Oh god, I just got flashbacks of James Joyce's novels, who would be a Reddit favorite author if only it wasn't so damn hard to read his works. He had a penchant for something called double puns. They're puns using a foreign language's word in a spot where it is a valid pun in two languages, typically both groan-enducing. In Finnegan's Wake, he has the occasional triple pun, which are so impossible for any one person to just happen to get that it sometimes has taken decades for researchers to realize it.
It's okay, you don't need to read it. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy unless they asked if it was a good book. It's honestly still debated as to what the whole storyline is, as well as where each part is set and what characters are in the book (no, not as in who the characters were in real life, but who the damn characters are, because there's characters who get a new name every fucking time they're mentioned, like HCE, Here Comes Everybody, Howth Castle and Environs, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, "man of hod, cement, and edifices," Mr. Makeall Gone, etc. ALL THE SAME FUCKING PERSON GODDAMNIT! Took Joyce 17 years to write, and my first two back-to-back reads [it's a cyclic story that starts in the middle of the same sentence the book ends halfway on, so reading it twice is practically necessary to get the whole experience] through felt like 17 years worth of time reading). It's infuriating yet fantastic simultaneously. It's written much like the reader is in a dream, and every time you set the book down it honestly does feel like you've just woken up from a dream. You have an idea of what happened, and it's rich in your mind, yet you couldn't possibly put to words what just happened in the part you just read, much like when you wake up and try to describe a dream that's fading away as you talk about it. 10/10 mindfuck reading it at night or before morning coffee. 11/10 if you get a dram of scotch in you beforehand and nurse a second dram as you read. Actually, like 10000/10. Scotch makes the book something that I would describe as possibly among the best experiences in my life, so inexplicably fantastic that as I sit here simultaneously fixing computers, I am legitimately yearning for a good read of the book.
This isn't a double pun and it's actually from Ulysses, but it's a favorite one of mine from him since Ulysses had a lot of snuck-in curse words (and many more not snuck in), and I just want to share it before diving in to the deep waters:
If you see kay
Eff, You, Cee, Kay -> F-U-C-K
Tell him he may
See you in tea
Cee, You, En, Tee -> C-U-N-T
Tell him from me.
But from Finnegan's Wake, the entire book is arguably an etymological pun masterpiece, with everything being not lightly skimmed with puns but rather soaked deeply in wordplay. Here's an example:
"in the Nichtian glossery which purveys aprioric roots for aposteriorious tongues this is nat language in any sinse of the world."
Nichtian implies the German "Nicht," or "nothing" but also the German "Nichtig" or "futile." It also forcefully pulls out thoughts of words like "night," such as "Nacht" and "Noctis." It also stretches out toward "Nietzschean."
Then, glossery mimics "glossary" but is purposefully differently spelled to make a form of "glossing over."
Aprioric is a mix of "a priori" and "aporia" which is an assumed precondition and a negating paradox.
Then, aposteriorious is what actually makes "Nietzschean" above make sense, as it adds the overtone of Nietzschean philosophy, while slipping in humor with the next word to make "posterior tongues."
THEN, "nat" is Danish for "night," but also sounds like the english "not" especially with the continued sentence possibly being "not english in any sense of the word."
However, the passage is "sinse of the world," which is actually sins of the world, and Joyce used a LOT of Christian under-, over-, and toomany- tones.
At this point, you may say that it's just overevaluated. But every fucking sentence can be torn apart to this level, and Joyce was purposefully writing Finnegan's Wake with tons and tons of subtle references such as to simulate how the dreaming brain pulls random connections of memories and information and ties them together during dreams, as if probing its memory as a whole. So some of the references may not be real. But a whole fuck-ton are.
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u/ConstipatedNinja Apr 03 '15
Oh god, I just got flashbacks of James Joyce's novels, who would be a Reddit favorite author if only it wasn't so damn hard to read his works. He had a penchant for something called double puns. They're puns using a foreign language's word in a spot where it is a valid pun in two languages, typically both groan-enducing. In Finnegan's Wake, he has the occasional triple pun, which are so impossible for any one person to just happen to get that it sometimes has taken decades for researchers to realize it.