Finnegans Wake Grappa discussion

How to read? the peri annual question. Tells us how you are reading. Tell us how you are doing. Tell us, oh tell us please!

Long of the short of it :: I, "N.R.", am reading and reading in paragraph blocks, four times minim, with the key=code from McHugh and the long&short of Campbell. Not bad, not bad.

Sofa - page or so once in free swim, second time sentence by sentence with my Own Poor Brain picking open and annotating, then once more with secondary sources to assist. Pencil marking the pages as I go.

My plan is, on finishing, to then lie with a bottle of Whisky and listen to the audiobook with eyes closed and let it wash over me, with all the layers I have absorbed rippling underneath it all.

Have got hold of a few of the more general secondary texts and will read those as the mood takes me.

So far I am only about 5 pages in, but already gaining in confidence, and really really enjoying it.

Paragraph by paragraph with McHugh, then repeating. Often consulting Campbell (now that I have Campbell) but not too dedicated to the Skeleton Key. Revisiting passages from the past often enough. Burgess had some lovely thoughts, but of course they are only Burgess's thoughts. I find once you get the basic repetitions and themes down, and the idea of the morphing and masking of the essential 5 characters, things flow more smoothly. A reader begins to look for signposts and repetitions to see the kinds of geographic locations (edit- I mean which character you are with) within the text you are entering/emerging from. But remember above all that this is a piece of prose music, so it has to be heard.

I'm reading it with the audio, which I slowed down. Then I'll read it again with the annotations. The McHugh annotations is difficult to read and not as enjoyable as Finnegan's.

Osmosis.

I don't go looking for meaning. It finds me or it doesn't. Too impatiens for annotatiens.

Then we have an overstanding, dear Scribble.

I shall be taking the lift, as in copypaste, of other member's obpinionservations, here, then, with a kwik reword, passingemoff az: My Own, to provide the e-lusion of reading.

How am I?

My basic unit is the paragraph which seems to work fairly well, being typically a coherency itself and perhaps one of Joyce's primary working units.

1) I read five to ten pages untether'd and virgin. That's about my mental=exhaustion limit. Typically find myself quite whirl-wind-reap'd by that point.

2) I may have reread the prior paragraph or two or three prior to (1) ; just to revisit and refresh since my Wake Reading has been sporadic lately.

3) Return to read the first paragraph of that 5-10 virgin reading.

4) Third time through the paragraph I read the McHugh, almost to the obsessive point of using the Wake=text to decipher the Annatations.

5) Fourth time, post=annatations I read and recall and under stand what I can.

6) (5) usually leaves me unsatisfied and I should include a regular fifth reading-pass which would include multiple paragraph blocks in order to glean a larger arc.

7) The Campbell I read alternately prior to (1) and/or post (5). From Campbell I gain the regular readerly things like narrative arc, time/place/setting/characters/themes/etc.

8) Wonderful!

9) Rinse and repeat.

10) I average a rate of about a page every 40-60 minutes. I've been reading since June 2012 and am 50% geWaklt.

Nathan "N.R." 7) The Campbell I read alternately prior to (1) and/or post (5). From Campbell I gain the regular readerly things like narrative arc, time/place/setting/characters/themes/etc."

I'm compiling a nice collection of Finnegan/Joyce related books that I'd like to read this year. Love literary criticism. That's fun for me. Maybe it's because I never had to read them for school.

My Joyce shelf.

WOW ALOHA. That shelf is not only phat but expen$ive. As I cannot afford a shelf like that, kindly package up those tomes carefully and message me for my mailing address.

Thatdbegreatthanks.

So I've been home sick a bit and had time to waste in illness and I've gone back and reread some of the earlier sections of the Wake without annotations or reference, specifically like pages in the mid-20's through like the mid-50's (page number-wise) and I'm surprised how much sense they're making. "Sense" of course here is relative, but how situated I am in them, how much they seem to be yielding narrative and a meaning now that I am more accustomed to what is happening in the Wake as a total thing. So I guess the lesson is read and read and read again and revisit what you thought you've read. The chapter about the naming and accusation of HCE is almost clear reading this time around.

Eyeyam CurRendLee Re-DING! a'lika 'dis

https://www.goodreads.com/photo/user/...

@Jonathan: Is that WOOD with no COASTER? Hope that Guinness has warmness.

Gregsamsa wrote: "@Jonathan: Is that WOOD with no COASTER? Hope that Guinness has warmness."

That's how I roll baby.

Besides, my son has successfully done so much damage to that table over the last couple of years we no longer bother with exotic lah-di-dah items such as Co-Stirs.

*snicker*

I was just trying to be a stereotype.

Btw, after taking in my wildly autistic nephew, you wouldn't BLEEEV what depth with which I understand your table situation.

Y'know what, I think I'll sit'im down and try a Wakean storytime next time. Perhaps it might penetrate. Will report later.

I have managed to accumulate a good size Finnegans Library.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

I basically read a page a day and look up whatever strikes me as interesting.
I also have a book on the Scandinavian Elements of Finnegans Wake but Goodreads seems to think it doesn't exist so I couldn't add it to the library.

Harry wrote: "I also have a book on the Scandinavian Elements of Finnegans Wake but Goodreads seems to think it doesn't exist so I couldn't add it to the library"

Isbn? Or link to its amazon page? I can add it in here. There's really no avoiding Scandinavia in The Wake.

It is odd but the book seems elusive when searching for it on most sites and trying to track down its ISBN. Amazon has a couples copies cheap though.

http://www.amazon.com/Scandinavian-el...

Harry wrote: "It is odd but the book seems elusive when searching for it on most sites and trying to track down its ISBN. Amazon has a couples copies cheap though.."

Entered in the gr db. It was familiar to me from McHugh's bibliography. Scandinavian Elements of Finnegans Wake

In The Sigla of Finnegans Wake, McHugh quotes Clive Hart's Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake

"Around a central section, Book II, Joyce builds two opposing cycles consisting of Books I and III." SMFW 66-67

McHugh takes this concept further and stresses that

"the greatest priority for the beginner is to acquire enough familiarity with Finnegans Wake to see the simple equilibrium of two symmetrical half-arches supporting a keystone of greater complexity." SFW 6

He then goes on to give examples including how Shem's biography (I.7) balances Shaun's (III.I).

I am intrigued by this concept and it has definitely affected my approach to reading the wake.

So I'm reading this thing again. This time in a Red Cloth Seventh Printing, the old fashion kind which still lists The Author's corrections in the back. Mostly for nostalgic reasons was this old clunker chosen.

At the moment, I'm situated to begin The Third Chapter of the First Book. I'm reading straight through for the most part ; reading it all twice, either the entire chapter or significant chunks of pages at a time. This is a nice kind of thing to do what that I didn't do the first time I read through this thing (and that time I read each paragraph (at least) four times each at a time). So I'm reading larger units than I had first dime turch. Also, for secondary and tertiary matters I've limited myself most=part to the outline found in the beginning of the recently published Oxford edition (which is the truly correct edition to read in this day and age ; unless you wanna, you know, take your chance and do the romance with that Restored Wake). Let's call this reading, My Second Naïveté.

So in reality it's all a Ragna=Wrawkus! Good Time!

(I'm also reading The Book of the Dark from Bishop, but it's not a reading guide at all ; but it's a very enjoyable and convincing interpretation of what the book is, what it says, and how it all works ;; rrreally quite fantastic to be having Bishop's thinking in my head as a I tread through this Wake of the Ages.)

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "(I'm also reading The Book of the Dark from Bishop, but it's not a reading guide at all ; but it's a very enjoyable and convincing interpretation of what the book is, what it says, and how it all works..."

Yes, right, the Bishop thing is the best thing I've read about the Wake.

Oh right and I forgot that I've got this neat little thing A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake by David Hayman which is pretty cool to read in it its chapters after reading in The Wake its chapters to see that early stage of the development of the Head lying under Howth of the Hillpeople.

btw, this First Draft thing from Hayman is an altogether different kind of thing than that etext edition Jonathan posted recently -- that one includes all the published bits and pieces of Work-in-Progress. This Hayman thing is from the manuscripts, with a thing that indicates a number of levels of changes and additions and substitutions and things of this nature.

Reporting back: autistic nephew not a fan of Joyce. On a whim tried something else. Proof that God hates me: he demands more Gertrude Stein. I'm too tired to really impress upon you the hurricane hidden by the word DEMANDS.

Gregsamsa wrote: "..he demands more Gertrude Stein. I'm too tired to really impress upon you the hurricane hidden by the word DEMANDS."

Alas, you have no joyce..

Gregsamsa wrote: "Reporting back: autistic nephew not a fan of Joyce. "

oh nononono no Joyce for the autistic nephew. Joyce=Wake is for sleeping Finn MacNephew.

Ali wrote: "The Hayman book can be viewed legally and in its entirety here."

Yes!

While I began Waking circa 16 years of age, and understood large chunks of it, in latter years I found Roland McHugh's Annotations to Finnegans Wake a great help with the portmanteaus and non-English text.

Harry wrote: "I have managed to accumulate a good size Finnegans Library.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

I basically read a page a day..."

Great collection. I'll have to compare books later and see what I'm missing. Here is my James Joyce shelf. IAll of his books are related, anyway.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

Here's some folks in Cambridge MA reading The Wake lo! these past 18 years ::

"One book group, one book, 18 years"
http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/...#

"And on this evening, as it has for the last 18 years, an eclectic group of readers gathered, their book club devoted to a single novel: “Finnegans Wake” by James Joyce. This roiling magnum opus published in 1939 is notorious for its difficulty, its impenetrability, its circular structure, its dream-within-a-dreamness, its onion layers, its allusions, its puzzles, its double, triple, quadruple entendres. It ends in the middle of a sentence — with the word “the” — and begins on Page 1 in the middle of the same sentence. It took Joyce 17 years to write. Experts estimate about 60 languages appear in its 600-plus pages. For the Thirsty Scholars, as this band of “Wake” enthusiasts is known, it took 13 years to make it through the book the first time. In 2010, they started it again."

I'm reading one-to-four paragraphs at a time before checking in with Campbell to get my bearings. I then reread the same material more slowly until I think I've got what I can out of it, resorting to fweet.org (I don't own a McHugh) only if something strikes me as especially interesting or cries out for elucidation. Rinse and repeat until the end of the chapter. Having arrived at chapter's end, I'll read through the whole thing at a 'normal' reading pace. That's the really fun bit.

I'm nearly through Part I; it seems to get easier and more fun the more familiar you become with the themes and motifs. I'm pretty sure I'll be Wakeing in one form or another for the rest of my life. Is that wrong?

M'Intosh wrote: "I'm pretty sure I'll be Wakeing in one form or another for the rest of my life. Is that wrong? "

Very write. Veryvery right!

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "M'Intosh wrote: "I'm pretty sure I'll be Wakeing in one form or another for the rest of my life. Is that wrong? "

Very write. Veryvery right!"

Even if only in the way we read other authors post-Wake, looking out for the double and triple echo in every word and phrase, and then when we don't find it, being.....somehow-at-sea, boringlost..

I’ve really appreciated this how-I’m-reading thread! I ordered McHugh and Campbell, but decided, kinda nervously, to start reading before they arrive. In a humbling, satisfying, awed and excited week, I’ve made it to page 52.

I’m a total sucker for those opaque modern and post-modern works that allow readers to participate in meaning-making. But I’m realizing that these are largely based on how set words fit together into higher orders of meaning. In The Wake, all the alternate spellings, puns, sounds and enjambments have made me very aware that when I read, I'm completely accustomed to doing that thing where my eyeballs just take in a collection of letters as a whole, assume the word, then move on. For this book, I have to go way back and relearn how to read it at the elemental level of the letter and the spaces between letters. Only then can I move on to higher-order work of meaning-making.

So, almost immediately, I started doing something I rarely do (except with some poetry): reading every syllable of the text out loud to myself. Which, in a book with all that stuff about ears, music and the oral tradition, seems not so crazy. Unless I’m in public.

I read aloud until clusters of sense seem to bob up through the murky Magic 8-Ball of Jocyean prose. I orient myself with those, then search backwards and forwards for related clusters of meaning and alternate meaning. Usually, I reread a paragraph or pages over again until I feel I’ve opened up a bunch of sense possibilities. Chapter 2 flowed with less rereading, but I’m working hard for every bit of Chapter 3. And I’m quite enjoying Joyce’s meta moments about stories, story-telling, clarity and how to read this book, even if, perhaps, my aWakened brain is imagining them.

Rachel wrote: "So, almost immediately, I started doing something I rarely do (except with some poetry): reading every syllable of the text out loud to myself."

Yes! Because this is, at a primal level, music...

"I read aloud until clusters of sense seem to bob up through the murky Magic 8-Ball of Jocyean prose. I orient myself with those, then search backwards and forwards for related clusters of meaning and alternate meaning. Usually, I reread a paragraph or pages over again until I feel I’ve opened up a bunch of sense possibilities."

The McHugh and Campbell will go a long way here to orienting you, but you don't want to be too concerned with orientation either, Joyce is also showing you the way, in ways... The Wake works in circles and cycles within each word/sentence/etym etc. so you begin looking for "emergences" that do actually make the text a bit more linear-feeling and full of meaning... but the music of the Wake language is the first thing to dig about it... once you really love that the rest will come...

Rachel wrote: "I’ve really appreciated this how-I’m-reading thread! I ordered McHugh and Campbell, but decided, kinda nervously, to start reading before they arrive. In a humbling, satisfying, awed and excited we..."

Rachel, every word of that comment of yours was a delight. I can't wait to follow your Wakeing

I second that! Especially the bit about the music - it was through the song lyrics embedded in the sentences and the rhythm they conveyed that I came to read the Wake. I had been following Geoff's updates and everytime I read one of the quotes he posted, I found some echo of an old song coming back to me. So I had to start reading the Wake myself!

Hey, thanks! The music has been pulling me through the bits that are still murky, for sure.

"Emergences:" I like that idea.

Actually, I'm leaving for a couple of weeks tomorrow, so if McH and Campbell don't get here, I'll keep going solo, exegesis-wise, for the time being.

I'm thinking Finnegans Wake = best airplane book ever, because there's no way I'll run out of book, but also worst airplane book ever, because of obligatory talking to myself.

Some combination of leisurely stroll through the prose followed by a bright glimmer of poetry tripped up with a pencil in hand to mark the moment of poetic understanding.

5-10 pages at a time. 20 is my max and is very immersive by that point!! The book within a book is my favourite episode so far. Or the one where the comma got beat up, that's cool too ^.^

No commentary or outside help, as tempting as it is to snoop on those!

No commentary or outside help is divine, the best way to approach any of these works..... for a first time at least. Though I still haven't touched any reference material for Joyce or Pynchon, research and understanding of the respective author's lives at the time help place a few things.