Stop Following Me, Wake

Week 3, April 12-19, pages 31-43

I imagine Joyce constructed Finnegans Wake as something of a reflective polyhedron. It's a many-sided shape, and it's surfaces bounce meanings back and forth from one side to another. Once you pick up on a possible meaning, you start to see its image flashing throughout the shape.

This shape may or may not be what Joyce
had in mind when he was writing the Wake

What happens to the reader is, you see something in a word or a phrase which suggests a particular line of thinking, and suddenly all the words on the page begin to light up with similar or related meanings.

Now, Joyce put a lot into the book.  A lot.  He put an encyclopedia's worth of information into it. But he also constructed it in a way that lets the reader add in her own thoughts and prejudices, and find within its pages validation for that point of view. There's something infectious about this way of thinking. Once you start looking at every word and seeing similar sounding words with subterranean connections of meaning, you can't stop. It seeps into your everyday thinking.

Living with a three year old, and his evolving sense of language, doesn't help. The other day my son, concerned I was not wearing my glasses, said to me, "Where are your guesses, your glasses?" As in, you need your glasses or you're just guessing at what you're seeing? And then, before he went down for bed, he said, "Sleep dreams, Daddy." He meant "sweet dreams," I think -- or maybe he didn't. Maybe he was hoping I'd get a good night's sleep and have plenty of "sleep dreams."

And then there's this: I was reading an article on the new sci-fi movie Ex Machina when I came to the following segment about the AI robot named Ava.

[Ava's] face is perfectly symmetrical, a flawless teardrop of flesh pasted onto a reflective chrome skull. Her body is rather unnecessarily female, considering that machine intelligence is ostensibly genderless. But in Ex Machina, femininity is a tactic; just as, a few years ago, in the real world, a chatbot “passed” the Turing test by tricking its interlocutors into believing it was a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy named Eugene. Ava’s girlish affectations are designed to destabilize Caleb and distract him from his task. And since her consciousness is written in the language of human networks, she is all the women of the human race at once. And not a woman at all. And both.

All the women of the human race at once? Is this Anna Livia Plurabelle, also know as ALP, the wife of HCE and the female presence that dominates large portions of Finnegans Wake?

What a rabbit hole...

Five Things We’ve Learned From Chapter One

April 5 – April 12; Week 2: pages 15 - 29

We cheated a bit this week. Instead of sticking to the strict 12-page diet, we swallowed down two extra pages to get us to the end of chapter one.  Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll lose those extra pages somewhere along the way. It may be smart to keep them in the bank.

Now that we’ve finished the first chapter of Finnegans Wake, let’s take stock of what has happened so far.  Stealing a page from the sports round-up article (“5 Things We Learned from the Phillies’ Season Opener!”), how about we review five key lessons from the first two weeks in the Wake?

12 pages is the right amount of pages for me

The “Reading Finnegans Wake” podcast recently began a close read of the book, going word by word and exploring the many possible meanings.  At least one book club spent 18 years on the novel. On the flip side, I’m sure there are grad students out there who’ve read the book straight through, unconcerned with plumping the depths of every word.

For me, 12 pages a week is a happy place.  I can read 12 pages, and depending on how much time I have to commit, can re-read quite a bit. This isn’t the way to understand every meaning of every word, but it keeps me engaged and maintains a healthy momentum.

Recirculation

For as hard as this book really is, Joyce does throws us a bone with the use of repetition. Stories and themes repeat many times and in many guises.  Once you pick up on a story, you being to recognize its reflection over and over. Like a fugue, the first chapter runs through numerous variations on the fall of Tom Finnegan story.  

One thousand stories

“There extand by now one thousand and one stories, all told, of the same,” (FW, page 5).

The book is based on the idea that history is cyclical.  All of the stories we know have occurred before and are recurring again.  That’s why the fall of Tom Finnegan is reflected in the story of Finn MacCool and the story of Jesus Christ and, eventually, the story of H.C.E. The main character is known as “Here Come Everybody,” insisting on the universality of his situation.  Not only do these stories recirculate, they are mirrors of each other.  The overlapping and intersecting can be confusing, but the underlying patterns provide structure to the chaos.

Characters and plot? What characters and plot?

There’s been a lot of mental energy spent on deciphering the plot of Finnegans Wake.  Heck, there’s a lot of ink spilled on who the main characters really are. At this point, I’m unconcerned with both plot and character. Worrying about who is actually dreaming the dream of FW seems less important than many of the other puzzles that keep being throw into the mix.  I’ll deal with Shaun and Shem and Izzy and whoever else might amble into the book when the time comes.  Plot and character seem like minor concerns to Joyce; that’s how I’ll treat them, too.

This can be fun

The question of, “Is this readable?” has given way to, “Can I enjoy this?” The answer, so far, is a resounding, Joycean “Yes.” It’s absurdly difficult, and there will be lots of sections that will threaten to defeat us.  But it’s also the most unique piece of fiction I’ve ever encountered, and I’ll continue to take what I can from its pages.

Week 2 (JF)

If I thought I understood one-tenth of the first twelve pages, then, after reading Tindall, realized it was more like 1/10, my ratios dropped significantly this week.  Which is sort of funny because OM, who's the honors lit student here, told me that it got easier for him.  Ugh.

This week's segment began for me with an encounter and an exchange between Mutt and Jute.  Who are they?  Apparently, HCE's twin sons, Shem and Shaun.  Huh??

Mutt and Jeff (pictured above) was the first daily American comic strip, written by Bud Fisher for the San Francisco Chronicle beginning in 1907.  (There's alot more info at the wiki link, and, tbh, I found it more all more interesting than this week's segment.)  As you can see, they're a mismatch, and probably one of the first of such duos in pop culture history.  Think of Laurel and Hardy, or Felix and Oscar, and you get the idea.  The fact that JJ was aware of a stateside cartoon indicates that by the time he was into FW the world was getting smaller.  Anyway, they're both kinda losers.  How Jeff became Jute to JJ, I have no idea.

Anyway, "Mutt and Jeff" or "mutton" is also Cockney rhyming slang for deaf - it came up in my google searches, I'm not that smart or well-traveled.  So both of HCE's sons are deaf, or represent deafness, got it.  Nope.  Only one does, per Tindall.  It's Jeff, or Shaun, is deafness and sight (and other things).  Mutt, or Shem, is blindness maybe and hearing (and other things).  And they talk about...wow, some completely incomprehensible shit for two and a half pages of full-on dialog.  I'm not gonna dwell on that too much, but the concept of a deaf person and a blind person having trouble communicating makes sense at some level.  There's alot I need to unpack for myself about the twins.  They're not the key, but they're a key, and their conflict recurs, from what I've read.

(Tindall talked a bit about numbers for this segment, and there is a numerology to FW.  Shaun is 11, and Shem is 21 - yeah, idk why, either.  Together, they add up to 32, which is HCE.  H = 8, C = 3, E = 5.  Think about that for a second.  Pause.  Ok.  Now feel my pain, and doubt my sanity for what OM called this week a "wack literary pursuit."  Oh, and remember, he thought this week's segment wasn't too bad.  No wonder I liked the comics angle.)

Most of this segment is the story of the Prankquean, ALP.  It's a fairy tale or something about how ALP and HCE met, and how their relationship, and their relationship with their three kids, evolved.  I didn't understand any of that, until I read Tindall.  I figured the Prankquean was ALP, but the way JJ presented her and her story was pretty veiled.  There are three visits, and three repeats of a cryptic question, "why do I am alook alike a poss of porterpease?"  The phrase "alook alike" is fun, but the rest is beyond me.  Tindall says it's ALP saying she looks like the twins ("porterpease" or peas in a pod, and she was their porter/provided their womb), but HCE sells porter and pease is so close to please, so he's part of the answer, too?  Whatever, moving on.

There's some stuff about a guy named Jaal von Hoother, who's supposed to be HCE.  I missed that.  Irish history that I can't be bothered to look up right now, but the Danes invaded and conquered Ireland?  Why why why does it have to be so complicated?  Why can't JJ just tell a damn story?!  He's good at it - ahem, Dubliners.  But that's not his goal here.  Obviously.  What is?  Well, there's some stuff about Enlightenment Italian Philosophers that I need to cover.  It has been alluded to in some of the preliminary material that I read, but I think Tindall discusses it more in his intro.  I'll try to get to that this week, and might have more to say about it in my next post.  But...

I have a sneaking suspicion that this book is about writing - that, post-Ulyssees, JJ went from modern to post-modern.  (I have stuff cooking on those fuzzy terms, but, as usu, more later.)  Post-modern, as in self-referential.  META.  My fave passage this week was about print.  Like Gutenberg Press print.  (He actually does mention Gutenberg and the Magna Carta, but it's "Gutenmorg and the cromagnom charter.")  I wish that Tindall would have been more helpful, but he wasn't.  Ok, so the passage is on pp. 19-20, the paragraph that starts at "True there..."  (This is reference for OM, who's the only person reading this, ha.)  Specifically: "For that (the rapt one warns) is what papyr is meed of, made of, hides and hints and misses in prints.  Till ye finally (though not yet endlike) meet with the acquaintance of Mister Typus, Mistress Tope and the the little typtopies."  I'm not sure what's going on there, but I really like it.  It's so singsongy, and references type and typing.  And typos, which are practically my bread and my butter, lately.  Sucks to suck.

Ok.  Enough for now.  The Mutt and Jeff stuff reminded me of R. Crumb.  O, let's keep on trucking...

Peace,

JF  

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

Week 0 (JF)

Then he falls off a ladder and dies.  And at his wake, somebody spills whiskey on his lips, and he comes back to life.  Traditional Irish folk song, and a springboard in some ways for the Wake.  Initial obvious observation?  The song title is possessive; the book title isn't.  F'sW vs. FW.  Finnegans, like a family - or Finnegans everywhere, because poor Tim is an everyman - wake?  After, hm, a night's sleep?  Cmon.  That's just googling the song, and riffing on the title.  Easy peasy.

This week I didn't do much on the Wake.  I looked at it a few times - actually, I stared at it sitting on the dining room table for a while before shaking my head.  While waiting for William York Tindall's A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake to show up from Amazon, I read four pieces of various lengths and qualities about the book.

First, I read Ted Gioia's "The Adventurer's Guide to Finnegans Wake."  Pretty overview-y.

Second, I read Allen Ruch's "Finnegans Wake" on The Modern Word website.  More in-depth, and a series of Q&A's that sometimes try a little too hard to be witty.  Still, there's some substance there, particularly when Ruch talks about FW having a charming, postmodern self-awareness of its own difficulty that makes it about itself and all texts, "as well as the acts of writing, printing, publishing, reading, glossing, annotating, and criticism."  But that self-awareness (not to mention that difficulty) comes from Joyce or JJ, as I'll probably call him in this blog.  A key sentence: "[I]t's important to remember that Finnegans Wake is still a work of literature, the creation of a waking mind, and has therefore been carefully planned out."   But Ruch also advises against trying to make conscious sense of the language and narrative, and for approaching the book with a relaxed and receptive mind.  There's an internal tension to those statements, in which authorial intent is at once celebrated and dismissed.  I'll get to that issue later.

Third, I read Michael Chabon's "What to Make of Finnegans Wake" from the New York Review of Books.  It's great, and I actually recommend it aside from the subject--the guy's an amazing writer.  Chabon talks alot about realism and modernism, and JJ's struggle with finding a language to represent  unconsciousness.  He closes, "The limits of language are not the stopping point, says the Wake, they are the point at which we must begin to tell the tale."  Kinda like that idea.

Fourth, and finally, I read John Bishop's Introduction to the Penguin Twentieth Century Classics Edition of the Wake.  (I described this to OM as the one with the pale green spine.  It's the one we're using to make discussion easier.)  This is probably the most helpful, and the least objective, piece.  It describes (or tries to) the "plot" of FW.  Basically, an old man, who may or may not exist within the book is dreaming about his family and events in his life.  In the dream, he takes on the name Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, and his wife takes on the name Anna Livia Plurabelle.  So anytime in the book that JJ uses words starting with h, c, and e together, it's a reference to Earwicker, and anytime that he uses words starting with a, l, and p together, it's a reference to Anna.  The couple have three children, a daughter and two sons.

Ok.  No more spoilers.  I haven't even started the book, and you guys aren't going to, but I do have a rather substantial bone to pick with Bishop.

The issue is the one of intentionality that Ruch touched on.  An early draft of this post did, too, riffing on the idea that whether FW is completely impenetrable (and I'm still hopeful enough to assume it isn't), JJ intended it to say precisely what it says.  I didn't complete the circle there, but I will here.  It's where I part ways with Bishop.   Either Barthes' views in "The Death of the Author," which Bishop mentions unflatteringly thrice in a single paragraph (and by extension Foucault's views in "Who Is the Author?" which Bishop doesn't mention - although, trust me, the former makes a stronger or at least more coherent case than the latter) are valid, or they're fucking not.  Their merit doesn't rest on the difficultly of the work.  That is, just because JJ took 17 years to finish this really difficult to write and to read book doesn't mean his opinion about "what it means" is entitled to any deference.  It's entitled to zero, and I think he'd agree.  (Here, my lack of preparation shows because I'm guessing some lit grad student, who's super into this, could Horshack in here rn and tell us about a letter sent or a comment made by JJ to...um...hold on...Bishop dropped his name, but so did the others...Jacques Mercanton? that the damn book is about everything and nothing at the same time, which would make definitive interpretation sorta beside the point.)  So when Bishop poo-poos Barthes and deconstructionism, it seems like it's coming the perspective of somebody who wants to figure it out, and assumes there's something to figure out.

Sure, there's something to figure out.  Duh.  Somebody as smart as JJ doesn't spend that much time on a meaningless endeavor.  But is it his meaning that matters?  Or mine?  Or OM's?  Or ours as a book club of two?  We may need help (ahem, Tindall) to wade through the wack verbiage and allusions, and we definitely need each other for encouragement.  But we don't need somebody else's viewpoint.  I don't want to speak for O, but I actually don't give a rat's ass if I understand much of this book.  I'll understand as much as I can.  And I'll feel better for that, than I would from fitting my take into a paradigm constructed by a guy who hates on Barthes, three times.  (I mean, really.  Blogger doesn't have an emoticon of a heart punch, but if it did...Roland, you're my boy, much love.)

This is actually fundamental stuff, what I'm ranting about.  (For the one person who's reading this: Sorry, dude.  I'll wrap this up soon.)  It bears on each and every one of us, tied as we are to e-communication on lighted screens.  Does your reading of an email matter more than than the sender's intent?  Does your "like" of somebody's post square with why they put that up, as a congruent whole, or does it seem more like a venn diagram?  Well, I like the idea of that post, and I like that person, and liking is easy, so yeah - thumbs up.  But I haven't read it?  Or thought about it?  And if I did...uhh, social network paralysis.  Haha.

Ok, so, yeah.  The point is this: Eff the author, eff JJ.  He's long dead.  Even if I had a question about what he wrote, I couldn't even ask him.  And if I could, I might scrap with him about it because, once he finished, it wasn't what he wrote, it's what I read.  Simple.

Dismount soapbox.

OM and I haven't really discussed ground rules for this thing.  I think we generally agree on the 12-page limit.  I can't speak for him, but I'm observing that strictly.  End of the 12th page, mid-sentence or not, I put the book down like an SAT test pencil.  There may be rereading, or reading in the guide, to do, sure.  But I'm not going to make that more of chore by pushing the page limit.

Oh, and I tried to tinker with the look of the blog.  (The Finnegan drawing above would make a great header.)  That's beyond me right now, but I'll keep trying.  And if anyone wants in, now is the time.  Feel free to join us and grow your brain.  There isn't a single person, conversant in English, who can't do this.  It's 12 pages/week.  And there are smart people whom I know that might enjoy the challenge.  (Side-eye to the JF and the RK.)  My email address is probably in my profile, along with a sweet topless pic of me from 2010 when I was trying to get somebody to pay attention to me.  If not, it's jafreitag@gmail.com.  Let me know.

Next week: Pages 1-12.

Update: The guide just showed up.  Tidall has an intro, too, ugh.  So I have to finish that?  Frankly, I'm sick of people previewing the book.  Week 1 starts on Sunday.  More later...

Peace,

JF

[Note: This post was mostly finished before Week 1, which ended on Easter.  I apologize for the late finish and publish.  Fwiw, I am done with the first 12 pages, and I will comment briefly upon them soon.]

Hush! Caution! Echoland!

March 29 – April 5; Week 1: pages 3 - 15

Why are there so many great Irish writers? By that, I mean so many great Irish writers of English. Ireland, of course, has its own native tongue: Gaelic.  But (and this is the short-short version, obviously) centuries of English colonization brought a language shift. Gaelic is still spoken and taught in Irish schools, but the dominant language is English, and has been for a couple hundred years.

As you can imagine, the rise to prominence of the English language isn’t always seen as a good thing by the Irish. One form of resistance is to insist on using Gaelic, in academic and public life . But what about taking the language of the colonizer and mastering it? What about breaking it down and making it your own? If the pen is really such a bad-ass, dominating the language of the master is its own form of resistance.

I thought about this as I continued through our first section of Finnegans Wake, which is, after all, the work of an Irish writer pounding the English language in his palms like a blob of dough. Continuing from page 12, here is the passage on page 13:

Behove this sound of Irish sense. Really? Here English might be seen. Royally? One sovereign punned to petery pence. Regally? The silence speaks the scene. Fake!

So This Is Dyoublong?

Hush! Caution! Echoland!

How charmingly exquisite!

First thing to notice is the appearance of our old friend, HCE.  “Hush! Caution! Echoland!” is immediately followed by “How charmingly exquisite!” If you’re being generous, “Here English might be seen” gets you close to HEC, especially if you approach it phonetically.  HCE is our main character, but he also doubles as Dublin (remember Howth Castle and Environs).

OK, so what else?

Behove this sound of Irish sense.

“Behove” means “to be necessary,” although in this sentence it also suggests “behold,” or, “look at.” And “the sound of Irish sense,” may be the Irish language itself. Look at the Gaelic language.

Really?

This begins a repetition of one-word sentences following a longer sentence for the rest of the paragraph. Really? Royally? Regally? Fake! Which is the real language and which is the fake one? Is it the royal/regal language of the English crown? Or is it the sound of Irish sense?

Here English might be seen.

Here in Dublin we speak English. Also, here in the pages of Finnegans Wake you might see some things that you recognize as English.

One sovereign punned to petery pence.

What was the relationship of a “sovereign pound” to an Irish “pence”?  I looked it up: 240 Irish pennies = one English pound. Joyce certainly does seem to be punning the English language to pieces, breaking it down so that the strong English pound becomes nothing more than 240 scattered pence.

The silence speaks the scene.

The silence of the Irish language?

So This Is Dyoublong?

Do you belong in doubling Dublin? Who belongs? Do the English? Does English as a language?

Hush! Caution! Echoland!

There is a long history of England suppressing the use of Gaelic, so it had to continue in careful, hushed tones. At the same time, we are in Dublin, where English “echoes” through the speech of the Irish people, making Ireland its own kind of Echoland.

How charmingly exquisite!

Imagine the Dowager Countess of Grantham saying this line.  As in, look at the Irish writer being so clever. How charmingly exquisite!

According to my guide, I didn’t pick up on the references to Jonathan Swift, nor to the full range of references to types of money. That’s OK, because Joyce is certainly riffing on the Irish use of the English language, all while he consciously unrolls that language.

We also have an early indication that Finnegans Wake may be more than a little self-aware. Here English might be seen. It’s a little nod to those of us who’ve persevered all the way to page 13.  I suspect it won’t be the last time the Wake laughs at itself. We’re immersed in a book that is delighted in the sound of words echoing across its pages.

A Guide In Hand

There is no agreement as to what Finnegans Wake is about, whether or not it is “about” anything, or even whether it is, in any ordinary sense of the word, “readable.” – the first sentence of the introduction of my copy of Finnegans Wake

Sometimes it’s hard to ask for help. As an adult, you’re supposed to be able to do things on your own—find a job, take care of your finances, cultivate healthy relationships, not fall victim to addiction and vice, and a bunch of other stuff probably.  Truth is, though, everyone needs help. Doing everything on your own isn’t the smartest or most efficient way to deal with all the weirdness of life.

This applies to literature, too. People love reading together. In fact, people who are in book clubs read more than people who aren’t in book clubs. (N.B.—I’m not sure that is a fact. I actually just made it up. It could be true.)

Finnegans Wake, more than any other piece of literature, is not meant to be a solo journey.  Thankfully I have JF along for the ride, but we don’t want to simply hold hands and drown together. We both prepped for the journey by first reading through some essays and intro materials, i.e., those links hanging out on the right of the blog. There you’ll find broad character sketches, discussions of underlying themes and influences, and even a few ideas about plot.

I figured that’d be enough to get started.  I wanted to keep an open mind. Not be overly influenced by someone else’s view. Let the novel dictate how I read. Go with the flow—or maybe the “riverrun,” as the Wake famously begins.

So I opened up FW and got started. What this means is, I read the words on the page, left to right, one at a time, and did my best to understand them, individually and collectively.  You know, as one does when reading.

It was confusing.

I read a few sentences that sparked suggestions of meaning.  I re-read those sentences. Sometimes I read them out loud. A few times, I read sentences out loud in my best Irish accent (this was a surprisingly productive approach, truth be told).

I found a lot of things to enjoy: the rhythm and flow of the language, that moment when a multi-layer pun revealed itself, even a joke. Yes, I got my first good audible laugh, which came at the end of a sequence which (I later found out) is known as the “Museyroom episode.” This section consists of three rambling pages of an odd recreation of the battle of Waterloo (and so much more), presented as a guided tour through the Willingdone Museyroom (i.e., the Wellington Museum in London), at the end of which we step outside into the “keling” air, and Joyce drops in a one-word paragraph:

Phew!

I exhaled with a genuine smile.  Phew, indeed.

Still, we have only just begun. There’s a long way to go. So I picked up a guide.  FW has spawned many reader’s guides, among the earliest and most famous being Joseph Campbell’s A Skeleton Key and William York Tindall’s A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. JF decided to go with the Tindall, so I followed suit and found a free online version of the same.

And I’m fine with that. Sir Edmund Hillary didn’t climb Mount Everest alone. He needed a Sherpa guide.  So if Finnegans Wake is the Everest of literature, why shouldn’t I make use of a guide? No shame here. William York Tindall, you can be my Tenzing Norgay.

What the guide does is provide a compass. There is no earthly way to know every allusion or symbol that Joyce packed in—the guide doesn’t even pretend to know everything. More than that, the layering of language that occurs within its pages may never be matched (nor should it be?), and the number of valid interpretations has no end. But broad ideas help.  Reading someone who has already worked out a framework for understanding the text provides, if not exactly solid ground, at least a glimpse of the shore in the distance.

For example, the main character is HCE. He is sometimes named H.C. Earwicker.  He is, or possibly he represents, the person who is dreaming the dream-novel. He is the head of a family, with a wife, two sons, and a daughter. Because this is a dream, identities shift and modulate, so H.C. Earwicker assumes many names and forms.

But look out for the initials “HCE.” One of the many ways FW signals the presence of the main character are variations on those letters. Sometimes it’s called out explicitly, as in “Here Comes Everybody,’’ or “Horoun Childeric Eggeberth.” Other times it’s more subtle, as when he is referred to as, “this man of hod, cement and edifice,” (i.e., he’s a builder).

The very first sentence of the book, in fact, tells us that we are returning to a place called, “Howth Castle and Environs.” Howth Castle is a real place in Dublin, so we’re being told about the geographic location of the action, as well as getting our first hint that HCE is one of our central concerns.

I don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to figure that out on my own.  But now that I have the compass, I know what to do when the needle points to “HCE.” I reflect on what I know of HCE, and the words around him come into focus.

It’s gonna be a long year, isn’t it?

For now, I’ve decided to use the guide in this way: Read the weekly 12 pages first, circle back and read through the guide, then read the 12 pages a second time. The guide, which I’ve only briefly glanced at so far, makes for pretty compelling reading itself. In fact, the secondary materials on FW are so extensive, and vary so greatly, that we could spend all our time talking about the interpretations of the text.  What we talk about when we talk about talking about Finnegans Wake.