Week 1 (JF)

Well, that was an interesting way to spend part of Easter Sunday.  The first twelve pages were more like the first fifteen because page 1 is a title page, page two is blank, and the text starts on page 3.

How does it start?  Famously, with the back half of the incomplete sentence that ends the book.  Circular, see.  I'm not sure how that jives with any of the bigger themes of the book.  Maybe that conscious thought is linear, and unconscious thought is circular?  Or dreams recur?  Idk.  Here's the whole sentence (/ marks where it breaks and begins again):

"A way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious virus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."

So remember that thing I said last time about Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, and JJ using h, c, and e to signify?  That's how the last/first sentence ends, with HCE.  I don't know where Anna first shows up, but the dude is there on line three.  And good old Tim Finnegan is there on line 19 of the first page, along with the fall of man (or Humpty Dumpty, that's what I got).  The first page is also famous for its God (capital "G") thunderbolt--the super-long word that every FW noob has heard of.  And the first page is where you realize that this book is only nominally in English.

What else can I say about this week's segment?  It was both harder and easier than I imagined.  Harder in the sense that...sense was out the window almost immediately, so understanding more than a fraction of what the words mean (not what JJ intended them to mean, but what they actually mean syntactically) was a problem.  Or not, and that's the flipside.  Easier, as in funner.  The lyricism (Tindall called the first chapter an "overture") and flow of the language, whatever language, is pretty cool and often beautiful.

I'm not going to go into more detail about content/plot.  So far it's about everything from Ancient Egypt to then-present Ireland.  Finnegan is in there alot more than Tindall indicated, imo, and there's a trip to a museum that I liked.

Favorite passage(s):

"With Kiss.  Kiss Criss.  Cross Criss.  Kiss Cross."  p.11

This is great.  It's how I write, or how I want to write.  And weird how JJ presaged Kiss (Peter Criss??) and (almost) Kriss Kross.

"Gricks may rise and Troysirs fall (there being two sights for ever a picture) for in the byways of high improvidence that's what makes life-work leaving and the world's a cell for cites to cit in."  p.11

Alot going on there.  Gricks = Greeks, Troysirs = Trojans.  So some rise, some fall, and there are two sights to every picture (or two sides to every story), and that's what makes life worth living.

Finally, a few quick notes.  On Tindall: He's obtuse, and the guide is almost as difficult as the book itself.  I still haven't read his intro, and I think that will help.  So in addition to the next segment, I have that to look forward to, ugh.  On 12 pages: OM and I will be finishing the first chapter this week.  It takes us through page 29, so we're still basically on pace.  On the blog: I don't know what O's plans are, but I'll try, and probably occasionally fail, to post at least a short something once a week, even if that's just a favorite passage.

O, why are we doing this again?  Snob cred?  Not sure if it'll be worth it, but I'm still here.  More later...

Peace,

JF