a little bit of humor

a little bit of humor

Monday, January 25, 2010

Finnegan again and again

So I opened Finnigans Wake, on a whim, the best way I suppose, and decided to look for a repetitious description. Needless to say, it took less than a minute to find such a passage and here it is: "...and the whole mesa redonda of Lorencao Otulass in convocacaon was this disinterestingly low human type, this Calumnious Column of Cloaxity, this Bengalese Beacon of Biloxity, this Annamite Aper of Atroxity, really at, it will be precise to quarify, for he seems in a badbad case?" (pg. 179). As usual, this passage succeeded in obfuscation, but I am not too proud to admit that this will be my lot throughout the entire book. Although I didn't understand it entirely, it made me laugh. Maybe that's because he deems it "precise to quarify" when there is no quarity or clarity, that's how I understood it, in this book. It's cruel irony. Plus, his so-called quarification, if I may use his word, conists of words such as Cloaxity, Biloxity and Atroxity, which are a slap in the face of clarity.

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