Our Finnegans Wake reading group has been meeting once a month for over six years, and we usually get through about three or four pages, reading the text out loud and then attempting to interpret it. In its various incarnations, the group has included linguists, classicists, literature profs, writers, musicians, lawyers, the curious, avid readers, and veteran Joyce readers among others.  In the hopes that it may be valuable not only for our collective memory, but also possibly for the wider community of Finnegans Wake readers,  we've decided to post our comments for each session, taken in very loose 'minutes' form, with a different member authoring the notes each month. This month's note-jotter is Kevin Spenst, founder of the group, who has taken down an impressionistic version of last session's Joycean unravellings. Members present included Kevin Spenst, Kim Koch, Ford Pier, Mark Trankner, Amy Logan, Rob Weber, and Robin Bajer. Kevin's notes follow:


 I typed as we read, taking down words that stood out as particularly feral. We read between pages 179 to 195. Here's what I took down:

after Ford’s suggestion to press on

Mark:

proto prostitute

murget

bethels 

stungmun

burst himself 

Arabijibbers

Nip up

Kim:

Kick 

Untelligence 

John fibs much

Bright b alliteration

Hisatencies

Uterim

Noggin among the blankards

Reared your disunited kingdom

Christ and

Souldom

away with covered words

self-raising syringe and twin feeders 

Morisity of my delications

Butlers

Popeyed world

Scriblative

Robin:

bolivars

oldest song in the wooed woodworld

Ford:

Carrion

Dynamitisation of colleagues

Rob:

Guinness is agulp

Amy:

poverty of mind

pawn a crown of thorns

pietre 

cross of your cruel fiction

twixt

cock cock crows

Mark:

weeps cataracts

famished hand

gainsay

Kim:

ankle gazer

wig in your ear

twitter

defecate you

cross may crush you

anchor through the ages

Robin:

Wasterbaskerville

obscene coal hole… bum

tidings

punchestine

mummy… 

as happy as the day is wet

There was an inordinate amount of talk of masturbation, but this section seems to be focused on Shem's childhood (mummy... and lots of baby talk) and his relationship to his mother. 

Mark points out the alchemical equation of shit becoming ink.

Kim states the iterative quality of language which Joyce is playing with. The idea of generative.

Kim asks: To what end?

 Amy: What does Joyce think of Shakespeare?

 Mark: In our world it would be easy enough to create a character who goes off into the wilderness of strangeness, but for Joyce it would have been more of a challenge.

 alphybetty formed…= language

 Amy: Virginia Woolf started Mrs Dalloway at the same time as Finnegans Wake

 Mark: Why does Shakespeare write so many plays?

We redeem our previous talk of masturbation by talking about different languages used in the Wake. Sixty different languages all told. 

http://kevinspenst.com
&https://twitter.com/twinnegganswake which the poetry foundation calls "pretty cool"

http://tinyurl.com/7k6vk6z