Finnegans Wake – the book the web was invented for

James Joyce’s difficult masterpiece has baffled readers for over seven decades, but music, reading-aloud and digital technologies are opening up rich new interpretations

Ninety years ago this month, the fourth edition of Ford Madox Ford’s Transatlantic Review came out. It featured the first new work to be published by James Joyce since Ulysses in 1922. The modestly titled, eight-page piece, From Work in Progress was the beginning of a project that was to be, if anything, even more scandalous and divisive than its predecessor.

In the 15 years between this first fleeting appearance and the eventual publication of Finnegans Wake on 4 May, 1939, Joyce’s book was to alienate long-time supporters such as Ezra Pound and attract a younger generation of writers, critics and publishers, including Samuel Beckett, Eugene Jolas, Robert McAlmon and Stuart Gilbert.

There is an annotated version online that led me to think that the book is like an early iteration of hypertext

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