November 27th Gathering

Two forms of chocolate and two kinds of tea sent our gathering off to an energetic start, commencing with the ongoing dialogue between two kinds of brothers.

Present company included myself (Mitzi), Hosty, The Borrowed Beckettian, Mr Google, and the Two Northwegians.

Section: 191.5 - 195.6

Shaun in the guise of JUSTIUS interrogates Shem in the form of MERCIUS, and the latter almost has the last word, but for creatures of his literary conjuring that he summons out of muteness. Out of cuteness too, given that "the dumb" are most likely fluffy ducklings or chicks swimming around a lacuna of the Liffey river, brought so eloquently to life in Shem's final self-defense. 

A brief bookmark in our reading of this chunk of the Wake, the strength of European glue was considered, in the cases of many of our paperbacks losing pages to the climate-suffering adhesive. This is pertinent to my own copy of FW which splits at exactly this section, pages 194-5.

A further brief bookmark includes two reading recommendations from Hosty. Three Men on a Bummel and Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome and How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson. 

At 191.5, Shaun/JUSTIUS continues his upbraiding of Shem while their father (or 'liege') is out drinking. A first (that I've noticed) disturbing reference to Hitler ("heal helper") and a few references to Fingal. Patrimony continues here as a prominent theme. In complimenting a figure he refers to as Immaculatus, it's not super clear whether Shaun is praising a Shem-that-could-have-been, or a Shaun-that-was (ie himself.) I tentatively read the likable youth as a Jesus type, as he is "a chum of the angelets"; it turns out that Koranic references abound, and Mohammed is present as the "bosom foe", the phrase in brackets evoking The (anti-Muslim) Crusades ("not one did you slay, no, but a continent!). The language is also childish, evoking petty fraternal discord from the days of Shem n Shaun's childhood. Shaun accuses Shem of envy towards his prettier and ironically more legible brother (for a penman, Shem is a messy writer.Having his "speller" mussed at this early age must not have helped.)That may be too literal a reading, especially for a paragraph that invokes the tradition of Muslim "reporters", angels who weigh the faithful's good and bad deeds. Shaun's vision of the Good Child is so highly esteemed that the "reporters" want to play with him.

Page 191 also contains an adorable possum reference. Confirming the possum (latin, incidentally for "I can") as Australian is the delightful portmanteau on "fumtreeumption"; and we congratulated ourselves on our continuing gumtreeumption in reading the Wake.

Blatantly cruel, calling him "blethering ape", Shaun refers to the main stories that occur in the Wake, asking wether Shem has taken lessons from them: HCE/Marcon and the two girls; Buckley and the Russian General; Aesop's fables". Mean as this is, Shaun's castigation reminds us of the layered narratives of FW and that is recycled stories are like history: tales to take lessons from.

A hilarious image appears in "hatfuls of stewed fruit" and a cute new verb - "kittycoaxed" are unable to sweeten the demeanour of Shaun's critical tirade, who accuses Shem of failing as a Jesus or martyr figure; and this occurs in a surprisingly bracketed phrase, the punniest of the page - "bound to the cross of your own cruelfiction".

Your devoted blogger now has to desist from further note-taking due to sauna-like conditions. Suffice to say our session ended on a fine note, relishing the contrast between the "deathbone" and the "lifewand". The former, from Australian Aboriginal custom, curses the pointee with muteness, whereas Shem's lifewand (his pen, and possibly his penis, ew!) elicits speech.

Shem seems to trump Shaun's nay-saying and condemnation by invoking their "turfbrown mummy" and turning the tide of the tale back to the wonderful ALP for a respite from all that masculine posturing, easing us readers into the babbling waters of ... well, I think we're all just thrilled to have actually arrived at I,8, the episode of the glorious, gosipaceous washerwomen. With some luck, we might even see them on January the 1st and start the hot summer's year with our toes cooling in the water.

October 2nd Gathering

Here was a weekend meeting much afflicted. Some laid low by germs, and others triple-booked, out of town, and one even beating down the door of the inn but cad-like, was not let in as if HCE himself were crossly shooing away barflies; perhaps the collective earwhig prevented those engathered hearing the next visitor.

Nevertheless, a trio quorum did justice to macaroons and two pages of the Shem section, p186-188.

A brief note about donkeys, first. Asses have recurred to symbolise the Four Apostles (Mamalujo) and will be of greater interest to our group in the future. Also, the donkey is on the way to assuming mascot status, not at all in allignment with a certain American politial party, but rather to represent our plodding progress. When it comes to reading FW, we are donkeys, not thoroughbreads. We hope our hoofsteps are sure on the uphill and steady on the down, bearing heavy loads of scones, wine and cake as we make a slow but steady progress.

Our previous gathering in late August introduced Shem's sacriligeous mass, in which sham latin depicts Shem in the act of "foul clay". That latter quote is her eon p186 and also refers to the story Clay in Dubliners - in fact, all Dubliners tales are referred to here.

A censor, an authoritarian policeman, is referred to - he is the "blond cop", both blind and fair, possibly Dutch due to the presence of that language. Racial issues arise as Shem is associated with dark-skinned, downtrodden folk, but that's tangential. So the cop is meandering down the street after visiting his mistress (a "protoprostitute") and the term "pigeoness" as slang for "business" is slightly reminiscent to us (as hen fans) of the dove/hen female bird image, with a hint of a link back to ALP.

To harken back to the idea of censorship - which began on the previous page with a parody of the agonising, paranoid pre-censorship kefuffle that slowed down the publishing of Dubliners - there's a portmanteau of ligature and libel: "ligatureliablous". A sense here that censorship is responsible for stopping the flow, cutting off the creative process with fear of libel and censorship.

To the scene at hand: the cop is being solicited from brothel doorways: "rival doors of warm bethels of worships", which I thought referred to 'warm beds' in a humorously blasphemous way, as 'Beth El' means 'house of god'. In another interpretation, he looks out through the window (the "fongster", as in finestre) of the bawdy house/bordello, the "boardelhouse".

A difficult passage follows, and no answers are to be found in The Skeleton Key. As we have said before about Tindall, it is no good just summarising the easy bits. So our group may one day write a cook called "The Hard Bits That Skeleton Key Left Out" or similar.

There is talk of drunkenness and a little bit of tipsy dancing ("findingos") which I also like for the dingo reference, the second in FW at this count, but it's not quite certain whether the blond cop is drunk or if it's Shem (it's usually the latter), even though the cop himself is dodgy.

GC interprets 187.15 as starting with another thunderclap. It's a long difficult word with lots of plosive consonants that sounds thunderous. Plus, it's another voice of male authority from on high scaring a lowly man (the cop challenging Shem), which is the power structure of the voice of thunder in the Wake (neanderthal man conceiving of a god through the 'voice' of thunder.)

There is a hilarious reference to the winter seasons and some mythological mystery about he who pulls the "cold stone" from out of the sea (an interesting bath plug image.) Then the reference to Mercy and Justice sets up two equal Voices who will narrate in the ensuing pages. JUSTIUS (2nd last paragraph, 187) uses excessive alliteration on "b" to begin a condemnation of Shem. I just noticed that the introduction to this, "brawn is my name" rhymes with Shawn/Saun, Shem's nemesis and bossy-boots brother (that's my bit of "b" alliteration.) Part of the "b" confrontation has another bird reference, "I'll brune this bird or Brown Bess' bung's gond bandy". Brown Bess is a musket and reminded me of a huge canon in some sailing ship story, and the canon was named Bess. An interesting side issue here of the names of weapons, and when gender applies. Yet the roasting of a bird in favour of firearms again revisits the slaying of a peace symbol (hen/dove) for war.

What follows in a jolly "talkingto", a lengthy, hectoring lecture by Justius/Brawn to Shem who is now recast as Nayman of Noland. Wonderfully inventive interrogation of literary voice as the brackets (which we usually allow ourselves to ignore, which you may feel free to ignore by ignoring this bracketed rule) indicate that the "Judge" voice is going to speak in the imperative which is "the empirative", a too-clever wielding of colonialist authoritarian power trippery.

Shem is made to account for himself, but the lecture continues in the judge's voice. Where has Shem been "in the uterim"? As if in the interim, poor Shem has regressed. Knowing what we do now about Shem and his corprocentric ways, I am not surprised. The judge changes tack and adopts a paternal tone to his "little friend".

Shem is given the surname "McAdamson" as if he is Cain (the marked son of Adam.) Shem is advised to trust in the judge and deliver or confess a "nightslong homely little confiteor", which I also like to imagine could be another sigla for the Wake itself, it being a night long confession, though not always homely, and much longer than one night in the reading, so perhaps not at all. Yet Shem will need all the "elements in the river" to get himself clean of his sins and wrongdoing.

A sneak preview that begins with the delightful phrase "Let Us Pry" on page 188 shows that the hectoring of poor Shem continues more avidly, but that Mercius will provide Shem's defense later on. These passages remind us all keenly of the courtroom scenes in Circe. Once we got through the meanderings of the blond cop, we were mightily impressed by the ensuing slamming of Shem and wondering just how he is going to get out of this.

Next session is slated for November 27ish. Attendants are asked to sneak a peak at "Let Us Pry" on p188 or simply turn up and hope for more of the best.

Off the Shelf #2 FW Teems of Times

I am developing a serious spinal crush on the book series European Joyce Studies. Currently, the edition with the theme of time is causing a thrill. "Teems of Times", it's subtitled, taking the famous phrase from the Washerwoman section of the Wake.

Although my focus isn't exactly "on time" (punctuality, always a challenge) when it comes to FW, the essays are enjoyable. I'm particularly dwellng on the penultimate chapter by Simon Carnell. Not only has it pointed out an Australian reference (always a treasured rarity in Joycean studies), it has yielded juicy quotationals:

 "The evidence of Joyce's response to events in Ireland leading up to the establishemnt of the Free State is caracteristically limited, and typically ambiguous." p148, Carnell.

Off the Shelf #1 Inventing Ireland

Inventing Ireland is an absorbing book from Declan Kiberd. It's the go-to tome for first principles on Irish identity in a post-colonial frame. Very readable and broad in scope.

The chapter on Oscar Wilde (chapter two) is great. Even if it contains some ricketty academicky speke such as ... "So every dichotomy dichotomises". p40

H, C and E = S, E and C?

Last night on the radio, a recording of ex-Crowded House Neil Finn in interview mode prompted an interesting comment about music-making. Finn said that you occasionally have to go through hours and hours upon ages of working through a huge body of material in order for the most naturally simple song or piece of music to emerge. That is how he and brother Tim came out of many hours of playing with the foundation chords and melodies for "weather with you".

Tim Finns are clearly partyng in my subconscious: or my "subnesciousness", as Glugg experiences on p177 of the 2010 edition of Finnegans Wake. After ages of Finning around and starting work on my thesis, something juicily obvious emerges from Campbell's famous "Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake". On page 121 Campbell interprets the children's games chapter, and explains that Glugg sweaths a Dedalus-like oath to Silence, Exile and Cunning. Seeing the three words thus reprised in a Finn context makes you reread with Finn-wise eyes. I'm asking, suddenly, if the names HCE doesn't harken humorously somehow to the SEC of Stephen Dedalus's mantra.

It's that, and it's also just a result of basic overdosing on anything Joycean.

Cheng on Joyce

From the introduction to Joyce, Race and Empire ... Cheng interprets Joyce's anti-imperialist bent in suggesting there is, in the entire Joyce ouvre, a "systematic intent" towards representations of the need for de-clonisation. In alligning this approach with post-colinial criticism, Cheng uses the adjective "sensitive", in writing that Joyce's representations are "sensitive to (and answer to) the sociopolitical writers ... Gramsci, Said and Fanon.

I'm always curious about the way writers are linked onto the caboose of criticism, and this phrase, "sensitive to", is a nice way to do it, and away chugs the train. 

The venerable persoange who lent me the book suggests it is silly on Cheng's part to write: "a national, ethnic or cultural dentity (whether "Irish" or "Chinese" or whatever) is, to a large degree, itself a cultural construction that is not very easy to characterize."

Cheng presents historical racism in the race theorists of the late 19th century. Robert Knox of England, and also John Beddoe. Knox was scarily horrible, saying Jews "have not literature" (ahem, Bible much? That little thing called Psalms of David?) and equally as nasty to the Irish. "The race must be forced from the soil". Such pleasant stuff.

Later there is some discussion of hybridity and diversity in the racial roots of how Joyce saw himself and the Irish (Cheng 56) and linked this to Foucault who wrote about the "dispersed and related" manner in which history shows one order imposed on another culture. That there is always some of the Other in the Same. That the nationalist Irish approach to "Celticism" used the same essentialising of Englishness (leading down the 'noble savage' path, glorifying ancientness and singularity rather than mixedness.)

Kicking About with Kiberd

It is barely 9am and I have already found one point of disagreement with Irish critic, Declan Kiberd. He wrote in 1997 that the wrongs of the world cannot be write by a nation's teachers! As a teacher, I muttered a harrumph. Why else does one become a teacher, but to constantly put wrongs right and fight injustice in the micro as well as the macrocosm?

The real point of disagreement however was on the subject of teaching Irish language - the ancientness of it, its peculiarities and associated historical cutlure - in the classroom, to wit: "a culture is more likely to be mummified than revitalised in a classroom". From the Jewish perspective, which has constantly renewed itself for three thousand years and counting, this assertion is nonsnse!

Right, rant over.
Article: English in an Irish Frame" 1997

A new word

Feb 10 2011

Daedal comes from Latin daedalus, "cunningly wrought," from Greek daidalos, "skillful, cunningly created."

This entry makes me chuffed I signed up for a daily dictionary-derived insight.Not only have I added to my Joycean vocab, I have increased my vowel-dependant Scrabble skills somewhat.

The Creative Department: a poem (Feb 7 2011)

In amongst my reading of Joyce-related Australian criticism I have found a variety of Joyce-inspired poems.

A poem by Peter Steele caught my eye, it is on Eureaka Street online and can be found here.
It's a grand little bundle of verses that conducts a private conversation with the ghost of Joyce, asking the ususal time lapse questions of a "what on earth would he make of all this modern stuff?" nature. The poet walks Joyce around a jazzed up modern day Dublin, rubbing elbows, as it were, with "the cubs of the Celtic tiger". Another nice line conjures the fleshly world of the Wake:

"the mouth of your mind as fluent as the traffic by Trinity’s walls.",

a further reflection on my reading of the Joyce, whether solo or with the FW reading group - that to read Joyce is to get "mouthy" in the way that the text demands, and that the narrative is indivisible from speech.

Beginnings February 7 2011

Austlit, meet Joycelit (How d'you do?)

One the strands plaiting along here is the resonance between a European writer like Joyce and his faraway counterparts in Australia. One of the more interesting ones I find is Joseph Furphy and of course that most Euopean of influenced pianists, HH Richardson. I've read her novels apart from 'Maurice Guest' which is, ironically, her first.

Susan Lever has written extensively on HHR and here are her words on the novelist's reaction to the Joyce influence:

Maurice Guest explores the internal lives of its characters—the kind of exploration which  James Joyce and other writers would develop into a full-blown modernist style. Joyce's work provides an appropriate reference point for Richardson's fiction because his first book, Dubliners (1914) developed, like her earliest work, from a naturalist impulse; and his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) has similarities with The Getting of Wisdom (1910) which she was pleased to see noted by critics.⁴

 In this chapter of her book A Kind of Romance: Henry Handel Richardson's ‘Maurice Guest’, Lever is arguing that HHR's books bridged 19th century realism and the psycholigical introspection and self-awareness narratives of modernist literature. It's quite a neat bridge, but steers me back to Such is Life which is on neither side of that chronologically sound bridge, but splashing about in the river below. Furphy's "novel" is as much about experimentation as it is a romp through colonial Australian literary landscapes. It's a kind of pastorale circus, and an unusual precursor, in terms of the newish national voice, of the serious books of HHR which emerged later.

Book One continues Feb 6 2011

FW 1:7:176 Redux - Shem's games revised!

January 30th, a Haunted Inkbottle.
We the engathered enjoyed a hearty feast of Wakefulness. Looking back on what transpired at our June meeting of last year, I'm made aware that we have overlapped a little. Last time we appear to have arrived at the list of games (p176); this time, we backtracked to remember the lay of the land, but stopped again at The Games. This time round was a lot more fun for various reasons. A new member has joined (Welcome, LM), and there were no planes to catch post-pikelets.

Thus we plunged again into the world of Shem and his 'scriptural arguments' (172). We discussed how Shem the writer (penman) could be in his "bardic memory low" - has he forgotten on his poetry? The phrase is also prescient of our modern reliance on RAM. We also thought there may be a clue to Joyce's age on p173 and thought to check his age at the time of writing Shem (was he 'furtivefree yours of age'?)

Interesting in all things Indian, I was curious about "tamileasy" (173). I also liked the reference to bungled language and writing: 'the various meanings of all the different foreign parts of speech he misused". We all had the energy to dig into the rhythm of "the rigmarole", and the ink-marked pages of my copy of FW are testament of the excitement of the moment: discoveries, revelations and ludicrosity.

Book One (June 2010)

 June 20 2010

FW 1:7:176 A List of Games

Chapter 7 of Book 1 of Finnegans Wake is all about Shem, the twin brother of Saun. Shem is known as the 'penman', and suffers much caricaturing as a debauched writer, no doubt in an extended twisted tribute to the author's own self-image. The early part of the this chapter shows Shem asking young boys and girls a riddle, which is: "when is a man not a man?" The resulting answer is, "when he is a ... sham."

Shem is a fun and interesting character, interpretable in a number of different directions. His name is the Hebrew word for "name", and I'm sure semioticians have written about him being a self-describing sign. Shem's main quality in this section is "lowness", with references to his appearance, tastes and behaviours and there's a sense of him being deservedly ridiculed. It turns out that his main problem is that Shem is "in his bardic memory low" - that he suffers from some kind of writer's block.

A second problem occurs when Shem is caught up in a brawl between two warring teams. I am still researching the detail which result in this "personal violence", and why a list of children's games is brought up. Some of those games are clearly rendered punfully, like "Heali Baboon and the Forky Theagues", and "Fickleyes and Futilears". The game listed which mentions boots is "Here's the Fat to graze the Priest's Boots", with "graze" instead of "grease". The inspiration came from an article about boot-polishing, as boot polish was said to be used in the city whereas country people apparently used goose fat. A popular ballad about greasing the priest's boots was noted and the gloss for this detail is available here.

Bloomsday bloomed (June 2010)

June 17 2010

Our event went off "like a shot off a shovel" at our preferred venue in Glebe. Our event was promoted via our website and a few newspaper announcement and a radio spot. The upstairs room at the Friend in Hand Hotel was packed with standing room only by kick-off at 7pm. There were only minor changes to the program, with the omission of "The Ballad of Joking Jesus" reading and a change of readers for the 'Wandering Rocks' (comets) reading. Our understudy of choice was contact only hours before the event and read a fine rendition of the excerpt, getting laughs in all the right places, to wit, Lenehan on Molly, "She's a gamey mare and no mistaking it." That reader is a young actor named Zoe Norton-Lodge who will be performing in a one-woman 'Under Milkwood' at the Sidetrack Theatre in July.

Hosty introduced the night with a dedication to her mother who passed away last year, and also to Randolph Stowe, the great West Australian writer who died just recently. I have read a stage adaptation of his book 'The Merrygoround in the Sea' which is moving.

Then Bloomsday began in earnest with two readings based on Stephen Daedalus in those early chapters of Ulysses. I introduced all the readings bar the penultimate which was a duologue drawn from the Washerwomen chapter of Finnegans Wake. With the two of us reciting, it was difficult to use the basic, unidirectional microphone and not treat the performance as a real bit of stage shtick with full projection. Either way the audience responded positively to what Hosty jokingly called 'the easiest bit in Finnegans Wake', which is not far off the mark.

The audience became performers when many took a one-line part in our 'Circe' reading. This is a great bit of fun that we do a different version of every year. My general approach when adapting Circe for a group reading is to focus on Bloom getting himself in and our of trouble, and to explain how the chapter is written in the form of a surreal screenplay.

The night was a roaring success with folk coming from all over the city to celebrate Joyce, Ulysses and literary culture. Most drifted off into the chilly night inspired and contented to have travelled some familar and also undiscovered paths through 'Ulysses' and some also stayed behind to join in a singalong of the usual Joycean tunes, 'Down By the Sally Gardens', 'Love's Old Sweet Song' and 'Danny Boy'.

Bloomsday Approacheth (May 2010)

May 23 2010

This year our have Finnegans Wake Reading Group will produce a Bloomsday event. A pair of Joyceans managed to find Hosty and band together with her as producers. It will be a fine night packed with readings from Ulysses and a little bit of Wakean goodness. I myself with pair up with Wrist Strap McPhee to read the duologue of the washerwomen who turn into a tree and a stone by the riverside.