![]() ![]() I’m not sure that he felt this, specifically, but to me, one of the feelings I get from this extraordinary book (that starts mid-sentence, and also ends mid-sentence) is that we are all one. Joyce’s interest (obsession) in language was the main driving force here. There are sections in Polynesian, Dutch, Lithuanian – and many many more. Joyce incorporated over 70 languages into the book – and, naturally, there are great “keys” out there, that track down all of Joyce’s influences. The entire thing is, apparently, a dream of our lead – if you can call him that – Earwicker. Where things can be nonsensical and yet logical at the same time. The entire book is made up of puns, word association games, interweaving webs of connections – He said that since Ulysses, except for that last episode, was a “daytime” book, this one was going to be “nocturnal”. The book cannot be said to be written in English – not strictly – although it’s amazing how much sense it does make, if you surrender to it. Because of the atomic bomb of Ulysses, people were, naturally, anxious to the point of apoplexy to see what Joyce would come up with next. For many years during that time it was just known as Work in Progress. ![]() ![]() Joseph Campbell wrote, in regards to Finnegans Wake, “If our society should go to smash tomorrow (which, as Joyce implies, it may) one could find all the pieces, together with the forces that broke them, in Finnegans Wake.” James Joyce worked on this, his last book, for 17 years. ![]()
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