A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake

by William York Tindall

For years, William York Tindall's guide has been one of the very best ways to approach the difficult writing and complex language of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Over a period of forty years, Tindall studied, instructed, and most importantly, learned from graduate students about Joyce's greatest literary masterpiece. He explores and analyzes Joyce's unexpected depths and vast collection of puns, allusions, and word plays involving more than a dozen languages, thereby breaking down the formidable barriers that can discourage readers from enjoying the humor and brilliance of Joyce.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Irish Literature, Literature, Theory, Classics, Reference

339 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

William York Tindall was an American Joycean scholar with a long and distinguished teaching career at Columbia University. Several of Tindall's classic works of criticism, including A Reader's Guide to James Joyce and A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake are still in print. He wrote a total of thirteen books on UK and Irish writers including Joyce, Dylan Thomas, W. B. Yeats, and Samuel Beckett. Indeed, Tindall nominated Beckett for the Nobel Prize in Literature; Beckett was the 1969 laureate.

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from." - T. S. Eliot

Some one in my Finnegans Wake reading group said of the Tindall guide, finding it nearly as incomprehensible as Joyce's famous night novel, "You need a guide for the reader's guide." It was at times abstruse, with Tindall sometimes glossing over whole sections, admitting that he didn't understand something or flat out suggesting that his interpretation could be wrong. The thing about Finnegans Wake is there are so many different ways of approaching the text, of trying to understand it, and many scholars of the work admit that it is a tough egg to crack. It was Anthony Burgess in his Re Joyce who admitted that he could generously say that he understands less than half of the book (I don't remember the exact percentage). And though not certain, I wouldn't be surprised if James Joyce himself wouldn't reread the work and make the same admission that Thomas Pynchon made about Gravity's Rainbow, that he had no idea what he meant in certain passages.

Now if there are two main ways to read FW, one analytical (and riddled with problems) and the other musical (and also in a way filled with problems, because this is quite a long musical commitment), it might be argued that for simple lack of agreement between scholars that the latter method of reading the Wake is the better. And there is a joy in reading the Wake this way (it's a work meant to be read aloud after all -- for me, much to the annoyance of my wife and kids).

However, if one opts for an analytical read, as I did to some extent, Tindall's work is one of several that might be deemed indispensable. Along with this one I read Burgess's Re Joyce and Stanislaus Joyce's (James' brother's) My Brother's Keeper, all of which helped shed some light on this book of the dark. My group also used the website Finwake.com, which was very useful in assisting with an understanding of certain references. And I also picked up Joyce's Book of the Dark by John Bishop (with many fun diagrams and digressions), though I doubt I will finish reading it now that my quest with the Wake is complete (at least for now). And many others have found Joseph Campbell's skeleton key to the Wake very useful. Again, this is one I would have liked to have read while immersed in Joyce's night book, but which I now very much doubt I'll get around to now any time soon.

While some justify reading the Wake for its musical quality, I don't think this would have sustained me for 628 pages. For an analytical read I cannot suggest Tindall enough, but in conjunction with Burgess, Campbell or some others. And, of course, I don't think I would have extracted as much as I did from the Wake (which is probably far less still than Burgess admits to yielding from it) without the persistence of my fellow readers, who met every Sunday morning for about two years to discuss and dissect Joyce's work. If this last paragraph sounds a bit like one of those award ceremony speeches, it is I suppose because there is a certain sense of accomplishment in having made it back to the beginning of the Wake, and I realize that I might never have done so without a little help along the way.

If I read the Wake again, having cramped with extensive notes (see that HCE there? Did you notice it?) the margins of my copy, I supposed it would be to read it musically (perhaps mythically). But for now, I will leave the Wake again at the beginning where at "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," before the flood, before the fall, before the dream, before Shem and Shawn (or Mutt and Jute, eye and ear, stone and tree), Isobel's heliotrope undies, the incident in the Park, before Buckley shoots the Russian General, but yet anticipating them all.

[Bob R Bogle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I scarcely know how to review this book because I scarcely know what it is. What it isn't is a reader's guide, which title suggests that it might be an authoritative atlas detailing the geography of its object, which is James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Rather this small but densely detailed book seems more like a reader's diary, partly a probationary and supposed summary of the Wake, itself at turns tentative, sometimes doubtful, tired, bored, perhaps careless, lapsing into casual commentary retelling Tindall's own frustrations and joys with the Wake. To she or he who insists on the brute-force, head-banging method of working her or his way cold through the compendious codex that is the Wake without any roadmaps close at hand, I think an assumption that reading Tindall would constitute some kind of a cheat is mistaken. It's more like a source of comradely moral support from someone who's been there before you and who shares your pain. That's it: it's like the difference between retaining the services of a red-cheeked Sherpa to ascend some Alpine summit with you versus blind bushwhacking up, up. Either way you still have to climb the darned mountain yourself, and one way you may be less likely to find yourself dashed to pieces over the edge of a dicey crag somewhere along the lonely way.

I daresay I nearly regard Tindall's book as an indispensable companion to be kept close by when one is laboring to read . . . to plod boldly or recklessly or simply madly through . . . Finnegans Wake. "Nearly" inasmuch as Tindall is at least as indispensable a companion as are many others who allege the same claim, though this "guide" is friendlier than most. Never pretending to explain what the Wake is "about", we find here Tindall's own views of and responses to the Wake: this book is "about" Tindall reading the Wake far more than it is about the Wake itself, which is fitting since the Wake is about little or nothing more than the Wake: a book about itself as a book. An excellent approach is to read a chapter in the Wake, and then read the corresponding chapter in Tindall to consider his speculations about what you've already read. He is not really technical, and he will always provoke more thinking on your part rather than simply recasting and spoon feeding Joyce back to you "in simple words."

As it's an old guide or narrative journal (1969) we might well expect newer and more apt baedekers may be found. This may be the case, but of the various books and articles I've read which revisit this same subject over and over (I've read many and will continue to read more because, in spite of what I've said here, I do judge Finnegans Wake to be worth the work it demands of the reader), it is Tindall that seems most amiable and welcoming to me.

This may be the most distilled expository writing, if it is exposition, that I've ever encountered. I always take notes on any book I read which is related to James Joyce and/or his works. To hit the high points in Tindall, one might as well highlight its contents from cover to cover, which hardly seems worth the effort. As the contents parallel Finnegans Wake exactly, it's always easy to quickly locate any specific chapter of interest. Tindall also uses extensive citations of chapter, page and line number in the Wake, although here and there he jumps around a little within a chapter. This, however, is never any more disconcerting than is Joyce's own discursive tendencies within the Wake which are of course legion.

[Josh Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a truism to say that any summary of a book presupposes an interpretation of that book. This problem is merely academic for most books, as the interpretative decisions one makes in summary are minor. For Finnegans Wake, though, those decisions are inherently major; you need to decide things like how many characters the book had/whether there are any characters in the fist place. You need to make major ontological decisions. Tindall makes them, but in a way that is conceited and self-assured without real warrant. There is lots of stilted, lofty language here that is redolent of boys' schools and the sort of "real men read Joyce" attitude that's really strange. Though he repeatedly notes this book's humor, his explanations destroy much of it.

If I was using this as a guide to help me understand what was happening in Finnegans Wake, I don't think it would have helped. But it's not that useful as a scholarly study of it either. It just ends up feeling like a sort of arbitrarily assertive work about Finnegans Wake that didn't add much to my understanding of it.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't have got through Finnegan's Wake without this as my companion

[j · Rating 3 out of 5]

This certainly helped me to adjust to the language of the Wake and Joyce's way of hiding information and narrative in his portmanteau-laden linguistic puzzlebox, but I found Tindall to become more and more tedious as the Wake became more and more legible (a relative use of the word). After the initial third of the text or so, Tindall rarely illuminated much for me that I found overtly valuable in unlocking the text (at least for my purposes on this, my initial full-reading of the Wake). But the head-scratching obtuseness of his "guide" and "explanations" are conceptually hilarious -- given that in many instances this supposed elaboration is undoubtedly equally as abstract as the notoriously challenging work in question.

I would recommend, at the very least, his introduction to the book which would serve as a good prelude to beginning the Wake.

[Raúl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tindall dedicó durante décadas un seminario universitario a Joyce y su Finnegans Wake. Tras el Skeleton Guide de Campbell/Robinson, fue el segundo gran intento de crear una guçia de lectura para hacer comprensible el texto. Ofrece un texto, dividido en los mismos capítulos que el original, en que se nos cuenta qué ocurre y se nos da interpretaciones, momento a momento del capítulo y de forma comprensiva. Ofrece una sinopsis amplia y clara del original (más o menos, de la mitad de extensión de cada capítulo), indicando entre paréntesis el número de página y de capítulo, en caso de que haya alusiones a citas exteriores al capítulo examinado. Tras cada capítulo, incluye una veintena de anotaciones a forma de glosario sobre expresiones claves de cada capítulo, explicando cada una de ellas y su significado dentro de cada sección.
Es el referente canónico para leer el Finnegans Wake, junto con la página-glosario www.fweet.org

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Manage one's expectations with any guide to FW. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the most practically focused of the guides. Tindall is clear-sighted enough to keep tabs on exactly what is happening narrative-wise. He's perfectly happy to admit the necessary limitations of his work.

I noticed that WYT seems a little more shy when it comes to the sexual parts. Could have been fun, but perhaps he thought they were self-explanatory.

Also the man himself seems interesting. There's a very casual slip in one of the notes where he mentions pub conversations about FW with Dylan Thomas.

[& · Rating 3 out of 5]

This made reading the Wake itself more bearable. Which is good. I think it dragged on for too long at certain parts and beat about the bush instead of focusing on the key storyline. I mean, why are we counting letters? Just explain what the hells going on.

[Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading a guide alongside Finnegan's Wake was indispensable. I found it difficult to adjust to the style of writing in this guide. It's like reading a bunch of notes strung together.

Considering that a true guide to Finnegan's Wake, one that breaks down all the meanings, would probably be a 1,000 pages, this a decent guide for someone who wants a high level overview.

It does get into some minor details. However, this isn't a guide that is going to take you line by line, or even page by page. It does jump around some, so although it will go through a chapter rather chronologically, it will reference a few pages back or forward to a connection.

The end of each section has a list of specific items that are given a few word explanation. They probably didn't fit well into the flow of explanation.

Most of the time I would read the guide first, then read the corresponding parts in Finnegan's Wake, and use the guide as to how far I would advance. I set myself a goal of about 10 pages a day, so for me reading a whole section of the guide before reading Wake wouldn't have worked, as I would have forgotten.

The author isn't afraid to state that he has no clue about what Joyce is referring to at some parts. There aren't any outlandish theories here.

[Leo Robertson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty decent, wouldn't have understood any of the references on my own. A bit repetitive at times, though (leave Mrs Bloom's Yes alone! It is what it is.) Gonna try out A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake: James Joyce's Masterwork Revealed too :-)

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a chapter-by-chapter account of my journey with this book, see https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/12/22/i...

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Way too academic for me. YMMV, but this isn't what I was looking for.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Отличный гайд по роману, но. Как и любая другая трактовка, эта не исчерпывающа, хотя Тиндалл старался очень скрупулезно. Он, видимо, совершил одну из первых задокументированных попыток «коммунального чтения» — в Коламбии, собрав «комитет чтения» из своих студентов и примкнувших к ним специалистов, и эта книга — собственно, продукт их жизнедеятельности. Читать ее, конечно, лучше после «Вездехода» Кэмбла и Робинсона, и вместе они, теоретически, могут дать какое-то дополнительное представление о «Финнеганах». Процентов на пять прирастят.
Хотя у Тиндалла вырисовывается несколько другая картина того, что в романе Джойса происходит, и это не вполне совпадает с любыми другими трактовками. В этом и есть удивительная сила «Финнеганов» — они неисчерпаемы.
Больше чем уверен, что новая русская версия, о которой все говорят сейчас, будет иметь так же мало отношения к собственно тексту Джойса, хотя есть надежда, что там не будет того безобразия, какое наблюдалось в шустром заходе Волохонского на роман. Любые прочтения тут неизбежно окажутся ложными и фальшивыми, а истинной будет лишь та версия текста, какая складывается ночью у каждого конкретного читателя в голове. Беда тут в том, что такую версию невозможно ни квантифицировать, ни воспроизвести, ни передать кому-то.
А раздражение от непонимания (хотя точнее, конечно, — от нежелания понять) — часть этого жизненного опыта, вложенная в текст самим автором. Роману скоро 80 лет, и мы по-прежнему понимаем, что нас всех Джойс отымел просто по-царски, скотина. Вот только жаль, конечно, переводчиков.

[Adam Wroblewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful, probably essential. William York Tindall is a total misogynist though. He'll interrupt these really thoughtful close readings to make some joke about how dumb girls are, it's a total bummer (and not just in an it-sucks-when-books-you-like-are-written-by-shitheads way; it causes him to really downplay/overlook the character of Issy throughout the book [Ah well, it seems like feminist joyce scholars in the 90s got published on that gap in the scholarship, so good on them]). At least he doesn't claim to be anything but interpretive/subjective (or maybe he does, I'm not going back to look). It sucks that it's one of the only full Reader's Guides out there, or anyway the most prominent one I've come across. I'm glad I read it through the first time relying mainly on the Campbell and McHugh annos. I'd recommend those over this book.

A fun thing of the book is how much open contempt he has for chapter I.7. He gives these really illuminating readings of chapters I.1-I.6, I.8-IV.1, but he just can't get behind I.7. Cmon dude, it's not that much different than the rest of the book.

He also gets bored and glosses over huge, fun sections of chapter II.1, but whatever, it's a great work of close reading, despite its weaknesses and shithead author.

[Sanjuro · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reader's guide is as difficult to review as Finnegans Wake itself. The book is only moderately helpful. The introduction of roughly 25 pages is extremely helpful and readable. Tindall explains how Joyce's puzzles work; the way he uses linguistics, aesthetics, and verbalizations to build entirely new words, sounds and meanings. Joyce's work is funny, and Tindall brings that out in his explanations. But, everything after the introduction reads more like an annotation than an actual "guide." These annotations are sparse and often nonsensical, seemingly stringing together random thoughts and ideas and hardly making Finnegans Wake any more readable. But, herein lies the difficulty. Is that really Tindall's fault? The guide is well written enough to remind us all that Tindall has put substantially more thought into the Wake than the rest of us, and it's equally clear that even he still doesn't really understand it. So, if he can parse the madness, and offer some insight into the linguistic imaginings, maybe this is enough?

[Cade Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very handy guide to one of literature's toughest beasts. Tindall's commentary is usually very insightful, and it's clear he's spent many, many years discussing and parsing out the inner workings of Finnegans Wake with fellow experts and students. However, the books overall layout is a bit messy and inconvenient (he states in the introduction that he expects you to read his guide simultaneously with the book, which to me sounds obnoxiously cumbersome), and to be honest I started referring to this book less and less as I progressed further in The Wake and became more and more comfortable not knowing what the flying f*ck was happening and just focused on appreciating Joyce's mastery over words and their accompanying music. Still, it's best to not go into The Wake unprepared, and this book is the essential companion for the journey.

[F Barry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that I will be 'currently reading' forever. I really wish there were an audiobook because it was written for the ear, and deserves to be heard with a Dublin accent (although I wonder what a Belfast accent would do with it). Roddy Doyle's comment " 'I only read three pages of Finnegans Wake and it was a tragic waste of time,' he added. Dubliners was Joyce's best work, but Ulysses was undeserving of reverence." I disagree, with respect. I like to live in a book and the longer I can live there the better. I should mention that I listened to an unabridged copy of Ulysses on cassettes and it's worth it.

[Garrett Peace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I can take this off my "Currently Reading" shelf now although I'll certainly return to it when I re-approach The Wake. Useful to a degree. You'll read a lot of it and think "How did he figure that out?" and won't ever get an answer: Tindall just expects you to agree with everything he says and doesn't really support any of the claims he makes. But those claims do make sense sometimes and help you out, so . . . would I recommend it? Sure. Is it the BEST guide to The Wake? I hope not.

[Pieter Cramerus]

Thicker than the book itself, the guide is nevertheless strongly recommended to anyone who dares to tackle Finnegans Wake. Failing to do so, you will not get many of the stream of consciousness puns, which are based on the seven languages spoken by the author. Thus, when you arrive at the final phrase in the book, which wraps back around to connect to the first sentence, you will be condemned to your very own circumlocution.

[ThePageGobbler · Rating 3 out of 5]

An impressive achievement for its time and decent enough on the level of synopsis and picking up certain motifs, but rather disorganised on a chapter-by-chapter basis (could maybe do with some basic headings to give us a sense of the particularities of each chapter) and doesn’t really give us a complex sense of what Joyce was trying to ‘do’ with the book beyond the usual stuff about collective dreaming, the Everyman, language, etc.

[Adam Hare · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s good to have multiple perspectives on this novel, and Tindall considers many things Campbell doesn’t. However, Tindall lets his desire for literary flourish to get in the way of his explanation and often his notes are too vague or personal to elucidate much.

I don’t think I would’ve gotten much out of this if I weren’t also reading Campbell alongside it. I think most readers would be better off with a more modern gloss on the Wake.

[Cleeb · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hi. As far as a guide for understanding the general plot (the vague sense of What Is Happening) in Finnegans Wake, this definitely does do the job. Other books probably (hopefully) do it better. Reviews saying it’s more like a journal are accurate. There are a LOT of cut-in opinions by Tindall. Some of them can be humorous, but for the most part they’re grating to downright insulting.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me this is not a book to necessarily finish and set aside. Since I plan to read 'Finnegans Wake' several times over to try and figure out what the fuck Joyce was messing with, I will surely be re-reading this book nearly as many times too. A fabulous resource for those interested in learning at least some of what the novel is referring to, however obliquely.

[Alfredo Suárez Palacios · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sin esto sería imposible pasearse por las páginas del Finnegans, es útil y necesaria, pero necesita actualizarse, se nota que es la más clásica y comedida, por lo que obvia muchas referencias que están claras en el texto (igual por eso las obvia), pero bueno, necesaria lectura para acompañar a la otra.

[Rene Bonilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL in order to try to understand Finnegans Wake. I definitely recommend this work! However, understand that to attempt to read Finnegans Wake is a foolish undertaking.

[Andre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely a useful book while trying to wade though the craziness of Finnegan's Wake.

[Differengenera · Rating 4 out of 5]

not perfect but as good an introduction to the paragraph by paragraph ''plot'' as i've found

[Gerard]

DNF

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book that reads like footnotes on a text lacking in discernible argument but focused on extrapolation.

[Kevin McCarthy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little too pretentious from the start. Tindall’s insight is impressive, but this companion guide is not nearly as clear and readable as Campbell’s.