YMMV / Finnegans Wake

• Aluminium Christmas Trees: One section that is surprising to modern readers concerns characters watching a discussion on television. The technology of the television had already been unveiled and demonstrated by John Logie Baird in 1925, but had certainly not become a popular mass medium. In other words, this section of the book is technically science-fiction, and accurate in how it anticipates TV watching at pubs in the future.
• Cult Classic: While the book is (in)famous for its sheer levels of incomprehensibility, a lot of people over the decades have come to see it as Joyce's best work, and one of the best novels of the 20th century.
• Dancing Bear: Ask a person what he or she knows about Finnegans Wake: the first thing to come to mind is most likely the style of the book, rather than the actual content.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Of Joyce's four major works, the Wake certainly sticks out the most for a few reasons.
• Epileptic Trees: From literary critics. With years of training they are well placed to hold forth on how Joyce counterpoints the surrealism of the underlying metaphor by utilizing indigenous ligneous vegetation with a tumid episodic spasmodic pathophysiology.
• Genius Bonus: Joyce apparently sneaks a few references to existing jokes into this book, most of which are obscured beyond recognition and most likely stacked on other jokes. e.g. "Gee each owe tea eye smells fish." (p. 299)^Explanation It is a reference to the word "ghoti" an existing joke word playing on English's lax pronunciation rules with the word being supposed to be pronounced as "fish"
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The book is surprisingly popular in China. A new translation sold out of its first pressing within the first month of publication.
• It Was His Sled: The first and last sentence. Also, it's necessary to look through multiple outlines to understand even vaguely what the hell the book is about.
• Vindicated by History: Most of Joyce's contemporaries and even his own family thought the book was stupid or a joke. It initially had negative reviewers, although one reviewer held off on judging the work, predicting that in the future, "with sufficient study and with the aid of the commentary that will doubtless arise, one might be ready for an attempt to appraise it." He was right.

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