steve@hpfloat.UUCP (steve) (09/08/84)
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_James Joyce's Ulysses_ by Stuart Gilbert is a good aid to reading
_Ulysses_. Gilbert was visiting Joyce regularly and discussing the
books (both his and Joyce's) while writing it.
As for _Finnegans Wake_:
I have not seen _A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake_ by Campbell and Robinson,
but Benstock (reference below) is critical of it except for pages 24 through
37, analysing the first four paragraphs of the _Wake_.
I have read _A Shorter Finnegans Wake_, edited by Anthony Burgess, and
it is a reasonable way to decide if you want to try reading the full _Wake_.
The best things about Burgess's version are the explication of the first
two paragraphs (similar to what's in the _Skeleton Key_?) and that most
of the book is straight excerpts from the text with short synopses to get
you from one excerpt to the next.
BTW, Adaline Glasheen makes a comment to the effect that Burgess's _Shorter
Wake_ is innocuous, but that the _Skeleton Key_ and Tindall's _Reader's
Guide_ are harmful to first time readers. This comment appears in the
introduction of her _Third Census of Finnegans Wake_, which also contains
a multi-page table of character correspondences titled "Who's Who When
Everybody Is Somebody Else".
Other books helpful to understanding _Finnegans Wake_ which I have enjoyed
reading include:
_Joyce-Again's Wake_ by Bernard Benstock.
_The Books at the Wake_ by James S. Atherton.
_Joysprick_ by Anthony Burgess.
_Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake_ by Clive Hart.
and of course,
_Dubliners_, _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_, and _Ulysses_
by James Joyce.
William York Tindall's _A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake_ is useful mainly
because it is organized in parallel with the text and can be used as a way to
refresh your memory with *an* interpretation of a passage in _Finnegans Wake_
just before reading it.
None of this is in any way a substitute for the _Wake_ itself, and I can't
end without including some quotations.
"Of the first was he to bare arms and a name: Wassily Booslaeugh of
Riesengeborg. His crest of huroldry, in vert with ancillars, troublant, argent,
a hegoak, poursuivant, horrid, horned. His scutschum fessed, with archers
strung, helio, of the second. Hootch is for husbandman handling his hoe.
Hohohoho, Mister Finn, you're going to be Mister Finnagain! Comeday morn
and, O, you're vine! Sendday's eve and, ah, you're vinegar! Hahahaha, Mister
Funn, you're going to be fined again!"
"In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of
Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singtime sung, her rill be run,
unhemmed as it is uneven!"
"Eins within a space and a wearywide space it wast ere wohned a Mookse."
(This parallels the first sentence of _A Portrait_.)
"He points the deathbone and the quick are still. _Insomnia, somnia
somniorum. Awmawn.
....tramtokens in her hair, all waived to a point and then
all inuendation, little oldfashioned mummy, little wonderful mummy, ducking
under bridges, bellhopping the weirs, dodging by a bit of bog, rapid-
shooting round the bends, by Tallaght's green hills and the pools of the
phooka and a place they call it Blessington and slipping sly by Sallynoggin,
as happy as the day is wet, babbling, bubbling, chattering to herself,
deloothering the fields on their elbows leaning with the sloothering slide
of her, giddygaddy, grannyma, gossipaceous Anna Livia.
He lifts the lifewand and the dumb speak.
--Quoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiq!"
" O
tell me all about
Anna Livia! I want to hear all
about Anna Livia. Well, you know Anna Livia? Yes, of course, we all know
Anna Livia. Tell me all. Tell me now. You'll die when you know. ....
.......
Can't hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats,
fieldmice bawk talk. Ho! Are you not gone ahome? What Tom Malone? Can't
hear with bawk of bats, all thim liffeying waters of. Ho, talk save us! My
foos won't moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem?
All Livia's daughtersons. Dark hawks hear us. Night! Night! My ho head halls.
I feel as heavy as yonder stone. Tell me of John or Shaun? Who were Shem and
Shaun the living sons or daughters of? Night now! Tell me, tell me, tell me,
elm? Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of,
hitherandthithering waters of. Night!"
"The green approve the raid! Shaun Baum's bode he is amustering in the
groves while his shool comes merging along!"
As for closing soliloquies, the one at the end of _Finnegans Wake_ is very
good, but this is already 'Enough! or Too much.'(Blake) so I won't quote any
of it. *READ THE BOOK!*
"... Tinbad the Tailor,...
When?
Going to a dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc's auk's
egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the
Brightdayler.
Where?
* "
.............................
{hplabs,ihnp4}!hpfcla!steve-t Stephen Taylor