Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy’s chart showing the psychogeography of Finnegan’s Wake.
It took eight years to translate James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake — a book that barely qualifies as being written in English — into Chinese, but the task is complete and the book is now available in China. Shanghai’s News and Publishing Bureau says that it’s now the number two book in terms of sales of the “good books” category (their term for “serious reads” — no Fifty Shades of Grey here), beaten only a new biography of Deng Xiaoping.
A Chinese billboard promoting Finnegan’s Wake.
My favourite quote about the book comes from Jiang Xiaoyuan, a professor of Shanghai’s Jiaotong University, who was quoted in Xinhua (China’s state-run news agency) as saying:
“Joyce must have been mentally ill to create such a novel.”
Nope, he was just drunk.
Tap to see the source. This is yesterday’s daily New Yorker cartoon, created by Brendan…
C’mon, let it not be Asians this time. Last time was pretty bad. Here’s the…
Jon Stewart’s right, and we’ve been here before. Where we are now, I’ve been before…
Poppies thrive in overturned soil, which is why they bloom in battlefields. I’m in the…
In times of high dudgeon, there’s a tendency to throw integrity out the window. One…
A demonstrator at Texas State University in Austin, Texas on Wednesday, November 6, 2024. Photo…
View Comments
My favourite quote from the story: "I would not be faithful to the original intent of the novel if my translation made it easy to comprehend," [the translator] said, according to the Associated Press.