James Joyce Reading Group discussion

Has anyone read this excellent study of Finnegans Wake? I highly recommend it.

Clue me some more, Philip. (sorry to have been away so long...my internet time hs been unavoidably hit)

well, it really focuses in on the dream aspect of the book, it delves into the pre-existing notions that ulysses is a book of the day and finnegans wake is the book of the night. the writer explores all aspects of that notion - that FW is a book of the night - of darkness, of our shadow side; it focuses on the fearful utterances that occur in FW that do not occur in U; such as incest (did bygmeester finnegan fondle the wee offerspung of anna livia?) and other darker impulses...betrayal among brothers (shem and shaun - jem and jaun), murder, revenge.

does that make sense? it also focuses (as a good deal of wake scholarship has done) on the dream aspect of the book, and how it effects the prose (structure on the macro and mirco level).

Sounds good, thanks.

Ahhhhhhhhh I can't wait to read Ulysses and FW!!!

dude, you're in for an ocean of treats!

Joseph Campbell’s Skeleton Key To Finnegan’s Wake is an excellent reference work. It basically annotates the text regarding religious, mythical, historical, etc. references. He also gets into some of the puns. It’s a great way to dive into the subject.

Campbell brings to the subject a philosophic point of view as to what various belief systems accomplish. His “life eats life” perspective is the frightening reality of a largely indifferent universe. Belief systems build structure into the randomness and even a sort of unreliable concern. You don’t have to follow this point of view to appreciate the light Campbell sheds on some of the more obscure images.

Now, here’s a point that has bothered me about Finnegan’s Wake:

Given Joyce’s unbelievable attentions to a works structure, why does this book have page numbers? Page 1 seems a likely flag indicating a beginning. I don’t disagree with the idea that the book is cyclical. Still I wonder, and wonder why the Books are numbered as well. Carrying this point to its absurd limits, it seems to me each book marks a point secondary beginnings and ends. OK, so I’m anal.

I can't comment on the use of page numbers, although knowing Joyce's desire to have his work cannibalized and served up for consumption by scholars and critics, I imagine the page numbers are there for those folks to reference.

As far as the four books of the Wake are concerned, Vico seemed to posit his four-part cycle of history as starting with the book of the parents (I'm using Joyce's terms, not Vico's), and then leading to the book of children , the book of the people and finally, recorso...

And yes, the Joseph Campbell - Henry Morton Robinson Skeleton Key is a great introduction, as are the chapters in Anthony Burgess' book Re:Joyce that arededicated to the Wake.

It’s a small point at best. If I trip down that line of reason, I have to question the use of chapters, paragraphs, sentences and even clauses. Truthfully, I like the book too much to be picky.

Word.

Wow. What happened? Isn't anyone at least a little curious about this strange Irishman? I'm embarrassed to be so long away form the conversation, but life can do that.

I like the idea that FW is a book of the night. I thought from the start the book was akin with Jung's Shadow-man. I assumed that based on the stream of history, languages, shifting roles of most of the characters, etc.

Whatdayaink (just trying to be Joyce)

The bit about page numbers. Agreed that Joyce's attention to structure was stupendous (the page synchronizations in 'Ulysses' 1st edition for instance), FW is also a 'square'. For example not only the 4 books but also the 4 apostles, the MAMALUJO bit and the 4 annalists point towards this equally circular and quadrangular structure of the Wake. No harm in being anal...
Joyce called his book 'quadrivial'. Clive Hart discusses this in some detail in his 'Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake'. One can also think of Bloom's obsession with the idea of 'quadrature of the circle' in 'Ulysses'.
About paragraphs, punctuations... well since much of FW is parody of other texts (as far as I can tell Joyce mentions all HIS works) so it is bound to resemble the basic format of a book. FW Book II.2 is also a notebook of the children, among other things.
Anyway Joycean geometry is fascinating! See Margaret Solomon's book 'The Eternal Geomater' for discussions on the sigla of FW.

yeah, i read that book by clive hart. there are indeed a lot of square motifs in the book - it's a four-part square that runs in a circle.

what would buckminster fuller say? (embrace the triangle!)

'Isoscelating biangle!'(FW 165)

nice!
:)

You are right. Campbell's book is eminently readable but he summarizes at times. Tindall's book is very old but lovely to read. He has a very interesting theory about T.S. Eliot and James Joyce forming the Shaun/Shem couple! But there's John Gordon's Plot Summary as well. Gordon's reading is often ingenious-he suggests a probable 'date' for the night of FW. But Edmund Epstein's book is absolutely brilliant and meticulously researched. An asset in my library. For the serious, 'astute, pro' reader there's always Roland McHugh and his Annotations of course. Just about any book by him is recommended. One of the great readers of FW along with Fritz Senn! I haven't read with enough attention John Bishop's book so can't say much about it.

I think Bishop's work is quite brilliant, but it is a cross linking study from a specific thematic view and not a page by page reader's guide. I think highly of the concept that Wake is a night book, and that the mechanism is that of a dream. The only limitation of that approach is that whereas Ulysses is a "day" book, it is so in an exclusive sense (such is the limitation of day consciousness), but Finnegans Wake is a "night" book, and therefore is so in an inclusive sense; it is expansive in the sense of the Cambellian monomyth, think of it as Joyce's equivalent of the Australian Dreamtime--in a sense it expands in to fill the awareness allotted by the indulgent reader. Gordon's ingenious date assignment is probably correct as far as it goes: I think Joyce intended the hints that he placed in the book. But in Ulysses the date is incontestable; by the very nature of a dream structure, the "actual situation" of the dreamer can be hypothesized--but in a sense our dream world connects to every dream we've ever had (I think of the passage in Proust where Marcel's sleep hyperlinks him to every bed he has ever slept in) and to even all other dreamers and all states of consciousness, so that the sharp edge of factuality is blurred.

In response to the question of pagination, paragraphs, the dry scholarly font, and other respectable trappings in which the Wake is embedded, I am of the opinion that Joyce made a very conscious and subversive decision to employ them. One could easily imagine Joyce deciding to write it as one vast prose poem in free verse, and indeed, the way that Finnegans Wake "means" is far more like poetry (or music) than the narrative of the traditional novel.

The vision I see is that of the lookingglass book in Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, one of the key thematic sources in Finnegans Wake in which the mirror book seems like an ordinary book, but its language no longer stays tidily put, but drifts apart, when examined closely. In the dream consciousness, the most absurd things are totally deadpan, and are drolly accepted by the dreamer.

Thank you very much for your commenst on Bishop's book Ed! I do agree that the 'dream' structure of Finnegans Wake and also its radical polyvalence makes it impossible to think in terms of unities. I especially loved your analogy with Proust's narrator. However the 'everydayness' 'everybodyness' is also a feature of Ulysses. Bloom's nightthoughts in 'Ithaca' for instance where he becomes at once Everyman and Noman especially. The 'incontestable' nature of Ulysses, also needs to be scrutinized with caution given its numerous factual errors that have made people think whether they were sly Joycean digs at the professors, not entirely unlike the Wake's nightlesson. Patrick McCarthy's article on 'Ithaca' is enlightening in this regard, I think.

Dipanjan wrote: "Thank you very much for your commenst on Bishop's book Ed! I do agree that the 'dream' structure of Finnegans Wake and also its radical polyvalence makes it impossible to think in terms of unities...."

Well yes, I winced a little bit, when I wrote that Ulysses was a straightforward day book, thinking of the Nighttown episode which is in a sense the psychoanalytic chapter of Ulysses, that is making the unconscious conscious in the form of a play, and of course the irreverent medical students taking the English language on one hell of a bender, and other passages of fantasy. But I felt that for the sake of clarity and brevity I could simplify a bit. :)

I agree with you that Bloom is an everyman figure, but I would suggest that it is established thematically through metaphor within a pretty solid Bloom mind interior monologue.

I'd contrast that with H.C.E. who really dissolves quite a bit, becoming parts of the landscape and pretty literally most every male historical figure, an every man (with a space); the dissociation is taken so far that these "offspring" of H.C.E.'s mind take on the conceit of existing as separate entities, and dreamer ends up forgetting that they are parts of himself (I am reminded of Blake's "Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast."). Does that clarify, Dipanjan?

Sure Ed. Of course as Joyce himself said that mountains, rivers and time were the real heroes of the book, so that one does not even have to think in terms of 'human' characters in the Wake. HCE could also be 'Heinz cans everywhere' (FW 581) or 'How culious an epiphany' (FW 508) and so many other variations. But what I was trying to suggest was that being 'Everyman' Bloom, like Odysseus has to become 'Noman' as well. It is this curious loss of identity that Bloom realizes as a 'nobody'. I was reminded of the last section of 'Nausicaa' where Bloom famously stops short of naming/identifying himself, writing on sand- 'I. AM. A.'. So that the cuckoo-call arrives almost as a name-call and Bloom is suddenly 'given' a name, with which he would perhaps identify.

Ah--this is a good thread--thanks!

Dipanjan wrote: "You are right. Campbell's book is eminently readable but he summarizes at times. Tindall's book is very old but lovely to read. He has a very interesting theory about T.S. Eliot and James Joyce for..."

i liked gordon's book quite a lot - unlike many joyce scholars, he brings joyce's personal life into the discussion. a valuable asset, i think.

to remark on ed and dipanjan's discussion - joyce himself said ULYSSES was a book of the day and FW was the book of the night.

yes, that is a simplification, but in effect, it isn't. UL happens during a single day - examines the consciousness that confronts the day - all the internal monologue stuff and all the themes are themes that we deal with, for the most part, on a conscious level.

FW was meant to examine who we are when we are sleeping - hence the language structure - the melding of so much information, history and study of humanity, but through the lens of dream. through the lens of the unconscious. thus the mega-epic (meta history) is condensed over the course of a single night. the book ends as dawn breaks much the way U ends as molly's soliloquy moves her into the realm of sleep ...

That is an extremely cool idea to me--i am excited to get into it.

Phillip wrote: "I can't comment on the use of page numbers, although knowing Joyce's desire to have his work cannibalized and served up for consumption by scholars and critics, I imagine the page numbers are there..."
I think I remember the four Vico epochs as being: the Divine, the Heroic, the Human, and the Recorso. I like to apply this form, rather than to the four major sections of Finnegans Wake, but to Joyce's oeuvre instead. Making Dubliners the book of Divine subjects: the rejection of superstition. Portrait easily becomes the heroic book: we meet the hero. Ulysses the human book: as Bloom's humanity is so central to the story. And finally FW can be the recorso: whatever that may be.

On another note, Stanley Sultan argues quite convincingly in his masterwork, The Argument of Ulysses that the notion of Bloom as an "everyman" is off the mark. He sees Bloom's story as individual and unique.

While I was in California I had taken a break from Finnegan's Wake (didn't bring it on the road) but, while I was at my daughter's she had a nice hardback copy of Joyce's bio, (the Richard Ellman) and was truly surprised at how much Joyce was literally just writing about the people in his family, his life in Dublin, over and over again. It struck me that he kept using the same material, but continued to burrow into darker and more secret places as he went , as if he was going through layers of a man's mind and influences. Dubliners more or less on the surface, telling tales, PORTRAIT begins the inward journey on a relatively superficial, confessional level, then Ulysses repeats the Dublin journey, but attempting an epically detailed, microscopic level account of all a man sees himself to be as a Dubliner and a man. Then FW goes full on Jungian about how one man is not only a speck, dealing with other specks--but also is that other speck, and almost Buddhistically Tao, like Walt Whitman's flotsom and jetsam. I only had time to read 5 or so chapters, but it just put me in awe of Joyce's power of reinvention.

I haven't looked at Ellmann in a long time. But I would label the four books slightly differently. I see Dubliners as establishing the author's milieu. Then Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man begins the story of the hero. Ulysses we could then call portrait of the artist as a family man. And Finnegans Wake can be the portrait of the artist as an old, notorious man.
I see the major theme in Dubliners as a rejection of the superstition found in religion. Portrait is the story of escape: from English rule, from Roman rule, and from his father's rule. Also there is in Portrait the story of governance: controlling and focussing his genius. And finally in Portrait the search for love. Ulysses, for me, is a love story. Examining the effect of time on a relationship. And FW, well, it's viewing the whole story backwards from old age: was it worth it: the sacrifice, the suffering, the disappointments. How would it all be seen after he was gone. Was he famous or just notorious?

Tracy wrote: "While I was in California I had taken a break from Finnegan's Wake (didn't bring it on the road) but, while I was at my daughter's she had a nice hardback copy of Joyce's bio, (the Richard Ellman) ..."

there's a joyce scholar by the name of john gordon, who teaches (or taught) at hampshire college in new england. he wrote a study that i enjoyed greatly that has a lot to do with citing the personal in joyce's life that figures in the narrative. lots of joyce scholars pooh pooh the idea of using autobiography as a way of entering the themes and such of the novel, but i thought gordon did a fine job - the points he makes in the book all made sense to me.

here's a goodreads link to the book:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

Phillip wrote: "Tracy wrote: "While I was in California I had taken a break from Finnegan's Wake (didn't bring it on the road) but, while I was at my daughter's she had a nice hardback copy of Joyce's bio, (the Ri..."

Thanks for the link!

certainly
:)

Phillip wrote: "Tracy wrote: "While I was in California I had taken a break from Finnegan's Wake (didn't bring it on the road) but, while I was at my daughter's she had a nice hardback copy of Joyce's bio, (the Ri..."

My experience in literature courses was generally a non-stop thrashing about between the "traditional" criticism, then the "formalist" criticism, then the "psychological" criticism, then the "archetypal" Jungian approach, then the "exponential" criticism, and then even some "sociological," "linguistic," and "Aristotelian" criticism. There was never any absolutely preposterous approach the reader could or should use, especially reading Joyce.

I regretted not looking more closely at the Aristotelian approach, because it is possible that Joyce, at least in Portrait and maybe FW, developed a neo-Aristotelian literature as an "imitation" (think Aristotle's "mimesis") of human experience.

any approach should facilitate a reading that reflects the reader. you bring what you bring, in terms of your understanding, your way of reading the world. one approach is never enough. joyce was certainly not aligning himself with any movement, so it seems ludicrous to assume that one approach is going to sum him up. whatever lens you enjoy viewing the world through works. we are kaleidoscopes of meaning, reading, viewing.

that said, you are not alone in finding aristotelian perspectives in PORTRAIT ...