tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7701584474716370952024-03-01T03:25:13.628-08:00Vancouver Finnegans Wake Readersamy loganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16368302968505059662noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-770158447471637095.post-86602281008064420622013-11-13T11:48:00.000-08:002013-11-13T11:57:13.699-08:00<b>FWakup Minutes, Aug. 27, 2013, Robin’s </b>pp. 225 to 231 Members Present: Kim, Kevin, Ford, Robin * Prefix “gl” often assigns to light words * Fats Waller song references – he builds a wall – humpty dumpty again * Shem = Glugg * List of the books of Ulysses (229) * Penelope’s monologue referenced, ending in “Nej!” rather than “yes”. * Was the Liffy worth leaving? No, not worthy of leaving. Was life worth living? (230) * Tristen und Isolde (226) * Mathilde Wesendonck, Wagner’s friend and possible mistress (230) * Isa – Isolde – The Rainbow Girls (226). Dancing in a circle, revealing their future selves, and back again. * Glugg’s painful and humiliating experiences with women (227) – launches him into a violent rage – fossilized violence. Joyce is equating the Irish humiliation with the social humiliations of boys – leading to self-imposed exile and a recreation of his past from abroad. A Platonic ideal of life. (228) * MacFearsome – playmate (228), reference a fraudulent epic, references a new world, one that is rough, gritty, fraudulent, a fall from grace, a Paradise Lost. * S.P.Q.Rish – Speaks Irish (229), translated Italian, the imperial standard of Rome. * Q. When is a hovel not a hovel? A. When it is a home. (231) * Remember the pain that ushers in a creative process. <br />
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amy loganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16368302968505059662noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-770158447471637095.post-74252442797077196752013-04-24T22:45:00.001-07:002013-04-24T22:52:51.753-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The latest update from Finnegans Wake Readers, Vancouver. Last month's minutes by Robin Bajer.<br />
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<b>Minutes <br />of the
April 3, 2013 Meeting of the Finnegans Wake Group</b></div>
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Location: Jess’ place <br />
Handouts:
Proto frisk language tree (double-sided) (Ford)<br />
Agenda: FW
209–216<br />
A Very Incomplete Summary Of Discussion: The horizon
itself is talking (Kim); Genesis, Eve and the Fall (Kevin); much
slanging, chewing, eyeing, feeding, lolling and leasing, utilizing
all the senses (Kevin); as the Liffy widens, the two shores cannot
communicate as easily as before(Ford) “<i>Between our two
southsates and the granite they’re warming, or her face has been
lifted or Alp has doped”</i>; goodbye to the world of myth and
forms, this is the present (Ford) <i>“Anna was, Livia is,
Plurabelle’s to be.”</i>; endless washing jokes lost on the
reader, airing their tales on rocks to dry (Ford); pages of gift
giving, Santa Clause like, <i>“with a Christmas box apiece for
aisch and iveryone of her childer, the birthday gifts they dreamt
they gabe her”</i>, gifts like river sediment, tributes like a
tributary, <i>“for sore aringarung, stinkers and heelers, laggards
and primelads, her furzeborn sons and dribblederry daughters, a
thousand and one of them, and wickerpotluck for each of them”</i>,
some sad, like the <i>“cough and a rattle and wildrose cheeks for
poor Piccoline Petite MacFarlane”</i> (Jess), for several, <i>“a
moonflower and a bloodvein: but the grapes that ripe before reason to
them that divide the vinedress”</i> first menstruation (Ford), <i>“All
that and more under one crinoline envelope if you dare to break the
porkbarrel seal”</i> (Marilou); even the sword and stamps as gifts
for our friends Shemus O’Shaun the Post; drinking <i>“Yuinness or
Yennessy”, “Laagen or Niger”, “diliskydrear”</i> and <i>“vilde
vetchvine</i>”, <i>“she pattered and swung and sidled”</i> did
the river on a drunkards walk (Robin); <i>“out of the paunschaup on
to the pyre”</i>; who is Frisky Shorty and Treacle Tom?; moving on
to a discussion of <i>“Sanscreed”</i> (Sanskrit), <i>“mixed
baggyrhatty”</i>, referencing Ford’s proto frisk language tree,
copies for all like Christmas gifts, FW regularly succeeds in
predicting the future (Ford); the river gives and takes, like gifts
to past (lovers?) (Marilou); Sault St. Marie, more Canadian content
(Ford); <i>“0’Delawarr Rossa”, “Susquehanna”,
“Chattahoochee”</i>, more US content (Kim); the defying acts of
river crossings (Kim); two tiny dots over the “i” in <i>“deltoid”</i>
are absent from the Oxford edition (Jess); lists of names of gift
recipients, ballad mongers all (Kim); circling back again to
<i>“stinkers, heelers, laggards, primelads, dribblederry,
aringarung”</i>, ah ha, Joyce is talking about dirty undergarments
(Ford), <i>“Wring out the clothes!”</i>; wherefore the pun?
Arises as multiple languages overlap (Kevin); Joyce’s head the
Elizabethan Globe (Kevin); frugal use of simile (Kevin); <i>“Can’t
hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of”</i>, lots of
interrupted sentences (Kevin), thanks to <i>“Flittering bats,
fieldmice bawk talk.”</i> (Ford);<i> “What age is at? It saon is
late”</i><br />
Other Business: Oyster farming, the “Soo”, double
morningstars <br />
Business Arising: “a C3 peduncle” (p.
211)?<br />
Motions and resolutions: <i>“I could listen to maure and
moravar again”</i><br />
Next Meeting: soon, (Kim’s?)<br />
Meeting
adjourned: “<i>Night night! ... Night!”</i> <br />
e&oe
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amy loganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16368302968505059662noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-770158447471637095.post-32983290082723454012013-02-05T13:30:00.001-08:002013-02-05T13:30:18.489-08:00Notes from The Wake, pp.196-201<br />
This month we have notes first from <strong>Kim Koch</strong> --long time group member, linguist, archivist, and musician (among her many areas of expertise), and then from <strong>Kevin Spenst</strong>, group founder, poet, and teacher (among his many attributes). Members present included Kevin Spenst, Kim Koch, Mark Trankner, Amy Logan, and Robin Bajer. <br />
<br />
<strong>Kim's notes follow:</strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong><br /></strong>
“Anna Livia Plurabelle”<br />
<br />
- A LITERAL stream of consciousness.<br />
<br />
- Some discussion of the origins of the concept/metaphor of stream of consciousness; would Joyce have been aware of it, and thus making express reference to it? Answer: probably. Coined by William James in the nineteenth century. Edouard Dujardin also informed the idea.<br />
<br />
- The paradox of stream of consciousness: lack of deixis limits our knowledge of a character; yet we know everything that passes through their mind.<br />
<br />
-Washerwomen’s narration of HCE and ALP as they launder clothes in the river; narrative washing through them. <br />
<br />
- p. 196: “…steeping and stuping since this time last wik”. Etymology of wik discussed (as of course its modern connotation of wiki-). Likely Joyce chose it for same reason computer technologists chose it: Hawaiian morpheme meaning “quick”. (Though Joyce had the double fortune its homophonousness with “week”. <br />
<br />
- River names run through it: Dniepers, Ganges, Loch, Sendai, Loo, etc.<br />
<br />
- Canadian content: Pemmican’s pasty pie (197) and Shoubenaccadie (200)<br />
<br />
- Eld Duke Alien = Old Ducalian Gilgamesh myth<br />
<br />
- ALP blamed for her rape by HCE<br />
<br />
- Aeneas and Dido “all was dodo” invoked.<br />
<br />
- Miscegenation of language, p.199: The hen crows on the Turrace of Babbel, cockles her mouth: assumption of alien words/grammars.<br />
<br />
- We encountered some Swahili: Wendawanda, a fingerthick.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Kevin's notes follow:</strong><br />
<br />
Anna Livia Plurabelle (January 2, 2013)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Robyn: A happy isthmus against bunglers. With the glean of him. The quaggy wag who sold you the pelican’s tale. ‘Til he spied the grand pigeon house. Where was the wash? He rode. When they saw him shoot our staley bread. <br />
<br />
<br />
Amy: It is just the same if I were to go? Is that what she is? <br />
<br />
<br />
Kim: Pretending to bow abandon. An odd time she’d cook up wishy-washy. As much as to say, she was safe enough. <br />
<br />
<br />
Mark: Is that a faith? Nith. Tell me. <br />
<br />
<br />
William James: I coined the term stream-of-consciousness in 1890.<br />
<br />
<br />
Saint Augustine: I wrote from the point of view of the self. <br />
<br />
<br />
Everyone: The old cheb went fut and did what you know! <br />
<br />
<br />
Kevin: We need an actor to show us swank, stutter, drawl and blather.<br />
<br />
<br />
Mark: Lictors are probably at the beginning of their careers. They make part of the king’s entourage.<br />
<br />
<br />
Amy: Saft is a Danish word for juice.<br />
<br />
<br />
Mark: The story of Dido and Aeneas is central to this passage. <br />
<br />
<br />
Amy: Eyge is a conflation of egg and eye. A kind of all-seeing egg. <br />
<br />
<br />
Narrator: And at 9:52, they all went fut at the top of 201. <br />
<br />
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<br />
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<strong></strong>amy loganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16368302968505059662noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-770158447471637095.post-63016599668508292512013-01-02T02:31:00.002-08:002013-01-02T02:31:40.775-08:00
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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:<br /><br /><br /> 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:</div>
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<div>
after Ford’s suggestion to press on</div>
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<b>Mark</b>:</div>
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proto prostitute </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
murget </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
bethels </div>
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stungmun</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
burst himself </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Arabijibbers</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Nip up</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<b>Kim</b>:</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Kick </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Untelligence </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
John fibs much</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Bright b alliteration </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Hisatencies</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Uterim</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Noggin among the blankards</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Reared your disunited kingdom</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Christ and </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Souldom</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
away with covered words</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
self-raising syringe and twin feeders </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Morisity of my delications </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Butlers</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Popeyed world </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Scriblative </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<b>Robin</b>:</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
bolivars</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
oldest song in the wooed woodworld</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Ford:</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Carrion </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Dynamitisation of colleagues </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<b>Rob</b>:</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Guinness is agulp</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<b>Amy</b>:</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
poverty of mind</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
pawn a crown of thorns</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
pietre </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
cross of your cruel fiction</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
twixt</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
cock cock crows </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<b>Mark</b>:</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
weeps cataracts </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
famished hand</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
gainsay </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<b>Kim</b>:</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
ankle gazer </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
wig in your ear</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
twitter</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
defecate you</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
cross may crush you</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
anchor through the ages</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<b>Robin</b>:</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Wasterbaskerville</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
obscene coal hole… bum</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
tidings </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
punchestine </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
mummy… </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
as happy as the day is wet</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div>
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. </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Mark points out the alchemical equation of shit becoming
ink.</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Kim states the iterative quality of language which Joyce is
playing with. The idea of generative. </div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Kim asks: To what end?</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Amy: What does Joyce think of Shakespeare?</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
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.</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
alphybetty formed…= language</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Amy: Virginia Woolf started Mrs Dalloway at the same time as
Finnegans Wake</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
Mark: Why does Shakespeare write so many plays?</div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
We
redeem our previous talk of masturbation by talking about different
languages used in the Wake. Sixty different languages all told. </div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://kevinspenst.com/" target="_blank">http://kevinspenst.com</a><br />&https://twitter.com/twinnegganswake which the poetry foundation calls "pretty cool"<br /><div>
<div>
http://tinyurl.com/7k6vk6z<br /> </div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
amy loganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16368302968505059662noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-770158447471637095.post-55939599513422037292009-11-25T12:13:00.000-08:002009-11-25T12:20:55.700-08:00Three Quarks for Muster Mark<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxKzTbGMBkFzHG-o5ikvo71rxHPr4yW7RxpIMSDaBRfNkNlXEDjIN9rpJd9BjVu3ZmSDfyypVzqaxPF6jBPz6CDyEpwOkyeD-V07FyQ0uDHQPBgqyPRc_YBi5ocVIQXH25zQghWAoJeE7j/s1600/Quark_structure_proton_svg.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxKzTbGMBkFzHG-o5ikvo71rxHPr4yW7RxpIMSDaBRfNkNlXEDjIN9rpJd9BjVu3ZmSDfyypVzqaxPF6jBPz6CDyEpwOkyeD-V07FyQ0uDHQPBgqyPRc_YBi5ocVIQXH25zQghWAoJeE7j/s320/Quark_structure_proton_svg.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408137193681774930" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Finnegans Wake </span>has long been a source of inspiration for creative minds, but a recent discovery (recent for me) that the word <span style="font-style:italic;">quark</span> originated in Joyce's work came as a surprise. Murray Gell-Man, one of the two independent physicists who proposed the theory of quarks, was actually inspired by a passage from the Wake. Although Gell-Man first thought of the term as the sound made by ducks, he couldn't decide on the exact spelling. However, in 1963, he was flipping through <span style="font-weight:bold;">Finnegan's Wake <span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span>(apparently he often did this, suggesting a scientific mind appropriately attuned to the nonsense of the universe; no wonder he thought up quarks), when he came across the word quark on page 383. "Three quarks for Muster Mark!/Sure has not got much of a bark/And sure any he has it's all beside the mark" read the passage, enigmatically. Although, as Gell-Man points out in his book <span style="font-weight:bold;">The<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> <span style="font-weight:bold;">Quark </span><span style="font-weight:bold;">and the Jaguar<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">quark</span> was obviously meant to rhyme with <span style="font-style:italic;">Mark</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">bark</span>, he decided to pronounce it <span style="font-style:italic;">kwork</span>. He was drawn to the idea that most words in the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Wake<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> have multiple meanings and sources. Another draw? Quarks appear in threes in nature as well. The website Indopedia suggests that this source for quark is "less than illuminating", but as usual, that's what makes <span style="font-weight:bold;">Finnegans Wake<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> both fascinating and frustrating. Today the word quark includes the following meanings: fresh unripened cheese; a punk song by Die Artze, a microkernel operating system, an American sci fi sitcom from the '70s, an American '70's science magazine, and perhaps most improbably, a last constituent of matter. For instance, protons are made of three quarks. Some of the varieties of quarks include <span style="font-style:italic;">up</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">down</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">charm</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">strange</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">top </span>and <span style="font-style:italic;">bottom</span>. James Joyce would surely approve.<span style="font-weight:bold;"></span>amy loganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16368302968505059662noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-770158447471637095.post-56293078466767439572009-11-08T21:44:00.000-08:002009-11-09T00:11:47.132-08:00An Adaptation of Page 439<span style="font-weight:bold;"></span>Finnegans Wake seems to inspire intriguing artistic creations. One of my recent favourites, which we played at our last meeting, is a reading/video montage that channels a lot of the surreal imagery of the novel, adding several contemporary pop culture twists. As usual, one page of Joycean text yields an insane number of ideas. The video is described as " a visual adaptation of page 439 of Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Created in one week, as challenged, with the collaboration of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ronen V." Directed by Rian Johnson as a collaboration with Ronen V., the work features the fabulous Joseph Gordon-Levitt narrating beautifully. Just one more example of why the text should be read aloud. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">http://vimeo.com/groups/388/videos/5575022</span><object width="400" height="225"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5575022&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1&group_id=" /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5575022&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1&group_id=" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="225"></embed></object><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/groups/388/videos/5575022">Page 439</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/rcjohnso">rcjohnso</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p><br />http://ts.vimeo.com.s3.amazonaws.com/187/671/18767149_200.jpgamy loganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16368302968505059662noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-770158447471637095.post-8591139611302276152009-10-22T00:37:00.000-07:002009-10-25T22:24:55.362-07:00A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake: Introduction to a Strange Subject<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXaA47qEtJ1PcmdpxAAJv_1mGyFZ_MhJB_cMTfdk2AvIGf3a0hISNaP7W0nAESX_BiXfE1O_boZVIvWGE7wdD27T0NNHfPY7fdlijK1aJePUFUS0ifekO9Cxg7YeuMu674gkPXd9zl-scw/s1600-h/010.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXaA47qEtJ1PcmdpxAAJv_1mGyFZ_MhJB_cMTfdk2AvIGf3a0hISNaP7W0nAESX_BiXfE1O_boZVIvWGE7wdD27T0NNHfPY7fdlijK1aJePUFUS0ifekO9Cxg7YeuMu674gkPXd9zl-scw/s320/010.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5396774691919057234" /></a><br />" <i>... the ultimate state of the intelligent reader is certainly not bewilderment. Rather, it is admiration for the unifying insight, economy of means , and more-than-Rabelaisian humour which have miraculously quickened the stupendous mass of material..."</i><div><br /></div><div>Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson's <i>A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake</i> is a revelation. As Edmund Wilson wrote in <i>The New Yorker, </i>the book gives readers a chance to explore the novel, one of the "few great intellectual and aesthetic treats that these last bad years have offered"; the praise holds true today. Although we have a copy floating around at our Finnegan's Wake reading sessions, it's great to have one to pour over at home (thanks Kim!). In its aptly titled "Introduction to a Strange Subject", the authors admit that "the vast scope and intricate structure of <i>Finnegan's Wake </i>give the book a forbidding aspect of impenetrability". An understatement to be sure, but it's somehow reassuring to realize that it has always been dense and somehow walled by its depth of knowledge, a "baffling jungle, trackless and overgrown with wanton perversities in form and language."<div><br /></div><div>The authors' assertions that "complete understanding is not to be snatched at greedily in one session; indeed, it may never come" bodes well for our group, since we are moving at a rate of just over 3 pages a month, and often feel no closer to understanding anything than when we began. <i>A Skeleton Key</i>, in so much as it is possible, seeks to clarify, decode and generally open up all levels of the novel's meaning. </div></div>amy loganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16368302968505059662noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-770158447471637095.post-87727312681172320562009-08-07T14:28:00.000-07:002009-08-07T14:37:32.644-07:00A 1939 Review of Finnegan's Wake<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7_7DEO2_qaRlaE67JS6YUAWwGlPVvUyzI-po793Ka8OEJJTd_H5ogVugMMR-HESu1km0GtbafdxPIaYtWaMpAEwc76VOoZEHbA1W4TLtPah70xad1uFRCCLcTXSo1baJ1s_Ai5w1eJ3xD/s1600-h/james+joyce+notebook.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367339100030841218" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7_7DEO2_qaRlaE67JS6YUAWwGlPVvUyzI-po793Ka8OEJJTd_H5ogVugMMR-HESu1km0GtbafdxPIaYtWaMpAEwc76VOoZEHbA1W4TLtPah70xad1uFRCCLcTXSo1baJ1s_Ai5w1eJ3xD/s320/james+joyce+notebook.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><em>The following review appeared in the Guardian newspaper in 1939, one of the first 'reviews' of Finnegans Wake. The author felt incapable of "appraising it" at the time, suggesting he needed at least 20 years of intense study to comprehend it fully. This suggests just how difficult a text it continues to be.</em><br /><strong><em></em></strong><br /><strong>The shock of the new<br />Finnegans Wake by James Joyce - in lieu of review, the Guardian, May 12 1939</strong><br /><br />Mr Joyce's Finnegans Wake, parts of which have been published as "Work in Progress", does not admit of review. In 20 years' time, with sufficient study and with the aid of the commentary that will doubtless arise, one might be ready for an attempt to appraise it.<br /><br />The work is not written in English, or in any other language, as language is commonly known. I can detect words made up out of some eight or nine languages, but this must be only a part of the equipment employed. This polyglot element is only a minor difficulty, for Mr Joyce is using language in a new way.<br /><br />A random example will illustrate: "Margaritomancy! Hyacinthous pervinciveness! Flowers. A cloud. But Bruto and Cassio are ware only of trifid tongues the whispered wilfulness ('tis demonal!) and shadows shadows multiplicating (il folsoletto nel falsoletto col fazzolotto dal fuzzolezzo), totients quotients, they tackle their quarrel."<br /><br />The easiest way to deal with the book would be to become "clever" and satirical or to write off Mr Joyce's latest volume as the work of a charlatan. But the author is obviously not a charlatan, but an artist of very considerable proportions. I prefer to suspend judgment. If I had had to review Blake's Prophetic Books when they first appeared I would have been forced to a similar decision.<br /><br />What Mr Joyce is attempting, I imagine, is to employ language as a new medium, breaking down all grammatical usages, all time space values, all ordinary conceptions of context. Compared with this, Ulysses is a first-form primer. In this volume the theme is the language and the language the theme, and a language where every association of sound and free association is exploited. In one of the more lucid passages Mr Joyce appears to be discussing language: "has any usual sort of ornery josser, flat-chested, fortyish, faintly flatulent and given to ratiocination... ever looked sufficiently longly at a quite everyday looking stamped addressed envelope?"<br /><br />What, it may be asked, is the book about? That, I imagine, is a question which Mr Joyce would not admit. This book is nothing apart from its form, and one might as easily describe in words the theme of a Beethoven symphony.<br /><br />The clearest object in time in the book is the Liffey, Anna Livia, Dublin's legendary stream, and the most continuous character is HC Earwicker, "Here Comes Everybody": the Liffey as the moment in time and space, and everything, everybody, all time as the terms of reference, back to Adam or Humpty Dumpty, but never away from Dublin.<br /><br />This seems the suggestion of the musical half-sentence with which the work begins: "River run, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."<br /><br />Who, it may be asked, was Finnegan? Again, I should have been unable to tell, unaided, from Mr Joyce's book. But I gather that there is an Irish story of a contractor who fell and was stretched out for dead. When his friends toasted him he rose at the word "whiskey" and drank with them. In a book where all is considered, this legend, too, has its relevance.<br /><br />One concluding note. Mr Joyce in a parody of Jung and Freud ("Tung-Toyd") mentioned "Schizo-phrenia". One might imagine that Mr Joyce had used his great powers deliberately to show the language of a schizophrenic mind. He alone could explain his book and, I suppose, he alone review it.<br />·</div>amy loganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16368302968505059662noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-770158447471637095.post-75510988970595082192009-08-03T11:49:00.000-07:002009-08-03T16:44:14.630-07:00Finnegans Wake on Film<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxy9Q9qmTwoIIvLft4ojukO-DZHeqpL3GWq4FsTcB-8hdsO242j_jbKd03sfuVg5VcOyLeg5N8eZP7vi8crrMy6xtCw_ElfzqaGz-2ggUSWl_n_SPzYo4ZOK8alNmCM5wnAOOC7FZCJpZ7/s1600-h/f.w.+film.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365819165146085266" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 221px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxy9Q9qmTwoIIvLft4ojukO-DZHeqpL3GWq4FsTcB-8hdsO242j_jbKd03sfuVg5VcOyLeg5N8eZP7vi8crrMy6xtCw_ElfzqaGz-2ggUSWl_n_SPzYo4ZOK8alNmCM5wnAOOC7FZCJpZ7/s320/f.w.+film.png" border="0" /></a><br /><div><strong>Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake</strong></div><br /><div>Check out the film here:</div><br /><div><a href="http://www.ubu.com/film/joyce_wake.html">http://www.ubu.com/film/joyce_wake.html</a></div><br /><div></div><br /><div>This 1965 film by Mary Ellen Bute pulses with surrealistic imagery and selected passages from Joyce's text. This was the first attempt to cinematize Finnegans Wake, and was loosely based on a stage version. Bute was considered a pioneer in the field of abstract and animated film. In this adaptation, a television reporter becomes the narrator, and images of nuclear explosions and cavemen are intercut with the wake itself. We discovered it on UbuWeb and projected it on a wall before one of our readings. Often hilarious, it actually brought the words to life in sometimes ingenious ways. To even attempt to make visual sense of Finnegans Wake, Mary Bute should be commended. As a compendium to an oral recitation, the film provides an interesting angle.</div>amy loganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16368302968505059662noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-770158447471637095.post-7108023352267982092009-08-02T12:42:00.000-07:002009-08-02T14:12:29.692-07:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaQqCdQ8eagd6OSWxScmK9KJRk6iZf0xLGpNAE6BevdPbueBWb9gZRAGJ09o85XcZt10ThSwUNztNCq0zY3hyF2E8yHyiq5-CoF7CGcPxID2waLHn21bmElva2_Uxpcpy_MnJNrmHTQN61/s1600-h/map+finn%27s+wake.bmp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365454360386110210" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 247px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaQqCdQ8eagd6OSWxScmK9KJRk6iZf0xLGpNAE6BevdPbueBWb9gZRAGJ09o85XcZt10ThSwUNztNCq0zY3hyF2E8yHyiq5-CoF7CGcPxID2waLHn21bmElva2_Uxpcpy_MnJNrmHTQN61/s320/map+finn%27s+wake.bmp" border="0" /></a><br /><div>This diagram is found in Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's book "Vision in Motion", though was not actually sketched by him. It offers a visual representation of the various levels and cycles present in <em>Finnegans Wake</em>. Since the novel is so complex and multi-layered, the diagram clarifies some of what Joyce is exploring. It shows just how vast and ambitious the book is, allowing a reader to trace the patterns.</div>amy loganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16368302968505059662noreply@blogger.com0