![]() ![]() Those who’ve read Ulysses will recognise what Joyce is doing in this chapter: he’s playing with form by mimicking text. Where are we? Are we there? ( Tindall, p.170) Consulting Tindall I learn that chapters IX, X and XI are the densest part of the Wake (which is both encouraging, and not) and he helpfully sorts out what Joyce means by the first lines:Īs we there are where are we are we there (Finnegans Wake (Penguin Kindle Edition p.260) There is a diagram like the ones we used to draw in secondary school geometry.There are slabs of text in what appears to be straightforward French (yay! I can read that) and Latin (well beyond the capacity of my experience in Form 2).I know enough about this book by now to know that they are not there to make anything clearer to me. Some of the footnotes are very long, taking up over half the page. Not the editor’s, they are James Joyce commenting on his own chapter. There are footnotes and marginalia left and right.Just flicking through the pages of chapter X in my copy of FW, I notice some strange things: Small signs of progress: I am more than half way through A Reader’s Guide to “Finnegans Wake” by my trusty guide William York Tindall, and 45% through A Skeleton Key to “Finnegan’s Wake”: James Joyce’s Masterwork Revealed by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson.īut only 41% through the actual book I am reading, so I shall save the champagne for later. ![]()
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