Resolved: Finnegans Wake

Apologies to The Devoted Three and others. Your humble correspondent has been less than chipper since the start of the New Year, and the strain of staying awake at least 8 hours a day, and multitasking things like breathing and walking, has taken its toll. But let’s not dwell on these things. My apologies for last week’s silence and on to the next bit.

I have only three real goals for 2009. The first is to be more active. Challenging my daughter to Wii Tennis and Wii Golf until she beats me steadily is all part of a grand scheme to get her to want to take on Real Golf or Real Tennis in the Real World. The second is to take my daughter to New York over Spring Break as a sort of Wilde Rite of Passage. In New York, all things are possible, and for more than 100 years American women have gone to New York to test their mettle and make something of themselves. It’s a city ideal for visualizing what a future might be like, for drawing strength from the sidewalks, and inhaling possibility as well as exhaust fumes. I think 13 is good age to look at a city full of wonder and potential and maybe, hopefully, start to see the potential within as well.

Finally, the big aspiration for 2009: To finally, at long last -- no excuses -- read Finnegans Wake. I’ve actually had people ask me why I would want to read Finnegans Wake. They have asked me why, if I’ve set this book aside four times before, I want to pick it up yet again. To me, The Wake is the book beyond other books, beyond the confines of the novel, beyond plot, character, narrative, point-of-view, all those things they teach you about literature and writing classes. It’s writing in English, but it’s English As Another Language. It’s thought and dream; it’s words painted by Picasso; it’s a story, or two or three, told by Thelonius Monk. For a person partial to works from the first half of the 20th Century, it is the next step, the final evolution of that art form. From the era of Jazz, psychoanalysis, dadaists, and cubists, the frontier is reached in Finnegans Wake. New words are formed, the words between the words, much the same as Monk strived for “the notes between the notes.” The language -- a mix of many languages, puns, and portmanteaus -- when read aloud, has a distinctive pattern, a musical score that accompanies the assorted images. Figures appear, disappear, and reappear, creations emerging, submerging, and re-emerging from the primordial ooze of the creative process. It is not a novel, but it is a vision, a challenging vision from one of the world’s most interesting writers. That is the call of The Wake: the glimpse of the genius behind it.

With every page, there are a dozen puzzles, some several layers deep – how many can you solve? How far into Joyce’s mind can you drill? No one has yet made it all the way, that we are sure of, anyway. Joyce said he wrote The Wake for a dozen or so scholars to argue about after his death. Joyce died many years ago, and those dozen or so scholars have been replaced by newer, younger versions, but still they debate – was The Wake meant as a just a joke, what was Joyce trying to say, what was his aim and objective – no closer to a definitive answer than ever. I think for anyone who reads The Wake there’s a test – how much can I draw from it on my own, when do I go for help, or do I commit the ultimate cheat and only the read the words – page after page, with little comprehension – until I reach the last page, which is not the end, but the beginning (The Wake famously begins mid-sentence, with the first half of the sentence on the last page of the book, making the whole story circular and “beginning again”).

During other attempts, I’ve sat with the text on one side of me, a guide on another side of me, and a dictionary somewhere near the floor or the night table – within reach. On other attempts, I just read through trying to grasp what I could and not trouble about the rest. But this time, I think I am most prepared, most equipped. For one thing, I don’t expect to breeze through it in a few weeks, or even a few months. 2009 is my Year of Reading The Wake. I’m better read than during earlier tries – I’ve read Pynchon, Calvino, and Garcia Marquez, lots of other writers who put forth their own challenges to the reader. I’m older and I’ve done more living, had more experiences, come across more people and more ideas. I’ve got the internet! That wondrous combination reader’s guide/dictionary/encyclopedia, small, portable, always at my finger tips. I don’t expect to have the definitive experience of reading The Wake – I don’t think I’ll unravel the enigma – but I think I’ll make it back to the beginning this time and feel that I’ve read the book and not just looked at a great number of words.

So, like the mountaineer scaling Everest, I begin my ascent up the cliffs of The Wake once more. Maybe “because it’s there,” but more likely for the experience of stepping off the beaten path, veering from the safe and well-traveled road, to see the view few have seen and marvel at it all.

On doctor’s orders, A Literary Cocktail is on the wagon owing to an ailment in no way related to martini consumption, but after falling down a set of stairs completely sober, one doesn’t like to tempt fate. To honor Frau Doktor, I give you…

The Baby Bellini

Ingredients
2 oz Peach nectar
Sparkling Cider

Method
Pour Peach nectar to chilled champagne flute, top with sparkling cider. All the glamour of the Big Girls’ Bellini, but safe as flat shoes on the subway stairwell.