Finnegans Wake Is LSD On The Page (Or Something Like That)

Week 12, June 20, page 152

After my previous entry, I hit a wall.

Funny, isn’t it?  I was all fired up about Chapter V.  I really enjoyed the way the text folded in on itself. Talk about navel gazing, this was the navel looking at itself.

Then what happened?

Then I entered Chapter VI, and things began to grind. The chapter is presented in a series of questions and answers (sort of). The first question, focused on HCE, gobbled up an entire week’s worth of reading, and didn’t seem to offer up anything new.  At least, that’s how I felt.  I was understanding bits and pieces of the text, but it felt like ground maybe we’d already covered in some way. I wasn’t understanding anything more about HCE.  The edge was lost, and I was rubbing against a dull blade.

Even when the chapter moved on to other characters, bringing in ALP and Shem and Shaun, I struggled to find the spark from Chapter V.  I kept reading, but I was feeling a bit down, not sure what to blog about or why, or even how much more reading I could realistically do. I began to look longing at my book shelf, at all the books I hope to someday read.

But then I discovered this video on YouTube, which is really just an audio recording of Terence McKenna discussing Finnegans Wake (the image is a static picture of what appears to be an extra potent marijuana plant).

If you don’t know who Terrence McKenna is, let me quote from his Wikipedia page: “He was called the "Timothy Leary of the 90s", "one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism", and the "intellectual voice of Rave culture".”

Just what I needed!  A different perspective on FW.  Could this guy be any further from Tindall? The lecture is from 1995, from a guy whose first three entries on his Wiki page are Early Life, Studying and Traveling, and Psilocybin Mushroom Cultivation.  Ha!

So what does McKenna have to say.  He says, “the reason I’m interested in it is because it’s two things: Finnegans Wake is psychedelic and it is apocalyptic/eschatological.”

Why is it psychedelic?  Because it gets rid of fixed meaning and a stable point of view. Identities are not fixed.  “Finnegans Wake is like you took the last thousand years of human history and dissolved all the boundaries.”  It’s like a trip, he says.

“The theme is always the same: the delivery of the Word, the misinterpretation of the Word, and the redemption of the Word at every level in all times and places.” (I don’t know if he wants you to capitalize “Word;” but it seems likely.)

“It’s about as close to LSD on the page as you can get,” McKenna opines.

OK, so it’s a far-out trip, man.  Why is it apocalyptic/eschatological?

Because the entire universe could be reconstructed from the pages of FW.  He calls this a “Talmudic idea, that somehow a book is the primary reality.”  It is a “philosopher’s stone of literary associations from which the universe can be manifested.”

For someone who is clearly so out there, McKenna speaks clearly and intelligently about his perspective on the text.  The book is “so rich that it is easy to make original discoveries. It’s easy to see and understand stuff that hasn’t been understood probably since James Joyce put it there.” Easy might be overstating things, Terence, but I can see where you’re going with it.

He goes on from there, and I'd recommend listening to the lecture, just for his specific POV on Joyce. I’m not going to agree with everything McKenna says, but he speaks with such obvious enthusiasm for Finnegans Wake that the feeling becomes contagious. I began to think, “Yeah, this book is pretty awesome, and I am still reading it! There are still a million ways to get something out of this beast!”

For the first time in a couple of weeks, I feel re-set, ready to approach the book with a fresh mind.  Let’s hope it lasts!