Week 4 (JF)

FW pp. 42-54

This week's segment spanned the end of Chapter 2 and the beginning of Chapter 3.  I struggled with the Chapter 2 material not because it was really tough, but because it was tough to pick up where I left off (momentum definitely helps with this book).  And I struggled with the Chapter 3 material because it actually was really tough.

As OM mentioned in our last conversation, Chapter 2 contains some of the earliest stuff that JJ wrote for FW.  As such, it's probably easier to read, relatively speaking - closer to Ulysses-level incomprehensibility.  Essentially, Chapter 2 lays out the whole plot (I think), to the extent this book has a plot.  HCE sees the young women peeing, gets busted by the soldiers, tells lies...and a rumor spreads all over Dublin.  The fact that the rumor is spread by "a cad with the pipe" and that shady dude Hosty, who's HCE, Jesus, and Satan at the same time?  Well, that's just JJ being JJ.

Chapter 2 is fun.  After a while, it becomes a pub-crawl with "a few good souls" (I thought of Pynchon's Benny Profane and his "whole sick crew" from V.) following/passing the rumor, now a "wararrow" that "flutter[s] its secret on white highway and brown byway to the rose of the winds and the blew of the gaels, from archway to lattice and from black hand to pink ear, village crying to village"  (p43, ll26-29).  The rumor morphs into a song, an actual song with music notes and lyrics, called "The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly."  Here it is written (in FW, only the first verse appears in staff lines), and here it is performed by Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).  Yeah, super weird.  Anyway.

Persse O'Reilly sounds like an Irish name, right?  Perce (short for Percy) O'Riley?  Sure.  Nope.  Remember, JJ is living in Paris while writing FW.  And perce-oreille is French for earwig.  Earwig, Earwicker.  Duh.  The Ballad of HCE, where Hosty pretty much skewers him.     

And here's something that I wish I would have thought of myself, but T.S. Eliot - last week, I mentioned how JJ dogged him for stealing part of Ulysses - beat me to it: Joyce was going blind.  He had iritis (inflammation of the irises), glaucoma, and cataracts, and underwent surgery and various other treatments to save his eyes.  Ultimately, they failed him, but his ears never did.  By the time he wrote FW, sight was less important to him than sound.  (The book is so lyrical at times, it almost asks to be read aloud for the sheer fun of hearing the not-quite words.)  The point is this: Ear, earwig, Earwicker.  Duh.  And, unrelated, earwigs are gross.  Once, while folding up a tent, I got bit in the neck by one.  That sucked.

Chapter 3 is less fun.  Alot less.  Even Tindall warns that it is "dream entirely or almost entirely."  He continues (and I almost decide to go ropeless like O), "This chapter our incubus, and we its succubi.  Yet cheerfulness breaks through."  I have no idea what the fuck that even means.  Tbh, he's less than helpful here, where I could have used a boost.  What I understand from the guide is that this chapter is HCE's version of the story.  The chapter is pretty long, and I'm only six pages into it.  Not much stood out, except the word "reamalgamerge" - a mash-up of reemerge and amalgamate, I guess.  Pretty awesome.

Like last week, I'm a few days behind this week.  I hope to catch up over the weekend, and stick more to a Sunday-to-Sunday schedule like O.  Btw, congrats, buddy.

Peace,

JF