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Book Club Celebrates After Finishing Book It Took 28 Years To Read

A book club in California has finally finished James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake after 28 years of meeting to discuss it one page at a time.

Finnegans Wake is a notoriously difficult read. Large parts of it seem to be written in made-up languages; some words look like a cat walked across the typewriter. It wasn’t easy for Joyce to write either, taking him 17 years to complete. 

A book club in Venice, California, chose Finnegans Wake as its group project in 1995. The literary scholars read the book over 28 years, taking their time to savour every page. 

According to The Guardian, experimental filmmaker Gerry Fialka hosted the club, which started reading the cryptic paperback in 1995. 

The group, ranging from ten to sometimes thirty people, would meet up once a month and read a page, only finishing the book this year.

At first, they read two pages, but obviously, that was too much, so they cut it down to one page and a lengthy discussion each meeting. 

It seems like it was a fun time, with one member, Peter Quadrino, describing the experience as “like my brain just took a shower.” 

“In the course of a meeting, I have 30 different Wikipedia tabs open… You’re always learning about some new historical figure, or event, or some poet.” 

So, was it worth it? Did they glean some impactful meaning from the text? Not really, as Fialka told The Guardian, “I don’t want to lie; it wasn’t like I saw God… It wasn’t a big deal.” 

I guess it wasn’t really about the book in the end; we all just want an excuse to hang out with friends. How many people go fishing and never catch fish or watch a footy team that always loses? 

So, what’s the next book for the group? Well, they’re giving ‘Finnegans Wake’ another crack. 

As Fialka explained to The Guardian, “We didn’t end. The last sentence of the book ends mid-sentence, and then it picks up at the front of the book. It’s cyclical. It never ends.”