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Comment by pklausler | Hacker News Reader

In truth, if you haven't actually read Finnegans Wake, you've missed a grand literary experience.

I've read Finnegans Wake and view it as almost entirely a waste of time. Maybe that marks me a philistine, but I put a whole lot of effort into the book - reading books about it, listening to two different versions on tape - and it did pretty much nothing for me.

And to the original question, I consider TAOCP probably not worth the time and effort to read in detail. It has a lot of interesting stuff if you have infinite time, but very little that I've found practical to me. I've read enough of TAOCP to get two Knuth reward checks but can't motivate myself to read more than a fraction of it.

You're right. It's gibberish.

In truth it is an extremely difficult book to read due to its experimental writing style. See for yourself:

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/j/joyce/james/j8f/complete.ht...

It really appears tedious, at best.

The explanation is golden:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake

"Despite the obstacles, readers and commentators have reached a broad consensus about the book's central cast of characters and, to a lesser degree, its plot. However, a number of key details remain elusive.[6][7]"

I took a class on FW in college, and that definitely helps. Perhaps the book is "hard," but it is hilarious. I can't read a page of it without finding something laugh out loud funny. If that is hard, bring it on. The book really has no beginning or end so feel free to jump around at will. I don't think it is good comparison to taocp.

What did you find laugh out loud funny in Finnegans Wake? (A serious question, I'm not trying to be argumentative.) To me, there were lots of things that were clever or slightly amusing, but nothing near hilarious.

Some examples from the first chapter "oystrygods gaggin fishy-gods" - ok, that's clever turning Ostrogoths and Visigoths into seafood gods. The Willingdone Museyroom section was entertaining enough with "Willingdone" and "Lipoleum" for Wellington and Napoleon. "And a barrowload of guenesis hoer his head" - Guinness the beer and Genesis the book of the bible, clever enough.

I've read a few comments before saying that FW is hilarious. Maybe it's pointless to try to dissect humor, but I'm just not seeing it.

"Shem was a sham and a low sham and his lowness creeped out first via foodstuffs. So low was he that he preferred Gibsen's tea-time salmon tinned, as inexpensive as pleasing, to the plumpest roeheavy lax or the friskiest parr or smolt troutlet that ever was gaffed between Leixlip and Island Bridge and many was the time he repeated in his botulism that no junglegrown pineapple ever smacked like the whoppers you shook out of Ananias' cans, Findlater and Gladstone's, Corner House, Englend. None of your inchthick blueblooded Balaclava fried-at-belief-stakes or juicejelly legs of the Grex's molten mutton or greasilygristly grunters' goupons or slice upon slab of luscious goosebosom with lump after load of plumpudding stuffing all aswim in a swamp of bogoakgravy for that greekenhearted yude!"

I personally think this passage is one of the funniest things I've ever read. First of all, it rolls off the tongue in the most ridiculous way ever (you have to read it out loud) and second of all he manages to write entirely about food while making you think entirely about naughty things.

No accounting for taste but you have got a peculiar sense of humour if that makes you laugh. Give me Professor Stanley Unwin any day.

As you say, it is difficult to explain humor. The best I can do is try to give examples. And to be honest most of the things that immediately strike me as funny deal with sex.

In the passage cited below by jhedwards, I find the way Joyce suggests Shem's Greek-Jewish heritage explains his taste in cheap prostitutes very funny (as well as his skewering the sanctimoniousness of it all, "you like prostitutes but only the cheap ones"). Also, that he gives the address of the whore house, like it is an advertisement is also funny.

You mention the first chapter, so I started reading from the online link given earlier in the thread. In the second paragraph, I found it funny the way he says that topsawyer (Tom Sawyer?) had not exaggerated the size of his balls when they were "doublin their mumper all the time."

It's all about the wordplay and frankly being ridiculous. Obviously if you read these things in the context of a forum, you are probably not going to find it funny. Context is very important: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/0i0fy2/stand-up-hannibal-bures...

As jhedwards suggests, if you read it aloud you will hear the jokes.

The first chapter is deliberately impenetrable, using obscure words from many different languages. I've seen commentaries that explain what it's supposed to mean, but it strikes me more as a tall mountain that exists to be climbed. It's more like you're translating it than reading it.

That said, if you can convince people to house rule it as a word-source for a Scrabble game, you can terrify people who want to challenge.

There's a way to read it that many people miss out on and that is to focus on the sound of reading it out loud. If you scrutinize the meaning of the words, sure, you might learn or discover something, but there's a ton of humor and play and fun to be had just by reading it out loud that most people miss trying to "understand" it.

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