Joseph Gordon-Levitt Recites from Finnegans Wake

Page 439 from rcjohnso on Vimeo.


A nicely done visual adaption/image collage with Joseph Gordon-Levitt (of Inception and 3rd Rock from the Sun fame) reciting a page from Shaun's lustful lecture to a bunch of young Catholic school girls in Book III, Chapter 2.

I'd love to hear more stuff like this. The Wake is ripe for interpretive recitation by actors.

Reading Group Reminiscences

As it so often tends to do, the Wake made its omniscience humorously obvious to the participants of our latest reading group here in Austin. Prior to digging into the text, we had some discussion about the big Finnegans Wake promotional campaign to promote the first ever Chinese translation of the book, talked about the book's seeming awareness that the reader is reading it, and also about cities as living beings.

We should not have been surprised when, in the course of the two pages we studied, the Wake winked at us with a couple lines that sounded like Chinese, referencing Confucius and other Chinese elements (bottom of pg. 131) while the next page had, among many references to the nature of cities, the line "weighs a town in himself."

I would've liked to have kept thorough notes on all of the Wake meetings we've had here in Austin as well as the other ones I've been to but unfortunately it hasn't worked out that way. I do, on the other hand, know which pages we've looked at in every Wake group I've ever been to and so here I would like to share one or two lines from the different Wake groups I've attended and reflect on those a bit.