Express purpose?(the editor's spin)

James Joyce once said of Finnegan's Wake that it took him seven years to write it, and it should take his readers at least as long to read it. Why anyone would want to spend seven years (or more) struggling to decipher the inscrutable, dreamy musings of a barman named Earwicker or Porter (and therein a sweeping history of mankind, if that's even a decent guess as to what Finnegan's Wake is about) has always eluded me. Just thinking about it, I grow frustrated with the arrogance of the man to write a book meant to be written about as much as read. Granted, the very first English-la