But my own view is that I’m not missing out on too much by not reading Finnegans Wake. And I’m not sure I would gain much by reading it, other than being included in the very exclusive club for those who have.

Is it as unfathomable as Ulysses?

Finnegans Wake is over-the-top unfathomable, Candy. I personally know no one who’s read it all the way through, even among the handful of James Joyce scholars I studied with in school. I’ve sampled areas of it only, and I consider myself a James Joyce fanatic. I likely would have focused on him for my scholarship had I stayed in academia. (I wouldn’t now, but that’s who I was then.)

Here’s an interesting, brief introduction to the book. In a clever Q&A format, the writer discusses with a would-be Finnegans Wake reader:

It is indeed difficult, but in a very different way than we think of Ulysses or Moby-Dick or Gravity’s Rainbow as being difficult. Even placing it in a category is tricky – Finnegans Wake is a work that utterly defies labels and genre. While some refer to it as a novel, it is certainly like no novel ever written; others find it a closer relation to poetry, but that, too, only goes so far. It also shares similarities to an epic, a myth, a riddle, a puzzle, and a philosophical text. Derek Attridge, a prominent Joyce scholar, has affectionately called it “an unassimilable freak.” At the end of the day, Finnegans Wake is a book that stands alone, a unique creation in the world of literature that marks a turning point between High Modernism and postmodernism.

This longish article is somewhat encouraging even though the questioner at one point says, “I’m beginning to think I am dreaining you.” Cheers to you, Candy, if you read it! I would like to some day, too, but I don’t know if that day will arrive.