Is 'Finnegans Wake' the world's hardest book to read?

Answer 1

Yes, it is the world's hardest book to read if you actually tried to read it cover to cover. The beauty of the book is that you don't have to do that. The reason being because of an idea Joyce had while reading Shakespeare. Joyce considered Shakespeare to be the greatest writer of all time for a very simple reason: In most Shakespeare works there isn't a single word that could be edited out. Every word was so important to the overall work that all of them needed to be there.

Joyce tried doing the same thing with Finnegans Wake. He tried connecting every single word to every single adjacent word through the use of the pun. Then he tried to do the same thing with adjacent phrases, then adjacent sentences, then paragraphs, and so on. Hell, he did it within the words themselves! For example, at one point in the book he uses the word, Jungfraud, to describe a woman. Jungfrau is the German word for virgin. Additionally, the paragraph that the word is in is about her mental health, so one could split the word Jungfraud into Jung and Fraud and derive additional meaning by realizing that two of the most famous psychiatrists ever are Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud whom Joyce considered a fraud. Yes, most of the words of the 600 or so page novel can be scrutinized in this manner.

He felt that by doing this, he could create a book with sort of an "infinite" number of ideas and meanings in it since; if every word, sentence, and paragraph in the book is directly related to every other word, sentence, and paragraph, then there was no possible way to limit what could be derived from the book. Joyce himself even admitted that there were ideas and relations in the book that had been inadvertently created through this method that he would never know about, but were pertinent nonetheless.

As for reading it cover to cover, don't, trust me (I did :/). The mere fact that the very first sentence in the book is a continuation of the very the last sentence of the book should convince you that Joyce did not intend Finnegans Wake to be linear. Instead, pick out a random paragraph from anywhere in the book and study it. Mind you, Joyce spoke 10 languages fluently and was not afraid to use them. Then, do the same for another random paragraph. Then try to relate the two paragraphs together. Continue this for a while with additional paragraphs and you'll realize that yes, Finnegans Wake is the world's hardest book to read, but it is also one of the most rewarding.

Answer 2

'Finnegans Wake' by James Joyce is often regarded as one of the most challenging works of literature due to its complex language, unique narrative style, and multiple layers of meaning. However, whether it is the world's hardest book to read is subjective and can vary from person to person based on their background and reading preferences.