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Re:Finnegans Wake: the book the web was invented for by mbubb on Thursday April 30, 2015 @12:32PM (#9466098)
Yes - took 2 Joyce seminars back in college and never got through more than excerpts of FW. Funny process - at first you think Ulysses is hard, and it is, but you get used to that world. FW is dense.

Another work which always seemed made for the Internet is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project

there is even a precursor to the hyperlink in the way that links to other topics jump around the work and imply multiple connections.

Things like https://mannahatta2409.org/ remind me of what Benjamin did in a way.

Re:Finnegans Wake: the book the web was invented for by JadeNB on Thursday April 30, 2015 @01:46PM (#9466524)
> Another work which always seemed made for the Internet is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project

If we're throwing out ideas, I'd love to see a web version of Rayuela (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_(Julio_Cortázar_nove... ).

Re:Finnegans Wake: the book the web was invented for by mbubb on Thursday April 30, 2015 @02:02PM (#9466616)
I remember reading that. At the time my absolute favorite novel. Its beautiful. He's a great great writer. The short stories. "A Certain Lucas"; "Around the day in 80 worlds" but nothing quite like Hopscotch.

Jumping to film - I always thought that a lecture/ essay on Blowup Blowout and ) a bit of a stretch) The Conversation

all descended from Cortazar's short story would make a great study.

Re:Finnegans Wake: the book the web was invented for by JadeNB on Friday May 01, 2015 @05:37PM (#9474686)
I dunno—I was introduced to the short stories first, and none of the novels compare for me (not even Hopscotch, much as I enjoy it). Cronopios and Famas, We Love Glenda So Much, House Taken Over—he has hilarious, chilling, and beautiful short stories.
Re:Finnegans Wake: the book the web was invented for by sogen on Thursday April 30, 2015 @02:24PM (#9466752)
yeah, Cortazar stuff is great,

wow, another Lucas fan!

Re:Finnegans Wake: the book the web was invented for by agumonkey on Thursday April 30, 2015 @02:12PM (#9466684)
I had the hardest time following Cortazar surrealism.
Re:Finnegans Wake: the book the web was invented for by abruzzi on Thursday April 30, 2015 @01:10PM (#9466289)
Part of the reason it stops readers quickly is the opening chapter is much harder than later chapters (that not to say that later chapters are easy, just nowhere near as dense ad the beginning). In that way is kind of like Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" in which part one is by far the hardest to read, since it is written, stream of consciousness, in the mind of a mentally disabled person. Later parts are easier to follow.
Re:Finnegans Wake: the book the web was invented for by gcv on Thursday April 30, 2015 @08:37PM (#9468626)
Ulysses is definitely doable, but it marks a point when high-brow literature stopped being something every reasonable, intelligent, and educated person enjoys reading. It's a chore (less so than FW, of course), and of questionable value — yeah, it's cool to get all the references to Homer, etc., but I don't think anyone puts down Ulysses with anything other than a sense of relief of having scaled it as an obstacle. (Yes, I studied Ulysses. Voluntarily and on my own time. I don't mean to belittle Joyce's talent. Ulysses is obviously a huge accomplishment, beyond nearly all writers.)

Compare that with, say, Dickens. People would drop what they were doing to read the next installment of Little Dorrit.

Re:Finnegans Wake: the book the web was invented for by ctogden on Thursday April 30, 2015 @02:54PM (#9466923)
> Another work which always seemed made for the Internet is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project

I think http://www.thelemming.com/lemming/dissertation-web/home/arca... would appeal to you then.

It looks like Eric Meltzer, Max Fenton, and some others may be working on another project based on The Arcades Project.

Re:Finnegans Wake: the book the web was invented for by waterlesscloud on Thursday April 30, 2015 @05:10PM (#9467666)
I took a Joyce class in college. We spent most of the quarter on Ulysses, a chapter at a time. We spent one class period on the first page of Finnegan's Wake.

As you mentioned, you adapt fairly quickly to Ulysses, but Finnegan's Wake is a whole other universe.

I found it helped with both works to mentally read them in an absurdly exaggerated Irish accent. Especially FW.