Greg’s Reviews > Finnegans Wake > Status Update

I had to put this away for a while as 1) I became so involved in American Crime Literature and 2) I lost my copy-with sand and sun lotion in the pages but found it under a car seat. Since it's too hot to go out to the beach (literally, the sand burns, the water isn't cool), I'll just wait and finish it this October or so. It's not like I've a clue about the book, really, other than the Biblical references.

I am reading this naked in public, all the way through. Seriously. At the only legal, nude beach in the USA, just north of Miami. The cops patrol and take cameras and arrest masturbators.

Sometimes, Joyce just takes the low, low road: '...so when you pet the rolling pen write my name on the pie." Hey, I'm just quoting from one of the classics of literature.

"When the old wormd (*world) was a gadden (*garden) and Anthea (*Eve or perhaps the tree of knowledge) first unfoiled her limbs..." I am more convinced than ever that this novel is a retelling and/or discussion of the Biblical Old Testament, and perhaps later Joyce will take us to the New Testament. (*The asterisks are my interpretations of the wording of course). Fascinating.

I just finished Volume 5 of Knausgard's "My Struggle" and he makes an interesting point about "Ulysses" vs "Finnegan's Wake": in the former, he says the story rises above the language/words, but in the latter, the language takes over while the characters and story sink. I think that's a valid point. Anyway, I'm over halfway through "Wake"!

Mind-blowing. Stupendous. Confounding. Challenging. There is a book called "The Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake" which I must find! I found "The Key to The Name of the Rose" to be so illuminating to Eco's astonishing, brilliant work that I can now openly admit: I get by sometimes only with the help from my (writing) friends who are way way smarter than me.

Almost a tenth of the way! Beautiful, but I only read it a page or so at a time.

"So This is Dyoublong? Hush! Caution! Echoland!" Beautiful and precise: the philosophy is clear. Some authors might base a chapter, an entire book, on this theme, Joyce stupendously uses just a few words. The world is 'Echoland' and when we finally find our true home, our place in the world, a firm hold on our identity, we must enjoy and live quietly. Those people who are unhappy will drag us down their own hell.

I'm off to see the Wizard (of the English language) and after "Ulysses", I have off-the-chart expectations of a rock-n-roll ride like no other.