Congratulations on Finally Finishing Finnegan's Wake!

Ever since you left your bear-lover and found a separate cave and you moved far, far away to more comfortable caves in warmer climates you’ve been searching for ways to fill the emptiness in your life. You’ve tried online dating, but bears are very different on the internet and you fast grew tired of being raped by relatively unattractive men with self-esteem issues.

You tried writing a novel, but it turns out that’s really hard, no matter how many books on writing a novel you read. In fact the time it took you to read all those novel writing books is pretty impressive on its own. It’s no wonder that you only came up with a few hastily handwritten pages about a little girl looking across a field at a wildebeest and calling out her father’s name to it.

After that you tried to start a small macramé business, but it turns out that making macramé, selling it out of a cave and branding it “Marc’s Carlsbad Cave Macramé!” isn’t a viable business strategy. After the cease and desist you decided to take it easy, stay in and read a good book. You originally considered the Hardy Boys series in its entirety, but you dismissed it because you didn’t want to have your parole officer stop by and think you were a pedophile or something. Then you thought about Tristram Shandy, but you decided it was too hard and wouldn’t command enough respect, since people generally don’t know what it is.

After a lengthy deliberation you chose to read James Joyce’s pretentious, barely literate masterpiece: Finnegan’s Wake. You began the process by stockpiling food, batteries and water. Then you opened the book, turned on your reading flashlight and began.

Nearly a year and a half later you’re going to finish, emaciated and stumbling out of your cave towards civilization. Coughing you’ll meander over hills and into town, rushing towards the nearest bar (which you will now be able to sense thanks to the fact that you’ve finished Finnegan’s Wake) and burst in, slamming the last currency you have on the table and ordering a plate of fish and chips and a double of Jameson’s whiskey. The bartender will look at you, then your money, then shrug and count out your change.

“Enjoy, wino,” he’ll say, casting a look of derision back your way.

“I just finished Finnegan’s Wake,” you’ll tell him as he walks away, but he won’t turn around. No one in the bar will be looking at you. In fact, they’ll all clearly be looking away, as if to engage you in the slightest would conjure a torrent of references to and non-sequitors regarding Finnegan’s Wake that absolutely fucking no one wants to hear. When your food finally arrives it will taste delicious, but only because you’re starving. If you weren’t starving it would taste a little worse because you just wasted a year of your life reading Finnegan’s Wake instead of doing something even moderately useful with it.

Congratulations on Finally Finishing Finnegan’s Wake!