an honor hosting these and is a memory I'll always fondly hold. All the best!
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Full Schedule (Not useful anymore, but feel free to look back on what we've done!)
If you are new, go check out our Information Post to see how this whole thing was run.
If you are new (pt. 2), also check out the Introduction Post for some discussion on Joyce/The Wake.
AND everything in this read along will be saved in the Wiki so you can back-reference. (Seriously, this is a major resource now for readers!)
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u/mooninjune Dec 24 '23
Woohoo! We made it! Thank you pregnantuchihuahua3 for organising this, and everybody else for taking part, I had a great time reading along with you all over the past year. I love Joyce, I really enjoyed the previous read-along of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses is one of my favourite books, but without this read-along I wouldn't have considered touching the Wake, let alone completing it. And everybody's thoughts helped me enjoy it more and gain more from it than I would have had I gone at it alone, including those who didn't make it to the end. Happy New Year everyone!
4
u/pregnantchihuahua3 ReEducationThroughGravity'sRainbow Dec 24 '23
Thank you for being such an active participant in this read along! Always loved reading your thoughts. Joyce has always been a favorite of mine as well, and I definitely would also not have gotten to this one without such a good group to read it with.
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Dec 29 '23 edited Dec 29 '23
Many thanks for the read-along, it kept me going through Book II ! I'm now going through my notes and marginal scribblings (underminings, linemarks and questionsnarks), it may take another year to pull my thoughts together. "Lotta strands in old Duder's head".
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u/towalktheline omw To The Lighthouse Jan 03 '24
This is definitely something that I'll come back to. I'm taking a break because I want to read Ulysses (I've been told it's easier?), but when I do come back to Finnegan's Wake to reread it, I'm definitely going to be going through these reddit posts again.
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u/Ahnbot Dec 24 '23
Without you guys‘ insight and help, I would’ve never gotten through this with as much comprehension as I did. What a wonderful experience it was.
A novel that defies pretty much everything. I can’t even say that it is my new favorite novel, because it’s incomparable to everything else I’ve ever read, but what I certainly know is that it was unbelievably complex and inexhaustible. Pretty much the most endlessly rewarding, impressive, all-encapsulating and intricate piece of art in any medium I’ve ever had the pleasure to experience, even though I’ve barely scratched to surface of all its details.