Finnegan’s Wake: An unreadable masterpiece and an Irish friend

Working in an antiquarian bookstore gives me those chance encounters with interesting people. Many people that come into our shop are exploring the village of Leiper's Fork, Tennessee, visiting the art galleries, perusing through the antique stores and maybe catching the farmer's market (when it is in season). We get questions like, "Is all of these books for sale?" "Is this a museum?" "How do you find these type of books?" It often leads to pleasant conversations and is a great way to spend the Saturday afternoon doing what you love. Every now and then, and these are the treasured moments for me, a character will stop in and immediately you know them. They have this certain look, a certain charm, an implied wit requiring no speech. They look alive, they invoke the inner child and sometimes they can alarm you with eccentric behavior that hints at crazy. And let's face it, sometimes they scare the shit out of you. So, I guess it is hit or miss and that's relative to what you're looking for that particular day.
One one of these types of days an older gentleman came in and immediately his friendly nature was on display. We began to chat and before you know it, I was listening to an interesting story about his life. Sometimes these stories can be bad, we all know that. But not this one. He was genuinely interesting to listen to. He has the gift of storytelling. He was a native Georgian from Savannah. Irish. And damn proud of both. I learned that Savannah had the longest (and of course best) St. Patrick's Day parade in the United States. Chicago eat your heart out. You could sense the love that he had for the old southern city, so full of history and grace. Having only visited the city once, I felt a longing to visit again to recapture some of that lost nostalgia that could be hiding in the less touristy parts of the city.

He was interested in the Patrick J. Carroll series of "Patch" books and luckily I had one for him to eagerly purchase. He had read them as a youth and now wanted to revisit. Now that the conversation had turned to the literary, every Irishman's favorite author, James Joyce entered the conversation. Being familiar with at least the titles and content of the more noted works by Joyce, I was able to talk at least somewhat intelligently with him. He then began to talk about Finnegans Wake. I had read the first paragraph of the novel in the past and knew that it was one of the most, if not the most, difficult novels ever written in English. My new friend knew the beginning by heart. How much I did not know. He began to recite:

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend
of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to
Howth Castle and Environs.
Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-
core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy
isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor
had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse
to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper
all the time

He stopped there. Whatever the level of reverence and pride he had for Joyce and for this novel, he did admit that, in his words, the book was "unreadable." One could memorize passages, but comprehending it was another thing entirely. I tend to agree and from my own experience I can only conclude that one must approach this novel as an exercise in analysis and research and a degree in linguistics wouldn't hurt. Before we moved on to other topics he did mention something I had not heard before. The above passage mentions the stream of Oconee. My friend told me that this was a practical joke played upon the Irish and maybe the world. Readers were looking for this river in Ireland, around Dublin as the passage indicates could be feasible and would certainly be an obvious consideration. However, this passage also mentions a Laurens County and "gorgios." This is a reference to Laurens County, Georgia and the city of Dublin, Georgia. And, if you look, you will find that the city has a river called Oconee, which in Irish means alas.

My friend may have thought this a practical joke by Joyce, but after researching it, I found that this was widely known to have been the reference. While researching this, I found an interesting blog that went further into the analysis of the above passage. If you are interested, please click here. Joyce spent 15 years writing this novel and you can see why. He put a lot of thought into the use of language, puns and obscure references. I guess that's why it can be an unreadable masterpiece.

Keith Wallace

thank you so much for sharing this encounter. I love your writing and the trouble you have gone to in describing the bookshop atmosphere and the setting for meeting the Joyce enthusiast. I am at the other end of the world but Joyce has always fascinated along with other Irish writers or writers about Ireland... Yeats, Wilde, Obrien Ofailin, Shaw, Joyce of course, and each time I visit Ireland I want to return to the literary books and books on Irish history. I have a weakness for Irish memoirs. And would like to dig for that strand of Irish roots . I chose Joyce to research and write about for a sen year English project when at school on an exchange programme to Morris , Illinois... Too ambitious for an 18 year old but I had an inflated sense of own grasp. at least I learnt as you say, that so much of Joyce is difficult to read. Best wishes.

You might be interested in this piece by Michael Chabon in the current NYRB. Here's the link.

Joyce and Faulkner have a lot in common among college English teachers; the profs all say how great those fellows are; but if you want to get a term paper thrown back in your face, just try writing one-sentence, thousand-word paragraphs like Faulkner did and see what sort of feedback you get on that; pretty tough and you won't like it is my guess; I'll guess again and say that most college English teachers don't like reading Faulkner either; that's why they get upset when you write like that; I don't see profs sitting around studying Finnegan's Wake or The Artist as a Young Man in their spare time; neither do I know whose butt one has to kiss to get the academy to agree that difficult reading makes great literature; I won't hold my breath until I do figure it out; nobody should; pay attention instead to the fact that fads like stream-of-consciousness don't usually survive the artists who dream them up; book sales probably have something to do with that.

A neat comparison. you are reminding me of the marvelous course I took in my American high school in Illinois on American English literature. I fell for the great American writers and most particularly read everything on Faulkner. I grabbed the opportunity of that extra year in school (before university) to absorb American history, law, literature and government. Led me to read Economics , History, and Politics at university back in SAfrica and then read everything I could on the Civil War . Sadly never visited the USA since school but your country is a special one. Stay well.