FW pp. 187-95
The end of Chapter VII is sort of a drag. Shaun takes over, and he seems like a real dick, even moreso than he was in the previous chapter. Remember that the Earwicker boys are twins, but Shaun acts more mature - older and smarter (he's definitely not the latter). And he isn't afraid to lecture his brother about how his conduct has affected the family.
Shaun starts out his #rant with a pedantic grammar check, reminiscent of his overly formal response to the question about the drunk guy. "Stand forth," Shem commands, "for no longer will I follow you obliquelike through the inspired form of the third person singular and the moods and hesitancies of the deponent but address myself to you, with the empirative of my vendettative, provocative and out direct." "Stand forth," he repeats,
"come boldly, jolly me, move me, zwilling though I am, to laughter in your true colors ere you be back forever till I give you your talkingto! Shem Macadamson [probably a reference to HCE, somehow] , you know me and I know you and all your shemeries. Where have you been in the uterim [uterus + interim], enjoying yourself all the morning since your last wetbed confession? I advise you to conceal yourself, my little friend [they're twins], as I have said a moment ago and have a nightlong homely little confiteor [confession, I think?] about things. Let me see. It is looking pretty black against you, we suggest, Sheem avick [not sure what avick means - maybe Irish slang]. You will need all the elements in the river [ALP, just wait] to clean you over it all and a fortifine popepriestpower bull of attender to booth."
Thanksgiving at the House of HCE sounds like a blast. Dad's still in trouble with Mom about "that thing in the park they don't talk about." Shem humblebrags, Shaun holyrolls, and Issy's a shapeshifting goth, who's probably into cutting. (Jk. We don't know much about her at this point. She could be really sweet.)
There's not a lot in this segment to decipher. I didn't get many of the references, but I did get the tone. It's clear that Shaun hates/resents and, somewhere deep down damnit, loves Shem and his cosmopolitan lifestyle. Maybe the hatred and resentment is directed less at Shem than at his choices, which took away the brother/twin that he needed and still needs. I got a prodigal son vibe (hence, the header image - a Google image search score from a Bible study website, where bad choices look kinda fly), which I'm not sure is there. I could make a case, though. One brother leaves, one brother stays?
Oh, didn't JJ have a brother, too? He sure did, Stanislaus, who...had a love-hate relationship with JJ. Imagine that, pretty autobiographical. Per that Wikipedia link, Stanislaus followed JJ to Italy (pre-FW) and bailed him out of financial shit several times. Stanislaus eventually became a teacher, or lecturer, there, and commented later about his older brother, "It seems to me little short of a miracle that anyone should have striven to cultivate poetry or cared to get in touch with the current of European thought while living in a household such as ours, typical as it was of the squalor of a drunken generation." What a drip, right? Reminds me of another Stanis. Tindall backs me up on this, fwiw, but he's mostly unhelpful and covers 12 pages of the Wake in record time - not without mentioning some Australian aboriginal device called the "deathbone." Yeah, the word is in the text, and maybe that's what JJ meant, but still. Shaun points the device at Shem, and turns over the conversation not to Shem, but to ALP?
I didn't get that on my initial read, tbh. I thought it was Shem or HCE, but it's very clearly ALP. She opens by admitting that she's cursed her womb that bore Shem and her husband, whom she "sometimes sucked." (Fairly graphic, but that's on page 193, and what censor back then read that far?) Then there's a confusing (and great, if I'm right about it) passage, where she understands that Shem has been haunted by a "convulsionary sense of not having been or being all that I might have been of you meant to becoming," of letting her down, and also understands that she's done the same to him, with good reason: Life. "The days of youyouth," she says, "are evermixed with mimine." He left from her, he laughed at her, and now he's forgetting her. But parents are people, too, and their emotions are as valid, and their experiences are as memorable, as those of their children. And their pain over the inevitable jump from the nest is visceral. We birthed and raised you, and now you have the audacity to leave? With a smirk on your beautiful face, like you know everything? Sigh. You'll see, if you're lucky enough to be a parent.
JJ closes this chapter with a really pretty pan back from ALP as she walks down the street, with her springy step and her curly hair. "[A]s happy as the day is wet, babbling, bubbling, chattering to herself, ... giddgaddy, grannyma, gossipaceous Anna Livia."
Who just happens to be the focus of Chapter VIII. Imagine that. Progress-wise, I'm a few pages behind, but I want to read the next chapter as a whole - it's 20 pages, instead of the usual 12. No big deal. I haven't dived in yet, but I'm looking forward to more about OM's fictional gf.
More soon.
Shaun starts out his #rant with a pedantic grammar check, reminiscent of his overly formal response to the question about the drunk guy. "Stand forth," Shem commands, "for no longer will I follow you obliquelike through the inspired form of the third person singular and the moods and hesitancies of the deponent but address myself to you, with the empirative of my vendettative, provocative and out direct." "Stand forth," he repeats,
"come boldly, jolly me, move me, zwilling though I am, to laughter in your true colors ere you be back forever till I give you your talkingto! Shem Macadamson [probably a reference to HCE, somehow] , you know me and I know you and all your shemeries. Where have you been in the uterim [uterus + interim], enjoying yourself all the morning since your last wetbed confession? I advise you to conceal yourself, my little friend [they're twins], as I have said a moment ago and have a nightlong homely little confiteor [confession, I think?] about things. Let me see. It is looking pretty black against you, we suggest, Sheem avick [not sure what avick means - maybe Irish slang]. You will need all the elements in the river [ALP, just wait] to clean you over it all and a fortifine popepriestpower bull of attender to booth."
Thanksgiving at the House of HCE sounds like a blast. Dad's still in trouble with Mom about "that thing in the park they don't talk about." Shem humblebrags, Shaun holyrolls, and Issy's a shapeshifting goth, who's probably into cutting. (Jk. We don't know much about her at this point. She could be really sweet.)
There's not a lot in this segment to decipher. I didn't get many of the references, but I did get the tone. It's clear that Shaun hates/resents and, somewhere deep down damnit, loves Shem and his cosmopolitan lifestyle. Maybe the hatred and resentment is directed less at Shem than at his choices, which took away the brother/twin that he needed and still needs. I got a prodigal son vibe (hence, the header image - a Google image search score from a Bible study website, where bad choices look kinda fly), which I'm not sure is there. I could make a case, though. One brother leaves, one brother stays?
Oh, didn't JJ have a brother, too? He sure did, Stanislaus, who...had a love-hate relationship with JJ. Imagine that, pretty autobiographical. Per that Wikipedia link, Stanislaus followed JJ to Italy (pre-FW) and bailed him out of financial shit several times. Stanislaus eventually became a teacher, or lecturer, there, and commented later about his older brother, "It seems to me little short of a miracle that anyone should have striven to cultivate poetry or cared to get in touch with the current of European thought while living in a household such as ours, typical as it was of the squalor of a drunken generation." What a drip, right? Reminds me of another Stanis. Tindall backs me up on this, fwiw, but he's mostly unhelpful and covers 12 pages of the Wake in record time - not without mentioning some Australian aboriginal device called the "deathbone." Yeah, the word is in the text, and maybe that's what JJ meant, but still. Shaun points the device at Shem, and turns over the conversation not to Shem, but to ALP?
I didn't get that on my initial read, tbh. I thought it was Shem or HCE, but it's very clearly ALP. She opens by admitting that she's cursed her womb that bore Shem and her husband, whom she "sometimes sucked." (Fairly graphic, but that's on page 193, and what censor back then read that far?) Then there's a confusing (and great, if I'm right about it) passage, where she understands that Shem has been haunted by a "convulsionary sense of not having been or being all that I might have been of you meant to becoming," of letting her down, and also understands that she's done the same to him, with good reason: Life. "The days of youyouth," she says, "are evermixed with mimine." He left from her, he laughed at her, and now he's forgetting her. But parents are people, too, and their emotions are as valid, and their experiences are as memorable, as those of their children. And their pain over the inevitable jump from the nest is visceral. We birthed and raised you, and now you have the audacity to leave? With a smirk on your beautiful face, like you know everything? Sigh. You'll see, if you're lucky enough to be a parent.
JJ closes this chapter with a really pretty pan back from ALP as she walks down the street, with her springy step and her curly hair. "[A]s happy as the day is wet, babbling, bubbling, chattering to herself, ... giddgaddy, grannyma, gossipaceous Anna Livia."
Who just happens to be the focus of Chapter VIII. Imagine that. Progress-wise, I'm a few pages behind, but I want to read the next chapter as a whole - it's 20 pages, instead of the usual 12. No big deal. I haven't dived in yet, but I'm looking forward to more about OM's fictional gf.
More soon.
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