This segment of Ulysses made a big impact on me both as a reader and writer at the time. One of those moments where you have to stop reading for a second just to let it sink in.
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The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada. Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a midden of man’s ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel: isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown steersmen and master mariners. Human shells.
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I get what you mean about surrendering yourself, that's part of the fun of Finnegans Wake: you don't always get what you're reading until you've read or said it.
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Originally Posted by rostasi
Also, I forgot (things about it will always pop up now and then):
It’s best to not start the book at the beginning. A good place is
at Book I, Chapter 5 (otherwise known as the “Mamafesta”).
You won’t “miss” anything by starting there, because, like Vico,
it’s cyclical.
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Ah, I knew the cyclical element of it but didn't know about chapter 5, good to know!