Yankee in a Red State

The ramblings of an expatriate New Yorker in the South ~ formerly known as The Kudzu Kronikles ~

This may sound crude ...

I must say that nothing in my experience of attempting to read Finnegans Wake is quite like sitting on the toilet and reading it aloud.
I do not care if I stumble over the incomprehensible words, I do not care if I don't "get it," because somewhere in the stream of reading aloud, it comes together and the scene focuses in my head and the sheer hilarity of the puns starts to emerge and well ... it is actually fun!
I wrestled with so much angst over my years of reading Joyce, wondering when I would feel fit enough as a reader of Great Literature to tackle the twentieth century's most toothsome tome.  Then, in a fit of boredom, I picked up Joseph Campbell's Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake.  Fortified with a fifty-year-old  (or close to fifty) text, as well as having tackled most all of Joyce's previous works including some not-so-well-known stuff, I felt that I could do battle with Finnegan, finally.
I'm on page 20, after a week, but every morning I can kill two birds with one stone as I sit on my throne, like Leo Bloom in Ulysses.  Except I don't smoke.

posted by: willothwisp at 16:08 | link | comments (2) |
james joyce

The Writer's Voice

I despise you, writer's voice.  Where on earth did you come from?
Fiction?  HA!
Sniveling, romantic, almost fantasy, you are spouting pablum based on an improbable plot that threatens to bludgeon the reader with ennui.
Hypercritical?  You bet I am.  I want edgy.  GIVE ME EDGY.
I do not want to write the romantic fantasy novel, I do not want to write the next bored housewife (yeah, I said housewife) with a rotten husband novel. This has to mean something.
I think you, writer's voice, are a sham.
You are but a lowly sentry meant to foil me in my search for the real writer's voice.
You are the mustachioed doorman to my wizard of Oz.
You are Cerberus to my Hell

posted by: willothwisp at 20:02 | link | comments (2) |
writers craft, writers hell