James Joyce worked on Finnegans Wake for 17 years or something like that.
Nora, looking at the gibberish pages, the ciphers, the codes, said, “Why don’t you write books people can read?”
Ha!
However: Nora always thought that Finnegans Wake – which pretty much the entire world thought was incomprehensible – was his best book. She understood it. She understood the language.
By the way, if you ever feel like taking on that book – I cannot stress how important it is to read it out loud. It’s incomprehensible on the page, but when you HEAR it? It’s marvelous. It’s meant to be read out loud.
Years after his death, she was still pestererd by reporters about her famous genius husband. And nobody ever asked about Finnegans Wake . It was always Ulysses, Ulysses, Ulysses.
She commented once, confused, irritated, “What’s all this talk about Ulysses? Finnegans Wake is the important book.”
For some reason, that gives me a chill. I think she might actually be onto something. She – an uneducated unintellectual wild-haired country girl – got it. That’s why Joyce knew that the most important decision he had ever made in his life was choosing this particular woman.
I think Nora had a lot more on the ball than most people think.