In for a Penny, In for a Pound
Descending into Finnegans Wake during the global pandemic
BY MATTHEW ST. AMAND
It seemed the thing to do.
The world was suddenly gripped by a global pandemic, immersing us all in a new reality of lockdowns and safety protocols. Amorphous, shape-shifting fear descended upon us like nuclear winter. The familiar felt strange. Routine was lost. No more malls, movie theaters or restaurants.
“COVID-19 is just the flu!” some said.
“It’s not the flu!” others said.
The coronavirus attacks the respiratory system. It is a vascular virus.
Hand sanitizer became as precious as prison house cigarettes and toilet paper traded like tech stocks.
The asymptomatic walked among us like werewolves waiting for the next full moon.
In a time where ordinary life was upside-down, I decided to approach an old unapproachable tome that had sat like a bird of prey on my bookshelf for 25 years. Finnegans Wake. James Joyce’s famously difficult novel. It had taken Joyce 17 years to write it.
I am a slow reader, and often an inattentive reader. Numerous attempts over the years had been repelled by the book’s sheer incomprehensibility. Oddly enough, when I finally committed to giving it a real chance, I found that reading prose that made no immediate sense held my eye to the page with a gravitational force. When the going got rough—and it got rough almost immediately—I thought of Samuel Beckett’s words of hopeless hopefulness: “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
Over the course of 12 months, I made two journeys through the Wake.
The first was just to get the lay of the land. Understanding didn’t matter. Following the first read, there were a few observations I felt sure about: There is no apostrophe in the title. The novel’s namesake, “Finnegan”, makes scant appearance throughout the work. There are more names in the Wake than in the Lisdoonvarna telephone directory. Nearly every time I came to a particularly unreadable passage and thought, “OK, Joyce is just flat-out writing gibberish”, he was, in fact, writing in the Welsh language.
The first pass took six weeks. A ridiculously short time. There are reading groups that spend years, decades, reading the Wake. I can’t say their approach is any more sensible than mine. After each word of the Wake passed through my mind, like ticker tape through a scanner, it was time to find experts who could tell me what the hell I had just read.
I discovered names like Clive Hart and Jon Bishop. There was Roland McHugh who compiled the deliriously detailed Annotations to Finnegans Wake. David Hayman who showed what the Wake looked like in Joyce’s early notebooks in A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, before Joyce artificially complicated things. Bits and pieces of these were available online.
I am not an academic, so there was only so much scholarly discourse I could absorb. Having traversed the Wake once, I set upon a second expedition, which took the next eight months. That time, I was ready to confront some of the famously arcane monuments of the book, such as the imposing 100-letter “thunder word” on the first page (there are 10 “thunder words” throughout the book):
bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!
Many readers read the word literally, phonetically. Personally, I take it as a generic great yell of the hod carrier, Finnegan, falling from the wall. Clive Hart explains that it is comprised of multiple words for “thunder” lifted from a handful of languages.
Quotes from James Joyce, compiled by the brilliant Dublin Wakean, Brendan Ward, on his wonderful blog “Finnegans Wake – A Prescriptive Guide” were helpful.
“One great part of every human existence [i.e. sleep] is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot” (James Joyce by James Ellmann, 584–585).
“They say [Finnegans Wake is] obscure. They compare it, of course, with Ulysses. But the action of Ulysses was chiefly in the daytime, and the action of my new work takes place at night. It’s natural things should not be so clear at night, isn’t it now?” (Ellmann 590)
Right—so, Finnegans Wake takes place during a single night’s sleep (as Ulysses takes place in a single day and night, up until sleep) and depicts the stream-of-consciousness of the main character’s sleeping mind (or, the sleeping mind of his entire family, possibly all of Dublin, or even the entire world).
A line on page 121, sums up the conundrum of the book’s indecipherability: “. . . the words which follow may be taken in any order desired . . .”
Other aspects of the book became knowable, such as the cast of main characters:
Finnegan: the hod carrier who falls to his death on page one.
Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (HCE): Pub keeper who lives with his family in the Dublin suburb, Chapelizod.
Anna Livia Plurabelle (ALP): HCE’s wife.
Shaun & Shem: Twin sons of ALP and HCE.
Isobel: Daughter of ALP and HCE.
There are the four old men—Matt Gregory, Marcus Lyons, Luke Tarpey and Johnny MacDougall—who are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the four evangelists who penned the Gospels of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Joyce truncates their names into “mamalujo.” They also, at various times, represent the four seasons, four cardinal directions, the Four Masters or Four Annalists of Irish history/literature, and even the four posts of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker and Anna Livia Plurabelle’s bed.
There are the 28 “maggies”—friends of Isobel’s.
There are the 12 pub patrons who also act as a jury, at times, and may well represent the 12 apostles, 12 months of the year.
Ordinary citizens are referred to as “Guinnesses.” Mashed potatoes are “murphies.”
The “Eve and Adam’s” mentioned on the first page (“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.) (Finnegans Wake 1) refers to the Church of Adam and Eve, which sits on the bank of the River Liffey in Dublin. Joyce transposes the names to indicate time moving backward.
St. Patrick and St. Kevin make appearances, as well as the Arch Druid of ancient Ireland. There is “King Roderick O’Connor, the paramount chief polemarch and last pre-electric king of Ireland,” drinking dregs left by patrons after the pub closes for the night—“heeltapping” as Joyce terms it. There are even a couple of obscure references to Joyce’s own novel Ulysses.
The basic “story” of Finnegans Wake centers on Earwicker, publican in the Dublin suburb of Chapelizod, and his “sin in the park.” The park in question is Dublin’s Phoenix Park. The sin in question is ambiguous—the fragments of information related to it suggest that HCE either exposed himself to a pair of young girls, or spied on them as they urinated within the cover of foliage in the park. The “sin” was witnessed by three British soldiers. Gossip abounds among the pub patrons about Earwicker’s sin. Earwicker’s wife stands by her husband. There are frequent mentions of a letter, alternately exonerating Earwicker and proving his guilt. At various times, the letter is said to have been written by ALP, or by their son Shem the Penman. Fragments of the letter are discovered by—of all things—a hen, uncovering it from a “midden” (garbage) heap, harkening to how the revered Book of Kells was located in sod after it was stolen during a Viking raid.
Having touchpoints to look for—description of the “sin in the park”, scraps of The Letter, “mamalujo”—offered tenuous footholds in the notoriously unstable text. As it turned out, my favourite discordion author, Robert Anton Wilson, is a Waken, who offered further insight into the book:
For instance, the middle chapter of the book, the story of how Buckley shot the Russian general. Buckley was a friend of Joyce’s father who served in the Crimean War, which for Joyce was a symbol of all wars, because it had the word ‘crime’ in it, and Buckley saw a Russian general in the field, and was going to shoot him, because the primary military rule is ‘always shoot the highest ranking officer of the enemy army’. As Buckley was about to shoot, the general took down his pants and sat down to take a crap in the field, and Buckley, telling the story in Dublin pubs as he was (inaudible) to in old age, said ‘it made him look so human, I couldn’t shoot’. And then the general finished and pulled his pants up again, and he was an enemy officer again, and Buckley shot the poor bastard down in his tracks. And somehow, to Joyce, this is the symbol of the fight or the predicament or the comedy of humanity, that the general is human with his pants down and his ass sticking out, and he’s not human with the uniform on. And in telling the story of how Buckley shot the Russian general, Joyce incorporates all the battles of human history.
My favourite recurring characters are “mamalujo:” Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In one memorable section, Joyce introduces them:
They were the big four, the four maaster waves of Erin, all listening, four. There was old Matt Gregory and then besides old Matt there was old Marcus Lyons, the four waves, and oftentimes they used to be saying grace together, right enough, bausnabeatha, in Miracle Squeer: here now we are the four of us: old Matt Gregory and old Marcus and old Luke Tarpey: the four of us and sure, thank God, there are no more of us: and, sure now, you wouldn’t go and forget and leave out the other fellow and old Johnny MacDougall: the four of us and no more of us and so now pass the fish for Christ sake . . . (FW 384).
Is reading Finnegans Wake worth the effort? Is there any reward to all the untangling and heavy lifting it requires from the reader? Yes, but that is a highly qualified yes, wrapped in a fragile shell of warnings and caveats. Even a person won over by the fleeting beauty and humour will lose the trail in the labyrinth. A reader must decide how much they need to understand, at any given time, to continue. Sometimes the curtains of obscurity part just long enough for some sense, even some comedy to show through, such as Joyce’s description of The Letter (exonerating/damning HEC for the sin in the park):
Letter, carried of Shaun, son of Hek, written of Shem, brother of Shaun, uttered for Alp, mother of Shem, for Hek, father of Shaun. Initialled. Gee. Gone. 29 Hardware Saint. Lendet till Laonum. Baile-Atha-Cliath. 31 Jan. 11 32 a.d. Here Commerces Enville. Tried Apposite House. 13 Fitzgibbets. Loco. Dangerous. Tax 9d. B.L. Guineys, esqueer. L.B. Not known at 1132 a. 12 Norse Richmound. Nave unlodgeable. Loved noa’s dress. Sinned, Jetty Pierrse. Noon sick parson. 92 Windsewer. Ave. No such no. Vale. Finn’s Hot. Exbelled from 1014 d. Pull-down. Fearview. Opened by Miss Take. 965 nighumpledan sextiffits. Shout at Site. Roofloss. Fit Dunlop and Be Satisfied. Mr. Domnall O’Domnally. Q.V. 8 Royal Terrors. None so strait. Shutter up. Dining with the Danes. Removed to Philip’s Burke. At sea. D.E.D. Place scent on. Clontalk. Father Jacob, Rice Factor. 3 Castlewoos. P.V. Arrusted. J.P. Converted to Hospitalism. Ere the March past of Civilisation. Once Bank of Ireland’s. Return to City Arms. 2 Milchbroke. Wrongly spilled. Traumcon-draws. Now Bunk of England’s. Drowned in the Lafley. Here. The Reverest Adam Foundlitter. Shown geshotten. 7 Streetpetres. Since Cabranke. Seized of the Crownd. Well, Sir Arthur. Buy Patersen’s Matches. Unto his promisk hands. Blown up last Lemmas by Orchid Lodge. Search Unclaimed Male. House Condamned by Ediles. Back in Few Minutes. Closet for Repeers. 60 Shellburn. Key at Kate’s. Kiss. Isaac’s Butt, Poor Man. Dalicious arson. Caught. Missing. Justiciated. Kainly forewarred. Abraham Badly’s King, Park Bogey. Salved. All reddy berried. Hollow and eavy. Desert it. Overwayed. Understrumped. Back to the P.O. Kaer of. . . (FW 419).
The passage continues in this fashion for well over a page, replicating, somewhat, the overwrought humour found in the Cyclops chapter of Ulysses, displaying Joyce’s fondness for endless lists.
In 2014, the Wake’s received a brief new life when the vaunted Folio Society published a gorgeous edition magnificently illustrated by artist John Vernon Lord. Lord’s visual interpretation of the Wake is beautiful and surreal and can be readily found on the Internet. This edition of the Wake went out of print soon after publication, so online images may be the only avenue for readers to glimpse these wonders.
For his own part, Joyce wrote a pseudo advertising blurb about the Wake:
Buy a book in brown paper
From Faber and Faber
To see Anna Liffey trip, tumble and caper.
Sevensinns in her singthings,
Plurabelle on her prose,
Seashell ebb music wayriver she goes
Following publication of Finnegans Wake, a friend asked Joyce if he had plans to write another book. Joyce replied. “If I write anything new, it will be something very, very simple.” There is no evidence that James Joyce ever wrote another word after the Wake.
Ironically enough, Finnegans Wake’s reputed unreadability is among the attributes that keeps it relevant to today’s readers. The online satire publication GishGallop.com recently published an article that read, in part: “University of Chicago James Joyce scholar Professor James Badwater has completed what he is calling a ‘plain English’ version of the Irish writer’s avant-garde work Finnegans Wake. The translated version of this comic fiction novel has eclipsed over 175,000 pages and will take approximately 42 years to read.” Recommended retail price: $1,750 for the 350 volumes comprising the work. Sad thing is, if this actually existed, I’d be willing to split the cost with some fellow Wakeans just to see what Professor Badwater came up with.
In this time of lockdowns and quarantines, where the current reality is often described as the “new normal,” the unanchored narrative of Finnegans Wake is a fitting companion piece to our collective sense of dislocation and disorientation. Ultimately, did I find Finnegans Wake to be a fraud or a work of brilliance? The honest answer is both. The book is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, which slowly reveals itself to the reader willing to take the zen approach, accepting that there will be huge swaths of the book that may never be understood. Some see this as an invitation, others view it as a central reason to dismiss the book. The only thing I do know with certainty is that I plan to read it again, soon.
MATTHEW ST. AMAND is a Windsor playwright and freelance writer. His most recent play, Negatunity, was filmed and available online during April and May due to the latest lockdown. His non-fiction manuscript, Gas of Tank, is currently making the rounds with Ontario publishers.