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When I read this book, as a matter of fact, within a few pages of beginning this book, I immediately decided it was the greatest book ever written in the English language. I love English and all the wonderful words it contains, and have a keen appreciation for the difficulty of arranging these words in patterns that are esthetically pleasing, owing to the vast number of subtly guttural sounds and the range of incredibly different words and the weird differences and assonances of sound and meaning between all of these different words that are derived from so many different roots from all over Europe. No book has ever taken the language as far as The Waves, in my opinion. These wild and whirling words spin outward and slide back in a masterful tidal rhythm. After I read The Waves I realized how stupid I was ever to fall for the mishmash of parlor tricks and laziness that was Finnegan's Wake. I'm not a big fan of poetry, except, for some reason, Beatnik poetry, and this book is part of the reason why I think most poetry is either badly done or just plain stupid. A book like this renders the entire genre of poetry superfluous: If you aspire to create poetry, then why not aim for the heights and aspire to write a "book" as amazing as The Waves instead? |