Erik Bindervoet & Robert-Jan Henkes, Finnegancyclopedie. Amsterdam: Athenaeum - Polak & Van Gennep, 2005. Paperback, 255 pp.
Tekeningen: Erik Bindervoet. Collages: Robert-Jan Henkes.
Als nieuw. Zonder CD.
Read 'It never ends’, a Guardian article on a Venice, CA, book club that spent 28 years reading Finnegans Wake. In combination with the Finnegancyclopedie, it can get you inspired to read Finnegans Wake. Bindervoet and Henkes made a 'Dutch' translation of it that was received pretty well.
An extract: "The sheer difficulty of Finnegans Wake makes reading it a kind of democratic experience, Slote said. Expertise doesn’t go very far. “You have to accept that no one person is really going to get it, which is where the idea of community reading can really kick in,” he said. A team effort can also help with decoding Joyce’s many allusions, which range from references to 19th-century Irish politics to French literature to popular drinking songs to the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Quadrino, who has a corporate day job, said he considers his Austin Wake group “the most fulfilling thing in my life”.
“In the course of a meeting, I have 30 different Wikipedia tabs open,” he said. “You’re always learning about some new historical figure, or event, or some poet. It really just feels like my brain just took a shower. It’s so refreshing.”