Wednesday, January 2, 2013


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
  

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