gmf@uvacs.UUCP (08/18/84)
My daughter (a grad student in English) has just finished reading Joyce's Ulysses for the 4th time, and is about to embark on Finnegan's Wake . She intends to use A Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake by Campbell and Robinson as a guide. Does anyone have any suggestions on how best to read Finnegan's Wake , or about any other guides or exegeses? Gordon Fisher ...uvacs!gmf
colonel@gloria.UUCP (George Sicherman) (08/24/84)
[quark] There's some helpful commentary in McLuhan's works, notably _The Gutenberg Galaxy_. -- Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksanne!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel
dlb@stc70.UUCP (David Black) (08/28/84)
The Skeleton Key will help you make it through Finnegans Wake, page by page, but I found the following to be even more helpful as well as being entertaining in their own right: - ReJoyce by Anthony Burgess - Finnegans Wake is fun and no one has more fun with it than Burgess - Our Exagmination round his Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress - twelve essays about Finnegans Wake first written when it was a work in progress rather than a complete mountain. I seem to remember that one of the essayists is Beckett, and he's fun to read whenever he writes about writers. I also think that each of the authors were acquainted with Joyce and so can be expected to tell about whatever smoke the master was blowing on the days when they talked to him. - A Census of Finnegans Wake by Adaline Glasheen - a miniature encyclopedia - there's also an article that I have never read with the enchanting title "Who's Who When Everyone's Someone Else" about the character transformations that occur. If the complete FW is more than you want to drown in there is also A Shorter Finnegans Wake. You don't have to be ashamed, it's not quite a Reader's Digest Condensed Version (though the idea of such a thing is fun), but it is more managable since it is a bit (but only a bit) less confusing. The best thing is to forget all the critical stuff and just read it aloud to whoever will listen. The fun is in the language - it's hard to imagine reading it for plot or ideas. David Black