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by James Joyce.<\/p>\nI can’t remember where I found this, I think it was on the auction block last year – Thornton Wilder’s personal copy of Finnegans Wake<\/i> – here is just one of the pages:<\/p>\n Joyce corresponded with Swiss writer Jacques Mercanton during the writing of the book and in one of his letters he says:<\/p>\n You are not Irish … and the meaning of some passages will perhaps escape you. But you are Catholic, so you will recognize this or that allusion. You don’t play cricket; this word may mean nothing to you. But you are a musician, so you will feel at ease in this passage. When my Irish friends come to visit me in Paris, it is not the philosophical subtleties of the book that amuse them, but my recollection of O’Connell’s top hat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Finnegans Wake<\/i> is definitely the most consciously crafted book of the 20th century. There are stories of final drafts being sent back to Joyce from the printer, and him huddling over them, marking them up. Someone asked him, “What are you doing??” Joyce answered, “Removing commas.”<\/p>\n The thing about a genius – like Van Gogh or Mozart – is that they must do what they must do. They must follow their genius – IT leads THEM. For the most part, it is not comprehensible to us mere mortals why they do what they must do. We reap the rewards in the results they come up with – although often we are still faced with incomprehension: like; WHY? Joyce himself said, mid-way through the writing of Finnegans Wake<\/i>, “I confess that it is an extremely tiresome book but it is the only book which I am able to write at present.” I am in awe of such certainty. Nora, his wife, looking at the gibberish pages, the ciphers, the codes, said, “Why don’t you write books people can read?”<\/p>\n Now this type of work may not seem to be for everybody – although Joyce felt it was his most accessible work. Of course the general public was better educated back then – and you could assume certain things about what people knew. People knew about Waterloo, people knew about Brutus and Caesar – etc. That’s not so much the case now. But still: Finnegans Wake<\/i> is actually a lot of fun, even though it’s a challenge. I read much of it out loud when I first read it – and that definitely helps. Again, nothing happens – although characters, of a sort, do emerge. Anna Livia Plurabelle, Earwicker – their sons. But the point is not literal. It is a dream-space, and Joyce was interested in re-creating a dream-space. Associations flowing, the mind let off the hook of consciousness. The characters do not remain static – they morph, transform, become animals, parabolae, rivers, whatever … like Ovid’s Metamorphosis<\/i>. Nothing is stuck<\/i>. Everything flows into everything else. A truly Joycean point of view.<\/p>\n The flipside to Nora’s humorous comment I mentioned earlier is that years later, after Joyce’s death, Nora was often interviewed about her famous husband, and all of the questions were usually about Ulysses<\/i>. Nora was not a big reader, she liked romance novels, basically – which is so perfect that she would be married to Jimmy. Not a literary woman, at all. But one of her comments in these interviews shows that there was a deeply insightful person in there – someone who knew her husband was up to something that nobody else was. She said, “What’s all this talk about Ulysses<\/em>? Finnegans Wake<\/em> is the important book.”<\/p>\n I think the rough Galway girl might be onto something.<\/p>\n![\"finnegans%20wake.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/finnegans%20wake.jpg\")
Joseph Campbell wrote, in regards to Finnegans Wake<\/i>, “If our society should go to smash tomorrow (which, as Joyce implies, it may) one could find all the pieces, together with the forces that broke them, in Finnegans Wake<\/em>.” James Joyce worked on this, his last book, for 17 years. For many years during that time it was just known as Work in Progress<\/i>. Because of the atomic bomb of Ulysses<\/i>, people were, naturally, anxious to the point of apoplexy to see what Joyce would come up with next. The book cannot be said to be written in English – not strictly – although it’s amazing how much sense it does make, if you surrender to it. The entire book is made up of puns, word association games, interweaving webs of connections – He said that since Ulysses<\/i>, except for that last episode, was a “daytime” book, this one was going to be “nocturnal”. It takes on the qualities of a dream. Where things can be nonsensical and yet logical at the same time. The entire thing is, apparently, a dream of our lead – if you can call him that – Earwicker. Joyce incorporated over 70 languages into the book – and, naturally, there are great “keys” out there, that track down all of Joyce’s influences. There are sections in Polynesian, Dutch, Lithuanian – and many many more. Joyce’s interest (obsession) in language was the main driving force here. I’m not sure that he felt this, specifically, but to me, one of the feelings I get from this extraordinary book (that starts mid-sentence, and also ends mid-sentence) is that we are all one. All languages come from the same pot. We all influence one another. There are no barriers. They may seem real (the barriers) … but if you poke holes in them, you’ll start to see the back and forth flow. This also goes along wtih the river imagery that makes up such a huge part of the book. The book is not strictly about anything – in the same way that you can’t really point to the “plot” of Ulysses<\/i>. Joyce was never into the usual structures. He wrote the book from 1922 to 1939 – a very rough patch in his life. His eyesight got worse, he had numerous operations – and there were times when he lost his sight completely. Hard to imagine. But I think it makes so much sense that his books, his mature books anyway – have so much to do with the SOUND of things, rather than the LOOK. Finnegans Wake<\/i> is musical. It’s actually a lot of fun, once you let go of your normal expectations. And that’s what Joyce requires. It’s like a big puzzle … you feel like a rock star when you understand a paragraph, and can recognize 2 or 3 of the references. There’s a little something for everyone here: ancient history, modern literature, psychoanalysis, Irish politics – it is truly a “catholic” book, in many respects.<\/p>\n![\"thorntonfinnegans2.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/thorntonfinnegans2.jpg\")
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