James Joyce

During the 1920s, a man with the name of Sigmund Freud became known for his ways in challenging faith in reason. He proposed the idea that the human mind drives much of human behavior. Freud pioneered psychoanalysis, this was a method of studying how the mind works and was also used for treating mental disorders. He had a knack for analyzing dreams for clues to subconscious desires. As his ideas became popular and trendy, some writers began to experiment with "stream of consciousness." By using this technique, a writer appears to probe a character's random thoughts and feelings without making any sense. Basically it was not logic or order whatsoever. The Irish novelist James Joyce played with the "stream of consciousness" technique. James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882 in Dublin, Ireland. His subtle yet sincere display of human nature, tied with his mastery of language made him one of the most influential novelists of the 20th century. In a novel called Finnegans Wake(1939), an experimental novel that first appeared in the form of extracts from 1928 to 1937 as "Work in Progress", Joyce explores the inner mind of a hero who stays asleep throughout the novel itself. Joyce invented many words, one of them was: bababadalgharagtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurknuk. This word is a hundred letters long. He made up words such as these to convey the freedom and playfulness of the unconscious mind.

Sources: World History 10th Grade Text Book
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96feb/joyce.html

It must be really hard to write such book, because it is known that our dreams don't make sense most of the time. If the main character is asleep throughout the whole book, then his subconscious must be the subject of the book. Describing someone's subconcious seems really hard and maybe it's even harder to read and properly interpret such book. I'd really enjoy reading part of this book and see how the author managed to describe such a sensitive topic like our subconcious.

Interesting how he writes a novel in which the man is asleep throughout the whole novel. The human brain along with human behavior is very complex and hard to understand. I'm sure that to this day we've still got a lot to learn, things that have yet to be discovered.

That's interesting! I imagine it would be extremely hard to write a novel like that. I want to read it now and try to figure out what kinds of things go in the subconscious mind. What I ask myself is, how did this guy write this as if he was in a dream if he was really awake? Wouldn’t writing while awake in some way disturb his subconscious?