'one joke' and finnegans wake

because art is dead

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6a/1974Jeopardy!Art1.jpg
RIP

what a fantastic piece of work this is.

i was thinking of reading this over spring break

also the cantos

nv, thanks for ruining any kind of productivity i had planned for this afternoon! looks great, thx

nice. making me want to finish the fcker.

i want a counterpart to those two to read, ideally something like 'pilgrimage' w/o my actually having to read 'pilgrimage'

the site looks good but a lot of its 'glosses' appear to be straight definitions of well-known words that were already appearing in FW in unaltered, Standard English form.

yes some of the glosses feel unnecessary, am not sure whether the annotator feels those words are archaic or peculiar to British usage

Haha, the pinefox otm

https://twitter.com/finnegansreader

^Shortly after finding the twitter I found a really lovely looking paperbk on Viking Press just yesterday (although it has a 'embodying all author's corrections' which did make me laugh) so now I have a copy.

Funny how that twitter account makes the wake an everyday thing.

I have at least _looked_ at every page of Ulysses, and more than half of the pages in FW. But I don't think any of Joyce is just one joke, and even when Joyce is joking I doubt he's ever "just" joking.

I suspect the Joycean impulse is more like: This be the jokeyjoke that hath occurred to me whan I found meself besat on this ineluctable shore-rock whilst thinkin this ineluctable series of thoughts. Begob and videlicet, yr man can't be expected to be shiftin out which bits are important from which bits arrrent.

This is one strain of high modernism: The jokes stay, and the Latin stays, as stay the dhrinkin and the fookin. If anything is omitted, so is the magic, which is contained in the weft of the thoughts recorded in the text. Perhaps Twitter is as good as any a way to read that kind of collage.

Nabokov is a different creature. Not so sloppy, but also not so warm. There's plenty of fun in Pale Fire, but all of it was put there intentionally, as a chisel-mark by a meticulous sculptor.

http://www.waywordsandmeansigns.com/

Earwicker, that patternmind, that
paradigmatic ear, receptoretentive as his of Dionysius, longsuffer-
ing although whitening under restraint in the sititout corner of
his conservatory, behind faminebuilt walls, his thermos flask and
ripidian flabel by his side and a walrus whiskerbristle for a tusk-
pick, compiled, while he mourned the flight of his wild guineese,
a long list (now feared in part lost) to be kept on file of all abusive
names he was called (we have been compelled for the rejoicement
of foinne loidies ind the humours of Milltown etcetera by Joseph-
ine Brewster in the collision known as Contrastations with Inker-
mann and so on and sononward, lacies in loo water, flee, celestials,
one clean turv): Firstnighter, Informer, Old Fruit, Yellow Whigger,
Wheatears, Goldy Geit, Bogside Beauty, Yass We've Had His
Badannas, York's Porker, Funnyface, At Baggotty's Bend He
Bumped, Grease with the Butter, Opendoor Ospices, Cainandabler,
Ireland's Eighth Wonderful Wonder, Beat My Price, Godsoilman,
Moonface the Murderer, Hoary Hairy Hoax, Midnight Sunburst,
Remove that Bible, Hebdromadary Publocation, Tummer the Lame
the Tyrannous, Blau Clay, Tight before Teatime, Read Your
Pantojoke, Acoustic Disturbance, Thinks He's Gobblasst the Good
Dook of Ourguile, W.D.'s Grace, Gibbering Bayamouth of Dublin,
His Farther was a Mundzucker and She had him in a Growler,
Burnham and Bailey, Artist, Unworthy of the Homely Protestant
Religion, Terry Cotter, You're Welcome to Waterfood, signed the
Ribbonmen, Lobsterpot Lardling, All for Arthur of this Town,
Hooshed the Cat from the Bacon, Leathertogs Donald, The Ace
and Deuce of Paupering, O'Reilly's Delights to Kiss the Man
behind the Borrel, Magogagog, Swad Puddlefoot, Gouty Ghibeline,
Loose Luther, Hatches Cocks' Eggs, Muddle the Plan, Luck before
Wedlock, I Divorce Thee Husband, Tanner and a Make, Go to
Hellena or Come to Connies, Piobald Puffpuff His Bride, Purged
out of Burke's, He's None of Me Causin, Barebarean, Peculiar
Person, Grunt Owl's Facktotem, Twelve Months Aristocrat,
Lycanthrope, Flunkey Beadle Vamps the Tune Letting on He's
Loney, Thunder and Turf Married into Clandorf, Left Boot Sent
on Approval, Cumberer of Lord's Holy Ground, Stodge Arschmann,
Awnt Yuke, Tommy Furlong's Pet Plagues, Archdukon Cabbanger,
Last Past the Post, Kennealey Won't Tell Thee off Nancy's Gown,
Scuttle to Cover, Salary Grab, Andy Mac Noon in Annie's Room,
Awl Out, Twitchbratschballs, Bombard Street Bester, Sublime
Porter, A Ban for Le King of the Burgaans and a Bom for Ye Sur
of all the Ruttledges, O'Phelim's Cutprice, And at Number Wan
Wan Wan, What He Done to Castlecostello, Sleeps with Feathers
end Ropes, It is Known who Sold Horace the Rattler, Enclosed
find the Sons of Fingal, Swayed in his Falling, Wants a Wife and
Forty of Them, Let Him Do the Fair, Apeegeequanee Chimmuck,
Plowp Goes his Whastle, Ruin of the Small Trader, He — —
Milkinghoneybeaverbrooker, Vee was a Vindner, Sower Rapes,
Armenian Atrocity, Sickfish Bellyup, Edomite, — 'Man Devoyd of
the Commoner Characteristics of an Irish Nature, Bad Humborg,
Hraabhraab, Coocoohandler, Dirt, Miching Daddy, Born Burst Feet
Foremost, Woolworth's Worst, Easyathic Phallusaphist, Guiltey-
pig's Bastard, Fast in the Barrel, Boose in the Bed, Mister Fatmate,
In Custody of the Polis, Boawwll's Alocutionist, Deposed, but anar-
chistically respectsful of the liberties of the noninvasive individual,
did not respond a solitary wedgeword beyond such sedentarity,
though it was as easy as kissanywhere for the passive resistant in
the booth he was in to reach for the hello gripes and ring up Kim-
mage Outer 17.67, because, as the fundamentalist explained, when
at last shocked into speech, touchin his woundid feelins in the
fuchsiar the dominican mission for the sowsealist potty was on at
the time and he thought the rowmish devowtion known as the
howly rowsary might reeform ihm, Gonn.

#poll

"Miching Daddy" has always intrigued me as something in the dark, love the musical ones like "Flunkey Beadle Vamps the Tune Letting on He's Loney"

take any one of the atoms of the book out like this and look at it is the best argument for how wonderful the whole is

Yes. I follow the twitter account and seeing that on the timeline - mostly ignore it but every now and then something like this comes up and its perfect. Turning out to be a good way to skim thru.

I want this list to be read by Ms Doyle

That's so weird, I randomly opened it & read that exact passage the other day

reading that is very dispiriting if you've just finished your own experimental novel

There was a brief period when I felt like the Wake exhausted the possibilities for fiction after it but no way, if anything it celebrates the exhaustlessness of language

I never feel like that with Joyce at all, and FW isn't really fiction.

That passage is more like a Rabelasian feast.

pynchon's disgusting candy drill + alliterative feast at either end of gravity's rainbow were just standing on these shoulders huh

Is that the only book you've read?

yeah! pretty impressive isn't it

maybe you should get out more. Sun is shining.

try and find a passage from FW that evinces that sentiment idk

maybe you should: 2nd book for you to read.

A third: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-One-Day-Adventures-Britpop-ebook/dp/B008EMAL4G/ref=la_B001H6QKQ4_1_1/278-3832172-6854343?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1461239689&sr=1-1

reading that is very dispiriting if you've just finished your own Britpop memoir

I must correct here to your own EXPERIMENTAL Britpop memoir #binAndBurnThatFucker

'the interior world of noel gallagher' >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> most published experimental fiction

Experimental Britpop - not an ILM thread yet?

mansun have like 3 threads!!!

your experimental novel is Mansun slash fic isn't it?

shhhhh

I never feel like that with Joyce at all, and FW isn't really fiction.

oh sure I was v callow and wrong and full of wrong-headed notions about form and genre when I had those thoughts

We were all young once.

https://tune.pk/video/5311874/father-ted-mrs-doyle-guessing-the-name

I think a couple of my relatives are in there.

It's the other greatest Irish listmaker who inspires the Father Ted name-guessing - similar scene in the 3rd Policeman

but i just keep staring at that list

Left Boot Sent on Approval

similar scene in the 3rd Policeman

Right, read it years ago but I don't remember much about it - apart from how it made me feel. Got to read that again.

pynchon's disgusting candy drill + alliterative feast at either end of gravity's rainbow were just standing on these shoulders huh

― And the cry rang out all o'er the town / Good Heavens! Tay is down (imago), Thursday, 21 April 2016 11:48 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is that the only book you've read?

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 21 April 2016 11:50 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

siiiiiick

[found it]
'Do you recall that you told me that I was not here at all because I had no name and that my personality was invisible to the law?'
'I said that.'
'Then how can I be hanged for a murder, even if I did commit it and there is no trial or preliminary proceedings, no caution administered and no hearing before a Commissioner of the Public Peace?'
[...]
Then he spoke.
'Are you completely doubtless that you are nameless?' he asked.
'Positively certain.'
'Would it be Mick Barry?'
'No.'
'Charlemange O'Keeffe?'
'No.'
'Sir Justin Spens?'
'Not that.'
'Kimberley?'
'No.'
'Bernard Farm?'
'No.'
'Joseph Poe or Nolan?'
'No.'
'One of the Garvins or the Moynihans?'
'Not them.'
'Rosencranz O'Dowd?'
'No.'
'Would it be O'Benson?'
'Not O'Benson.'
'The Quigleys, The Mulrooneys or the Hounimen?'
'No.'
'The Hardimen or the Merrimen?'
'Not them.'
'Peter Dundy?'
'No.'
'Scratch?'
'No.'
'Lord Brad?'
'Not him.'
'The O'Growneys, the O'Roartys or the Finnehys?'
'No.'
'That is an amazing piece of denial and denunciation,'he said.
He passed the red cloth over his face again to reduce the moisture.
'An astonishing parade of nullity,' he added.
'My name is not Jenkins either,' I vouchsafed.
'Roger MacHugh?'
'Not Roger.'
'Sitric Hogan?'
'No.'
'Not Conroy?'
'No.'
'Not O'Conroy?'
'Not O'Conroy.'
'There are very few more names that you could have, then,' he said.

That's so good, thanks!

But to go back to the Joyce, how many racehorses have been named from that list? "Tight before Teatime" has surely been taken up by now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=see3U9uUeZ4

The child, a natural child, thenown by the mnames of, (aya!
aya!), wouldbewas kidnapped at an age of recent probably,
possibly remoter; or he conjured himself from seight by slide
at hand; for which thetheatron is a lemoronage; at milch-
goat fairmesse; in full dogdhis; sod on a fall; pat; the hundering
blundering dunderfunder of plundersundered manhood; behold,
he returns; renascenent; fincarnate; still foretold around the hearth-
side; at matin a fact; hailed chimers' ersekind; foe purmanant,
fum in his mow; awike in wave risurging into chrest; victis poenis
hesternis; fostfath of solas; fram choicest of wiles with warmen
and sogns til Banba, burial aranging; under articles thirtynine of
the reconstitution; by the lord's order of the canon consecrand-
able; earthlost that we thought him; pesternost, the noneknown
worrier; from Tumbarumba mountain; in persence of whole
landslots; forebe all the rassias; sire of leery subs of dub; the Dig-
gins, Woodenhenge, as to hang out at; with spawnish oel full his
angalach; the sousenugh; gnomeosulphidosalamermauderman; the
big brucer, fert in fort; Gunnar, of The Gunnings, Gund; one
of the two or three forefivest fellows a bloke could in holiday
crowd encounter; benedicted be the barrel; kilderkins, lids off; a
roache, an oxmaster, a sort of heaps, a pamphilius, a vintivat
niviceny, a hygiennic contrivance socalled from the editor; the
thick of your thigh; you knox; quite; talking to the vicar's joy
and ruth; the gren, woid and glue been broking by the maybole
gards; he; when no crane in Elga is heard; upout to speak this
lay; without links, without impediments, with gygantogyres,
with freeflawforms; parasama to himself; atman as evars; whom
otherwise becauses; no puler as of old but as of young a palatin;
whitelock not lacked nor temperasoleon; though he appears a
funny colour; stoatters some; but a quite a big bug after the
dahlias; place inspectorum sarchent; also the hullow chyst ex-
cavement; astronomically fabulafigured; as Jambudvispa Vipra
foresaw of him; the last half versicle repurchasing his pawned
word; sorensplit and paddypatched; and pfor to pfinish our pfun
of a pfan coalding the keddle mickwhite; sure, straight, slim,
sturdy, serene, synthetical, swift.

#Trumps1stYearAtHogwarts pic.twitter.com/aGMZcVLWOH

— wint (@dril) January 19, 2018

That account does do it from beginning to end, one passage at 10 min intervals.

If you want to know where it is just Google the passage.

ah right. Good. riverrun.

Delmore Schwartz’s cat

I was wacthing a thing on Joyce on the i-Player last night (presented by Angelica Houston, obv.). No-one on it really speaks up for FW.

Huston presumably got the gig cause of the dead

Yes and it was bad bad. Only liked Frank McGuiness' comments iirc

b) i got no idea what form a reading group might take or how we might proceed - but those aren't reasons not to do it

We could probably do Book 1 on a section by section basis. That'll be untenable later on but it's a way to start.

From googling it seems the twitterfeed is on page 458. Anyone have any thoughts on that page?

From Chapter 3, Episode II. Good episode. With the crackling and the chawing and all that.

If you’ve been enjoying the #Bloomsday Words & Music on @BBCRadio3 this afternoon, listen out for our programme on Tuesday: we get caught up in Finnegans Wake. @DrMatthewSweet with Eimear McBride @FaberBooks, @FinnFordham @NellLybeck https://t.co/gJlhOOe1bs

— BBC Free Thinking (@BBCFreeThinking) June 16, 2019

Listening to this last night

Very nice account of a reader's journey with it.

https://lithub.com/finnegans-wake-at-80-in-defense-of-the-difficult/

An excellent piece on Wake reading as communal act, and also as almost a cult-like dimension of it:

https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/on-finishing-finnegans-wake/

https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/breaking-james-joyce/

Her other essay weaves her life with Joyce's (and also shows that the 27 year reading of FW was roughly 13 years spent on 2/3 of it!) It could be too much for anyone but her but I really liked it.

I saw the movie (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059179/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0). I needed the subtitles, but I think I got all the allusions.

"One joke" could be a poorly-told knock-knock joke, or it could be a masterful telling of "The Aristocrats." I haven't tried to read FW, but I assume it's towards the Aristocrats end of this spectrum.

Hoping to actually crack it open next month. To begin with, 10 pages a day.

This Chapter by Chapter outline is useful:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xcWkYWL03CEC&lpg=PP1&dq=Oxford+World%27s+Classics+edition+of+Finnegans+Wake&pg=PR35&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Will look for PDF of it or a web friendly version.

web-friendly version = the twitter finnenganswakebot (sadly long defunct)

there is a bsky version but it only has nine entries

Sorry I meant a PDF/web version of the chapeter outline. Feel like I need that more than having puns being explained to me.

I once had a really old copy given to me by an old English prof who used the copy in a class he took on the novel taught by Marshall McLuhan. I think it disintegrated or something.

Started it this week and I think I will finish it in 2/3 weeks.

Its fine to just read the words with that outline I posted to keep your head above water. Its very funny in that low-level laughter way. Laughing at the sounds is what keeps me turning the pages. Do wonder if that will hold.

A lot of it is words just sorta misspelt, or broken down.

I talked to a professor who specializes in FW once and admitted that I found the book pretty intimidating. He snorted and said “be afraid! I’ve spent 50 years programming myself to read that book”

Was not the response I was hoping for tbh

I think if you love music -- and you take music to be a set of sounds -- then that's a way of approaching it cold.

But yes if you want to understand it like a novel with plot, character, psychology you may need secondary sources and so on to get going.

Woke up today and I think I forgot how to read pic.twitter.com/cKacbsRrjR

— Travel Through Stories (@travelstoriesyt) April 1, 2025

writing that <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< reading that

reading should be more involved than writing tbh

maybe the translator should accept some of the blame

Working my way through Spenser's Faerie Queene, and a lot of it's multilayered meaning, archaic spelling/punning, and sing song style reminds me of the Wake.

Interesting...

The book and the page I posted about does lack the music of the Wake but it was inspired by it. Will read it but I suppose it must've been a few orders of magnitude more of a challenge than the usual.

Mans not hot. https://t.co/m6qPKqKV50 pic.twitter.com/2CuHaor0VP

— Kevín (@KevOnStage) April 13, 2025