Finnegans Wake Grappa discussion

Burgess's book is one of what I think of as the first generation of Wake scholarship. The second begins some time in the '70's with the publication of the Wake Notebooks. Campbell and Tindall and Schmidt are also here in the early days. I feel this first generation to be rather a little bit claustrophobic, having had about enough Campbell for a while.

At any rate, there is a Burgess essay online, "Finnegans Wake: What It's All About" by Burgess. I don't believe it is part of his Re Joyce book. I may be reading it.

http://www.metaportal.com.br/jjoyce/b...

I enjoyed this, although I did not read the part on FW... for whenever I tackle the novel.

I should look at the Burgess book and compare with your article, Nathan.

Kalliope wrote: "I enjoyed this, although I did not read the part on FW... for whenever I tackle the novel."

Oh I think both pieces will do very well as a nice little Finnegans hors-d'oeuvre!

Re Joyce is superb- I found it very informative and engaging- it was obvious that Burgess was a real Joycean, whose own writing has been strongly influenced by Our Hero. Thanks for sharing the link to this article on F.W., Nathan-really interesting stuff!

Just re-picked-up the Burgess book, for I had not read his discussion of FW. The second chapter devoted to the subject, titled, Bygmester Finnegan begins like this:

"A large number of literate, including critics and literary historians, insist on punctuating Joyce's title for him, believing that--through inadvertency or ignorance--he left out an apostrophe in Finnegans. Their pedantry destroys a pregnant ambiguity. Finnegans Wake fuses two opposed notions--the wake, or funeral feast, of Finnegan; (and) the waking up of all Finnegans." (194)

I disagree with two points here. A minor one is that Finnegans Wake does get it's apostrophe, finally, on page 607. In a lovely provocative sentence:

"It is their segnal for old Champelysied to seek the shades of his retirement and for young Chappielassies to tear around and tease their partners lovesoftfun at Finnegan's Wake."

But my major concern is not with the missing apostrophe. It is, rather, what I consider a poor reading of the word wake. There are two equally applicable definitions, besides "funeral party" and "returning from sleep", that seem to get very little play in Joyce scholarship. One is the middle-ages use of the word to describe a parish fair. The other, and much more obvious, is the phenomena of water being temporarily parted by some object, either moving or standing in it.

Using these ideas the title could be read as the ripples the Great Finn created in the space/time continuum while he was amongst us; and it could also imply a great yearly festival celebrating the memory of a great man, a sort of Saturnalia, where traditional sexual customs and taboos were temporarily suspended, hoping some how that some unforeseen union might begin the journey of a new Finn, again.
Just thinking out loud.

Mark wrote: "One is the middle-ages use of the word to describe a parish fair. The other, and much more obvious, is the phenomena of water being temporarily parted by some object, either moving or standing in it."

The second one there is the feature of the title In The Wake Of The Wake and I find it a delicious play (o' words) and try occasionally to keep alive. The first there (I'm not familiar with but) puts it centrally within that luscious Rabelaisian tradition.

Thank you, Nathan. I recognize David Hayman, but am not familiar with this particular book.

I have had many of these I figured something out thoughts while reading FW. It started when I realized that Eve and Adams could be even atoms meaning the river was flowing past the smallest of things or that the church was named backwards because the river is flowing in the reverse order that the Liffey actually flows.
I once figured out this whole thing about George Bernard Shaw in chapter 3.
So far, I have never found anything that I later didn't find in a book or article about FW.
The frustrating thing is that I am sure there is so much more to find than has already been discovered.