For Joyce readers, the end is a new beginning: the novel they are trying to unravel

LOS ANGELES — The first indication that “Finnegans Wake” may rank among the most challenging books you'll ever read is its first line, which begins mid-sentence.

The novel, by James Joyce, ends in the same way, without a period. Some experts say that the last line makes a circuit with the beginning, symbolizing the cyclical nature of time.

In California, life imitates art: A book club that spent nearly three decades reading the novel is starting it over.

“It is not over; It’s an ongoing experience,” said Gerry Fialka, 70, a filmmaker from Venice, Calif., who founded the group in 1995. The club met monthly to read a page or two and finally ended in October.

The club is one of several around the world dedicated to collectively unraveling Joyce's 1939 novel, which tells many stories simultaneously and is replete with neologisms and allusions. Critics have considered the work disconcerting; It is common for a club to take several years to read the book.

Joyce “couldn't have counted on many readers, or any readers, to understand her,” said Samuel Slote, a professor at the School of English at Trinity College Dublin, whose reading group began reading the book in 2016, and still hasn't. reaches halfway. “No one can really master it completely.”

A sentence at the beginning of the novel says: “bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!”

Margot Norris, professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Irvine, described “Finnegans Wake” as “dramatic poetry” that rather than following a typical plot plays with the very nature of language.

“In 'Finnegans Wake' we see words that are not words,” Norris said. The novel, he added, “draws your attention to the language, but the language won't be exactly the language you know.”

Fritz Senn, founder of the James Joyce Foundation in Zurich, who runs two weekly “Finnegans Wake” reading groups, described community readings as akin to slowly working your way through a religious text, which is often intended to be read once. and again.

“You have every right not to understand it,” he said. “There is no reason to be ashamed.”

“Joyce is an obsession,” said Roy Benjamin, 70, who has been a member of the California club for two years. “The more things you learn, the more meaning and nonsense it makes for you.”

In October, more than a dozen people from the California group joined a Zoom meeting to read the final page. Fialka asked them to “breathe consciously together” before taking turns reading two lines each.

Then, they went back to the beginning.

During the meeting, a member asked Fialka if he would “consider changing this format so that it doesn't take another 28 years to read.” But Fialka said the club's goal was never to finish the book, but rather to work together to absorb it.

“People think they are reading a book; but no,” she said. “They are breathing and living together like human beings in a room; looking at printed material and discovering what effect printed material has on us.”

By: Livia Albeck-Ripka