Summaries and Guides to Finnegans Wake

At a recent Wake group meeting, a participant inquired about summary guides to the text. In particular, she wondered what books are out there that can help give one a sense of what a page or section is about (if FW can be said to have any real plot, that is). There are a few such guides out there and all are pretty different so I'm going to list the ones I'm aware of. This is not an all-encompassing list of books about Finnegans Wake, but a list of books that attempt to summarize or walk one through the text.

A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake by William York Tindall
This handy guide is perhaps the most compact of any. Tindall summarizes each chapter succinctly and in a very readable, even entertaining style. At the end of his chapter summaries are notes further expanding on particular words, lines, or paragraphs.

A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake: Unlocking James Joyce's Masterwork by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson
Certainly the most well-known guide, it's the first ever attempt to crack the Wake's code, written just 5 years after Joyce's book was originally published for a baffled and disinterested world. This was my first experience of the Wake (I read it during an unemployed summer in 2008). The most valuable thing about this book is (in my opinion) its introductory section which provides some of the best overall descriptions of the book ever written. The remainder of this hefty tome attempts to turn the prose of Finnegans Wake into a much easier-to-comprehend form of English while inserting frequent commentaries to alert the reader as to what is going on at any particular point. I once talked to Joyce scholar Sheldon Brivic about it and he called this the "Disney version of FW"---it's certainly an adequate introduction but tends to leave out so much important material so as not to overwhelm the new reader. It's also frequently criticized for some of its narrow interpretations which have now become outdated. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Wake and it will always be the book that officially started my own Wake obsession.

A Guide through Finnegans Wake by Edmund Epstein
I've found this to be the weirdest Wake guide thus far. Epstein's interpretations tend to stray away from everyone else's, sometimes to the point of absurdity, yet he also occasionally seems to catch things the other books don't. Similar to Tindall's book, he summarizes each chapter in an accessible manner. I wouldn't recommend this one, though, as it will probably only serve to confuse one further unless reading it alongside other summary guides.

Joyce's Kaleidoscope: An Invitation to Finnegans Wake by Philip Kitcher

One of the newest books on this list, giving one optimism for the future of Wake studies. The author is a philosophy professor at Columbia University and provides a pretty standard, approachable, and (as far as this can possibly apply to a book like the Wake) understandable overall outlook on Joyce's kaleidoscopic masterwork. Interspersing personal reflections and experiences with philosophical and psychological interpretative threads, this provides a solid introduction to the Wake with a chronological summary of each chapter. While I enjoyed this book, I admit that I was hoping for something a bit more shocking and exciting in its originality (because of the great title). Instead, it's a very readable, well-informed and up-to-date summary of Joyce's dense dream book. Certainly serves to entice the new reader to explore things more deeply.

ReJoyce by Anthony Burgess
I wrote a full review of this book a few years back on my other blog. I consider this a very valuable and approachable intro to Joyce and it definitely helped incite my deep interests in the Irish scribe. Burgess (most famous for A Clockwork Orange) lavishes praise on his favorite writer while devoting chapters for each text in the Joycean ouvre including a nice summary of each chapter of Finnegans Wake. Not very thorough at all but certainly worth checking out.

James Joyce A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Writings
This is a great, daresay essential book for a Joyce student. It covers everything you can possibly be interested in about Joyce, in very good detail. It is essentially a small encyclopedia about Joyce's life and work and included herein are summaries for each chapter of Finnegans Wake as well as more closely detailed discussions of characters and vignettes from the Wake. Great book to thumb through.


Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary by John Gordon
Narrative Design in Finnegans Wake: The Wake Lock Picked by Harry Burrell

I haven't had the chance to read either of these but they certainly sound like they're perfect for a reader looking for a summary guide. The latter book has come up a few times in our recent Wake reading group meetings and sounds particularly intriguing, from Amazon:

Making bold claims for a new literary interpretation, Harry Burrell presents a forceful analytical model for understanding Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. He argues that Joyce used the genesis story of Adam and Eve as his underlying narrative and interwove it with themes and images from literature and history, thus rewriting the Bible, abolishing the wicked God of the Old Testament, and replacing Him with a gentle, loving female goddess.

Lastly, one of my favorite books about the Wake is Bernard Benstock's Joyce-Again's Wake. It's not along the same lines as the rest of the books listed here because it's more of a collection of essays discussing the book as a whole and what Joyce's unique art form explores. But I bring it up here because at the front of the book, Benstock attempts to give a short one line description for what happens on every single page of the book, so I've always found it worth looking back to. This book is actually available online for free at this link.

Reading a River Passage: ALP on page 153

Nothing enlivens a Finnegans Wake reading group like the appearance of ALP and her playful, flowing river prose. During our most recent meeting, while reading the fable of the Mookse and the Gripes we came upon the beautiful paragraph atop page 153 where the Mookse "came... upon the most unconsciously boggylooking stream he ever locked his eyes with."
This paragraph (and really this entire page) turned out to be extremely rich in references and layers of meaning, moreso than usual. Marinating on the river passage later on when I got home, some fresh interpretations flowed out so I'd like to briefly examine what's at play here.

Here's a look at the passage:

he came (secunding to the one one oneth of the propecies, Amnis Limina Permanent) upon the most unconsciously boggylooking stream he ever locked his eyes with. Out of the colliens it took a rise by daubing itself Ninon. It looked little and it smelt of brown and it thought in narrows and it talked showshallow. And as it rinn it dribbled like any lively purliteasy: My, my, my! Me and me! Little down dream don't I love thee! (pg. 153)

Well, first thing of note is that the initials of ALP (indicating the river mother Anna Livia Plurabelle) appear twice here: "Amnis Limina Permanent" (Latin: "the bounds of the river remain") and "any lively purliteasy."

We also have the number associated with ALP, 111 ("one one oneth") which stands for renewal but also in Japanese characters represents a river (with the middle line as the flowing river with surrounding banks). [Which I must have learned from here.]

I love that phrase "the most unconsciously boggylooking stream"---Ulysses was famous for its stream of consciousness technique but Finnegans Wake represents the everflowing stream of the unconscious, the prose of the book is that river itself (first word of the text being "riverrun"). This river is always flowing under the surface, whether we're awake or asleep. The word "boggy" means watery, soft, wet and actually stems from an Irish-Gaelic word meaning "soft".

"Out of the colliens it took a rise by daubing itself Ninon." Enjoyed this line when we read it as Colleen is my girlfriend's name (Irish word meaning "young girl") but it's also the French colline which means "hill"---the river begins up in the hills where it rains and then flows down. The word "daubing" means to cover a surface but also implies "dubbing" or naming (and surely includes a reference to Dublin too). "Ninon" is a great word---here is condensed a reference to the fascinating historical character Ninon de Lenclos (a French female courtesan and patron of the arts, aunt of Voltaire), while also tying together the Greek words nun ôn ("ever present") and ninnion ("baby, doll"). The ever present, female river essence flows on through history.

"It looked little and it smelt of brown and it thought in narrows and it talked showshallow."
Throughout the Wake, the river is described as being brown and dirty, just like the tea-colored Liffey in Dublin. It's also brown because it carries the dirt and debris of history toward constant renewal. I could also go off on a long riff about Anna Livia Plurabelle's African roots ("a bushman woman, the dearest little moma ever you saw" pg. 207), but that's a post for another time. Anna Livia's hair is also frequently described as being brown or auburn, "she's flirty, with her auburnt streams" (p. 139).

"And as it rinn it dribbled like any lively purliteasy"
As it ran, or flowed (German rinnen = to run, flow) it sang a little song in a purling language. That word "purl" appears a few times in the Wake, a simply beautiful word that refers to the rippling murmur of water.

The song "dribbled" by the river is to the tune of the old folk song "Little Brown Jug":


These lyrics are interesting, though:
"Little down dream don't I love thee!"

The "down dream" is the "brown stream" but I wondered for a while about the word down here. Why "down"? For one thing, rivers flow downward, starting up in the hills and flowing down by gravity. That's what keeps it flowing. It's also the "little down dream" of one sleeping underneath a down blanket or a down pillow. Down is the fine feathers of birds, especially baby birds, that is so soft and cozy that it's used in pillows, blankets, and jackets. This also brings to mind another version of ALP that frequently appears, that of the hen. And of course the egg is a major symbol in the book that recurs often.

Let all that trickle through your mind tonight as you rest and slowly slip into the "unconsciously boggylooking stream" that lies everflowing within us all.

New documentary "The Joycean Society" follows FW Reading Group

A brand new documentary, "The Joycean Society", about a Finnegans Wake reading group has been making the rounds at film festivals lately and getting some very positive reviews. Spanish artist Dora Garcia researched Joyce and the Wake for years and followed along with a reading group in Zurich led by prestigious Joyce scholar Fritz Senn, documenting the unique world of Wake reading groups in her short feature.

From a review/report about the film:

"Finnegans Wake is a book that chooses its readers; however, it’s not a book that touches everyone,” Garcia says. “It’s a book for people who want to understand the world absolutely, almost Indiana Joneses of language. So it’s an elitist book, but not for the rich or the beautiful, but for the brave who are skeptical at the same time."

From another review in The Hollywood Reporter:

In theory a "highbrow crowdpleaser" should be a contradiction in terms, but Dora Garcia's delightful featurette The Joycean Society comes mighty close to squaring that circle. In less than an hour, the film immerses us in the playfully erudite company of what must be one of the world's more rarefied reading-groups, a gathering of James Joyce enthusiasts who each week meet in Zurich to go through his experimental magnum opus Finnegans Wake page by page, line by line, word by word. The result is an accessible, original, amusing and thought-provoking enterprise, of a length ideal for small-screen slots and of a quality eminently deserving big-screen film-festival exposure.

Some more words about the film from Dora Garcia herself can be found here and here:

I have always been attracted to Joyce in relation to concepts such as “the destruction of the English language”, the “explosion of language”, “the end of literature”. This had, of course, a punk, countercultural quality I was very attracted to.

Hopefully the general public can get a look at this intriguing film soon.

Adam Harvey performs from Shem chapter

Adam Harvey is an actor from New Mexico who holds the distinction of being capable of reciting long portions of Finnegans Wake at length from memory, with dramatic effect. I had the privilege of seeing him perform the Mookse and Gripes fable at the 2011 North American James Joyce conference and it was unlike anything I'd ever beheld.

In this video clip, Adam reads the closing passages (pg. 193-195) of the Shem chapter (Book 1, chapter 7). This hilarious chapter, considered a favorite among many Wake readers, features brother Shaun describing the disgusting habits and living conditions of his shameful twin brother Shem. Shem, of course, is a version of James Joyce himself.

A few pages before Adam's selection, while the chapter starts to reach its conclusion, Shaun takes the form of a dramatic personage named JUSTIUS and gets his last words in on his pathetic brother. The whole thing is ridiculously comical as Shaun even asks Shem to help him come up with a proper denunciatory title:

you (will you for the laugh of Scheekspair just help me with the epithet?) semisemitic serendipitist, you (thanks, I think that describes you) Europasianised Afferyank! (p. 191)

At the end of his monologue is the very intriguing description of Shaun either putting the living to sleep, to death, or both:

He points the deathbone and the quick are still. Insomnia, somnia somniorum. Awmawm. (p. 193)

The Latin translates to "Sleeplessness, dream of dreams" while also mimicking the end of the Catholic liturgy which goes "forever and ever, amen."

It is here where Adam Harvey's wonderful selection begins.

Here in the final pages of a chapter spent deriding him in the absolute lowest of terms, Shem appears (under the dramatic personage of MERCIUS) to confess his sins and reverts toward a sad self-hatred until, so perfectly demonstrated in Adam's peformance, the ever-forgiving, ever-renewing river mother suddenly flows through him: "O me lonly son, ye are forgetting me!, that our turfbrown mummy is acoming."

She carries news headlines, playful trickling splashy watery language, "as happy as the day is wet" and has "tramtokens in her hair," our "giddygaddy, grannyma, gossipaceous Anna Livia."

And with the affirming, renewing, forgiving mother energy having revived the reviled Shem, we get that magnificent juxtaposition against his brother's "deathbone" curse:

He lifts the lifewand and the dumb speak.

The final spoken "Quoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiq!" features seven repetitions of the French "what" as Shem revives the dead/sleeping human race but it also takes the sound of ducks quacking, presumably along the flowing river and perfectly leading into the next chapter, the famous ALP chapter of a thousand rivers (which you can hear Joyce himself recite from here).

Lastly:
Here is an interview with Adam Harvey by my good friend and the curator of the long-running Venice Finnegans Wake/Marshall McLuhan reading group, Gerry Fialka.

You can hear Robert Anton Wilson recite this passage and another from the same chapter in Part 2 of his excellent interview about Finnegans Wake.

What is Finnegans Wake? A Mysterious Black Cube

"Joyce's emblem for the book, untitled for years, was □" 

- Eric McLuhan

One of my favorite characteristics of the Wake is its self-reflection and self-commentary. While the book describes a set of characters who take on different shapes and forms throughout history (the Earwicker family) it also describes itself as a physical entity and what it represents in history.

The question of "What is Finnegans Wake?" should become a regular series here as there is no single answer. The book even describes itself in various ways. For now, let's focus on the image of the Wake as a black box or cube.

Right from the start, on page 5, "our cubehouse" is mentioned along with multiple references to the story of the Prophet Muhammad, suggesting the image of The Kaabah ("The Cube"), the black cube building in Mecca that is one of the holiest sites in Islam.

Page 13 has the great phrase "the mujikal chocolat box" suggesting a "musical" black box (the Wake is all about sound, music, awakening the ear) as well as a "magical" box of chocolates, from which ya never know what you're gonna get, exactly as with the Wake which later describes itself as a "beautiful crossmess parzel" (pg. 619) combining Christmas parcel and crossword puzzle.

Some more black cube references:

"kabbaks alicubi on the old house" (p. 34) echoing The Kaabah once more with the sound of "box" and "cube," comes a few lines after the name "Abdullah Gamellaxarksky" appears, Abdullah being the father of Muhammad.

"caabman's shelter" (p. 542) hints at the Kaabah and recalls the cabman's shelter to which Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus go toward the end of Ulysses. The image of a house or shelter also refers to H.C. Earwicker's pub, a place in Chapelizod where the real people (if there are any) exist in Finnegans Wake. Earwicker operates a pub, his family lives and sleeps upstairs.

"the cube of my volumes" (p. 151) is a good description for the medium of the book itself, a voluminous cube. In Joyce's notebooks, and in the Wake (pg. 299) he uses a square hieroglyph to represent the book.

On page 98, "the opulence of his omnibox" and then the recurrence of the word "pillarbox" (pgs. 66, 235, 442) also suggest a coffin, the coffin of Finn or Finnegan (or Osiris) and I think of the clever image on the cover of Roland McHugh's little book The Finnegans Wake Experience:

There we see the text of FW itself looking like a giant sepulture in the middle of a forest, waiting for some intrepid archeologists or anthropologists to discover it. (Looking at the image I always think of a quote from Joyce in which he lamented on the Wake: "perhaps in the years to come this work of mine will remain solitary and abandoned, like a temple without believers.")

The cube as representative of the physical book itself is part of the gist of another memorable and meaning-filled line:

"the canonicity of his existence as a tesseract." (p. 100)

There we have the embedded initials of HCE, the "city" (since HCE "weighs a town in himself" p. 132 and embodies Dublin), the "canon" of the book itself and finally that amazing word "tesseract".

A tesseract is a hyperdimensional cube, a cube within a cube, a geometrical shape also called a "cubic prism." A four-dimensional cube.

Now we're getting somewhere...

Meditating on this piece of geometry for a little while conjures up vague ideas about time as the fourth dimension and what Joyce was trying to portray with his opaque text written "from severalled their fourdimmansions" (p. 367).

During the composition of the Wake, Joyce used to boast that he'd squared the circle. This gif from wikipedia showing a rotating tesseract might gives us a hint as to what the hell he was talking about:

Could that be a representation of the repeating cycles of human history through time and space? What Joyce calls "Our wholemole millwheeling vicociclometer, a tetradomational gazebocroticon" (p. 614)?  The "sameold gamebold adomic structure of our Finnius the old One"?

In my copy of the Wake, I'd drawn a couple strange symbols next to the "tetradomational gazebocroticon" sentence that are essentially squares with spirals spinning in the middle of them. (Joyce once described the Wake as "an engine with only one wheel.") That, to me, is the ultimate symbolic representation of the Wake. But, if we are to take things to higher (hyper) dimensions, that whirling, mesmerizing tesseract would have to be it.

Last but not least, the visual representation of the Wake as a black cube, a mysterious black tablet, certainly seems in alignment with the black monolith of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In Kubrick's film, the mysterious monolith is seen as having an important role in the evolution and growth of mankind, moving from violent apes traversing a barren waste land to space explorers venturing through the solar system and beyond. Similarly, the Wake details the evolution of mankind from muttering cavemen groping toward language to the farthest advances of technology, "as modern as tomorrow afternoon" (p. 309), with the Wake itself seen as a futuristic, hyperdimensional cube that somehow contains or mirrors the "monomyth" (p. 581) or formula for human history.

Having identified a mathematical "monomyth" formula, Joyce describes his basic elemental characters being fed through a machine-like device "with a clappercoupling smeltingworks exprogressive process... receives through a portal vein the dialytically separated elements of precedent decomposition for the verypetpurpose of subsequent recombination so that the heroticisms, catastrophes and eccentricities transmitted by the ancient legacy of the past" (p. 614) can be extracted out, manifested in endless multiplicity. Thus Joyce created a piece of art that contains everything that's ever happened and everything that will ever happen ("how minney combinaisies and permutandies can be played on the international surd!" p. 284).

A confounding black monolith indeed.

As for the parallel many have drawn between 2001's black monolith and the iPhone.... well, Joyce already covered that one with the condensed single word "iSpace" (pg. 124).

"A Typographic Confabulation with Finnegans Wake"

Via the essential creativity blog Brain Pickings, an old out-of-print obscure illustrated book of Finnegans Wake quotes, entitled Id-Grids and Ego-Graphs: A Confabulation With Finnegans Wake. Even though I've been a fan of the Wake for only about 5 years now, I'm pretty astounded that I'd never come across this title anywhere until today.

Go check out Maria Popova's write up for lots of images from the book. Here's a sample:

Beautiful. 

Feels like a prefiguration of Stephen Crowe's artistic experiment with illustrating the Wake one page at a time.

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.