Finnegans Wake - the perfect pool book pp.339-370

This section, comprising another dialog, this time between Butt and Taff, is really thoroughly challenging and engrossing. I found that it was best read in solitude at the swimming pool on a very quiet afternoon, so that I could heads-down read aloud in my faux Irish accent with 100% concentration.

Although this is supposed to be one of the easier chapters, it isn't. It requires complete concentration to decipher the descriptions of Butt and Taff before each of them speaks and the utterances of the two.  This section you just have to ride along on.  I feel that I really need to read it again, probably a couple more times.

We are situated here in HCE's pub, listening to the dialogue, a dispute between the two brothers and some extensive, mellifluous description.

Pages 332 - 338 chap 10 - focusing on p 332

So now, by way of personal autobiography, I'm a person who is lost (geographically) wherever it is that I am.  Sitting here at home, I really can't say offhand which way is North, South, East or West. Often, walking in my neighborhood, I  become disoriented as to direction.  This is a constant with me. I used to find new places by approaching in narrowing circles, continuing to observe till I came to the place I was seeking.

I have found an analog in Finnegans Wake. In it, I am always lost.  "Where am I?"  "Where are we going?"  "What is our destination?"  Each page, chapter and passage presents me with these conundrums.  I was just experiencing this on page 332.  I read over it, totally lost, then circled back and around several times picking up clues, piecing things together.  (As I say, every page of FW is like this.)  I found that we were again at the point where Finnegan is about to fall from the ladder and the pub is making commentary on him (H. C. Earwicker, the pub owner).

Some of the verbiage from page 332:

a new thunderword:  

Pappappaparrarassannuragheallachnatullaghmonganmacmacmacwhackfalltherdebblenonnonthedubblandaddydoodled

Some interesting other words and phrases from page 332:

gaauspices

plasheous stream

oathmassed fenians

cataraction

"While the cit was leaking asphalt like suburbiaurealis"

"mongan macmacmac whackthredebble non the dubbland addy doodled"

So, it seems to me that I have experienced frequently the following reading patterns with Finnegans Wake, multiple times:

          1. Travelogue (?)  Dwell on and circle around on a page or passage gathering more and more                   from the text as I inspect it.

           2. Read entirely for sound (the musical and sound quality of the text when read).  In this mode,                 content seems totally absent.

           3. Read for narrative - the text pushes the story along (albeit in an abstract fashion)

           4. Read for pure mental exercise - this happens quite a bit. You read along, deciphering word                  by word (some times word internals / phonemes / morphemes one at a time), paragraph at                    time.  This is like puzzle / research mode.  You read along, deciphering all the piece-parts.

Chapter : pages 281 - 298

Okay. Well now I seem to have stumbled across the most difficult (for me) page of the book so far, page 298.

It seems to me highly inscrutable, so I will need to go to the Annotations book and work through a bit at a time.  For instance: "Quicks herit fossyending. Quef! So post that to your pape and smarket!" It then sort of goes downhill from there.

This is reputably one of the more difficult chapters of the book, therefore I would assume, one of the more difficult chapters of all time. I will soldier on.

This page is rather immune, even to reading aloud.  I can only read it very haltingly.  The syntax is all jobbed up.  Very strange.
.

PAGES 309-330 in the Tavern with Humphrey

This section is very humorous with people back in the tavern ragging on HCE.

I have to say, the section from page 326-329 is one run-on sentence that goes on for 3 pages and hundreds of words.

I just want to say how difficult something like this is to achieve with the humor, flair and meaning that Joyce brings to the page. I am continually being buffetted by Joyce in this book with this sort of recurring tour de force.

I keep thinking "THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE! HOW DID HE DO THIS?"

Chapter 9, pages 260-280  pertaining to the children's education

So, this chapter focuses in on the medieval idea of education, being the "Trivium" and the "Quadrivium" and on the education of the children from the Children's Hour of the previous chapter.  It generally wanders off into the history of the world, creation and so forth.

The chapter has a "The House that Jack Built" (the repetititive memory-testing nursery rhyme) which shows up in variations throughout the section.

The section, in this regard, echoes Swift again, with the idea of a children's tale, but also in the use of extensive footnotes and annotations in a work of fiction.  This chapter has extensive footnotes throughout and annotates on the left and right margins, Shem commenting in the left margin, Shaun in the right margin.  I wanted to quote one footnote, which illustrates the creative nature of this conceit on Joyce's part. (Nabokov took this too its illogical extreme in his novel "Pale Fire"). Here is the footnote from page 279 of Finnegans Wake - its a real showstopper:

This is approximately one third of the footnote

1. Come, smooth of my slate, to the beat of my blosh! With all these gelded
ewes jilting about and the thrills and ills of laylock blossoms three's so much
more plants than chants for cecilies that I was thinking fairly killing times of
putting an end to myself and my malody, when I remebered all your pupil-
teacher's erringnesses in perfection class. You sh'undn't write you can't if you
w'uld'nt pass for underdevelopmented. This is the propper way to say that, Sr. If
its me chews to swallow all you saidn't you can eat my words for it as sure as .
there is a key in my kiss. Quick errit faciofacey. Whan we will conjugate to-
gether tolosher tomaster tomiss while morrow fans amare hour, verbe de vie,
and verve to vie with love ay loved have I on my back spine and does

Chapter 8 Anna Livia Plurabelle / Washerwomen and Book 1, Chapter 1 - The Children's Hour

Chapter 8 introduces us properly to Anna Livia Plurabelle, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker's female counterpart and analog to Eve, Iseult and other iterations.. A very lyrical opening, more poetic than other sections.  We then segue into dialogues and utterances of washerwomen along the Liffey, with the text changing in accordance with the distance across the river as we proceed downstream.

Book 2 Chapter 1 - introduces children to the novel - they play and talk prior to bedtime. The devil makes an appearance, trying to sway the children.  Some really incredible word invention breaks out on page 251 (as well as throughout).  Some examples:

autamnesically

apophotorejected

thisworlders

liquescing

angelhood

murkery viceheld

lapspan

wishmarks

monitorology

exaspirated                (exasperate + aspirate)

femaline                    (female + feline)

Some good stuff!

on page 254  we find the word  "ricqeracqbrimbillyjicqueryjocqgolicass"  which incorporates sexual intercourse and pregnancy

and then on page 257 we find "Lukkedoerendundandurraskewdlyooshoofermoyportertooryzooysphalnabortansporthaokansakroidverjkapakkapuk"  which includes about 10 ways of saying shut the door (to the devil) in a variety of languages.  Pretty good.

These portmanteau and hybrid words, especially the incredibly long ones are a hallmark of FW and keep the mind engaged on multiple levels throughout.