Finnegans Wake Grappa discussion

Edmund L. Epstein edited the new edition of the Skeleton Key (2005/2013). He also has a readers' guide :: A Guide through Finnegans Wake.

In the Foreward he lists the few volumes dedicated to The Wake in its entirety, as the Key does. They be ::

Third Census of Finnegans Wake: An Index of the Characters and Their Roles

Understanding Finnegans Wake: A Guide To The Narrative Of James Joyce's Masterpiece

McCarthy's "The Structure and Meaning of Finnegans Wake" in A Companion to Joyce Studies

Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary (Irish Studies

Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce

These are not volumes which would replace the McHugh, but would function as organizing overviews as Blamires Bloomsday Guide functions for Ulysses.


If you are using and/or are familiar with any of these books, freely to create a thread in this folder. The rest of this thread for the Campbell Q&A's and discussions.

I have a first edition Campbell.
While it was extremely cool to open it and read the introduction "Five years ago James Joyce released for publication the great manuscript of Finnegans Wake..." and realize that like the wake the book I was holding was part of a 70 year history, I wonder if I should invest in a newer one.
Does anyone know what changes have been made? Is it worth buying a newer Campbell?

Harry wrote: "Does anyone know what changes have been made? Is it worth buying a newer Campbell?"

If you like Campbell and intend to read the Key again, I would recommend picking up the pb of the third edition -- hd of the third is 2005, with slight copy-editing clean-up for the pb of 2013.

The changes are slight, though. The editor, Epstein, corrects a few textual items here and there from the 1961 edition. But most significant are the occasional remarks which show who critical opinion on the Wake has changed a bit from Campbell's day. These are typically of the nature, "[[It is now generally considered that all of the footnotes are by Issy. --ELE]]" or "[[Mummum is also 'amen' to the evening prayer.--ELE]]" (pages 163 & 162.)

I've only worked my way through about 100 pages of FW, so I'm still really at sea, Wake-wise (in a good way), but having just read the introduction to the Skeleton Key, I feel sort of disappointed in some of the authors' comments, like:

"Stripping away its accidental features, the book may be said to be all compact of mutually supplementary antagonisms: male-and-female, age-and-youth, life-and-death, love-and-hate...Under the seeming aspect of diversity -- in the individual, the family, the state, the atom, or the cosmos -- these constants remain unchanged."

Don't get me wrong, I'm hugely impressed by how much clarity these authors were able to bring to FW in 1944, but the overall tone seems, I dunno, a little too...clean? Tame? Seems to me that, given his radical formal choices, the way Joyce says what he says is right up there in importance with what he says (a lot of which is about how to say, anyway.) Given that, I don't necessarily feel that constants trump variation or content trumps form as what FW is "really about."

As I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate secondary sources (and knowing that FW is just too big for any one,) I was wondering how you guys used this book? Do subsequent parts focus on the complex interplay between how and what Joyce says? Should I maybe not make hasty judgements based on like thirteen pages of an introduction?

Thank you so much for any input!

As I got further into the Wake I got further and further away from Campbell and more and more into McHugh's annotations, which clarify word construction and context but do minimal interpretation. I took Campbell's Key as one reading among a host of readings. The Annotations are a much better reading aid, IMO.

Thanks! I think I'll continue with the McHugh for my first pass and save the more subjective stuff for afterwards.

I found the McHugh very helpful in unlocking some of the thornier puzzles in FW, and the translations from foreign languages.
I have the first edition; I understand there is a third edition, IIRC. Is it worth picking up, or can I get along fine without it?

Steve wrote: "I have the first edition; I understand there is a third edition, IIRC. Is it worth picking up, or can I get along fine without it? ."

If it won't break the bank, I'd recommend it. Two specific additions I'm aware of ;; a) material from the Buffalo Notebooks which are still being edited (so one might reasonably expect a Fourth Edition McHugh some time in the future) and b) the textual emendations assembled by the Dutch translators and which are also included in the Oxford edition of FW.

Re : Cambell -- frankly, I found his book nearly useless. It's designed more as chapter synopsis than interpretation, ie, like the excellent The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses, but it ends up being almost less clear than the Wake itself. What is perhaps potentially more useful as a synopsis guide is the A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "Re : Cambell -- frankly, I found his book nearly useless. It's designed more as chapter synopsis than interpretation, ie, like the excellent The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses."

Good to know. I was hoping The Skeleton Key would be similar to the New Bloomsday Book, which I found useful. And the Campbell & Robinson synopses did help me with a couple of thorny bits during Book 1, Chapters 3 and 4, where I couldn't even make out surface actions. But, I agree that their language can be awkward, and their plot descriptions seem really focused through their particular unifying lens.

The First-Draft Version looks so cool. I'd definitely like to check that out!