Free Republic

In 1939, Irish author James Joyce published Finnegans Wake, a piece of literature that defies comprehension. “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s,” it begins, “from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.” The book starts and ends with a sentence fragment, combines multiple languages and has no clear or linear plot. It’s a work that’s so dense, one group that started in Austin has been working on it for more than a decade. “We’re only reading one page at a time,” said Peter Quadrino, founder and organizer...

And now I'm off to get half in the bag. Feel free to express your vicious anti-Irish slurs, insults and calumnies in the comments...

A Sicilian man who had been pronounced dead by doctors startled relatives by sitting up just before he was to be put into his coffin and demanding a glass of water. Minutes later 79-year-old Roberto De Simone, from Palermo, was rushed back to the Vincenzo Cervello hospital in the Sicilian capital, where 12 hours earlier doctors said he had died. His wife and children, who had been praying over what they believed to be his corpse, declared his recovery to be a miracle. Hospital staff admit that they are baffled by his revival. Mr De Simone himself was more enigmatic....