The meaning of FINNEGANS WAKE 'captured' for the first time...

...in the real-time review by DF Lewis HERE



 Riparian and Repairian by Real Absence.

The Real Absence

Posted on Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - 04:11 pm:

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 I've just read and reviewed most of FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce who, like me, suffered from recurrent iritis. 
Why have I only read and reviewed most of it? Well, you'll have to read my review to get to the point of Real Absence...
http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/finnegans-wake-james-joyce/

Capsflap

CAPSFLAP n. An alternative name for the eye condition commonly known as iritis or uveitis.
 Derivation: Finnegans Wake: James Joyce (1939)

The Backwards Aladdin

Excerpt from my real-time review here of FLASH IN THE PANTHEON (Gloomy Seahorse Press 2014) by Rhys Hughes:-

The Backwards Aladdin
"You can't wish to be something you already are."
Absurdity gives birth to wise truths, often simply with a single ricochet from an infinite niddala of mutual rubbings by souls that possess things to be rubbed and with which to rub.
To be woken to each day by these Hughes' fictions is to wake indeed. Each a fastbreak flash to ignite my brain.
An aging brain, though. There's the rub.

Gary Budgen - Souvenirs from Sanctuary Street

Extract from today's real-time review of BFS JOURNAL #10 HERE:

Souvenirs from Sanctuary Street by Gary Budgen "...Captain Tomorrow whooshing over wartime London with its blimps and searchlights." Another new day in this review. On my regular morning constitutional today, I happened to take the above photo (on the seaside pier near where I live) before I had read this story, and it seems ideally suited to accompany it. I have come across this author's fiction before, I'm sure. Reviewed it, too. Once you have read this story, I'm sure you will agree it is an important one, important in itself and also important as part of the gestalt of this Journal's fiction and poetry. Although its genius loci represents more of an industrial town, one with an abandoned film studio and a bereft housing estate, the types of shops, a Punch & Judy show, a travelling salesman selling bathroom stuff etc. also make it feel like a seaside resort ambiance. It is indeed intensely atmospheric, telling of a well-characterised policeman, one who tries to avoid 'fusses'. And the story has another soaring image like the book's cover ... Soaring towards dreams, as many people do, especially the people here, soaring toward dreams, too, from an old-fashioned paper comic - along with a cyborg-like comic character, also tellingly along with the policeman's later poignant change of costume. All has a remarkably haunting deadpan, even dead-end, splendour, if that is not a contradiction in terms. I wonder if these characters, policeman, costume shop proprietor and wildly intent children will ever reach Sim's earlier version of God's Heaven and be similarly judged... (Loved the touch of the 'half of Mackeson'.)

Jamjoyance

I arguably coined these words and expressions: ‘zeroism, egnisomicon, egnisism’ in conjunction with PF Jeffery (1967), ‘whofage’ in conjunction with PF Jeffery (1973), ‘agra aska’ (1983), ‘weirdmonger’ (1988), use of ‘brainwright’ in modern times (1990), Salustrade (1992) use of ‘yesterfang’ in modern times (1997), ‘wordhunger’ (1999), ‘nemonymous, ‘nemonymity’, late-labelling, veils-&-piques’ (2001), ‘denemonise’ (2002), ‘megazanthus’, ‘weirdonymous’, ‘chasing the noumenon’ (2003), ‘wordonymous’, ‘wordominous’, ‘the-ominous-imagination’, revelling in vulnerability (2004), ‘a woven fire-wall of words’, ‘the synchronised shards of random truth and fiction’, ‘nemoguity’, ‘vexed texture of text’, ‘fictipathy’, ‘nemotion’, ‘the hawler’, ‘the angel megazanthus’, ‘klaxon city’, ‘horrorism’ when used as a word for the philosophy of horror fiction (2005), ‘publication-on-reading’, ‘antipodal angst’, ‘the tenacity of feathers’, ‘a writer’s mandala’, ‘wordy weird’, ‘nemophilia / nemophobia’, ‘magic fiction’ as the obverse of the more common expression ‘magic realism’, ‘weirdtongue’ as the ‘name’ of a language, ‘Glistenberry’ as an alternative name for ‘Glastonbury’, ‘tonguage’ as a ‘conscious’ language, ‘yester-eggs’ as a term for Proustian ‘selves’, ‘the parthenogenesis of reality from artifice’, ‘all is for the pest in the pest of all worlds’, ‘Baffles’ as fables with muffled morals (2006), ‘fanblade fable’, ‘abutting the if’, ‘word clones / word clowns’, ‘bumps for books’, ‘rite of review’, ‘cone zero’, ‘a basket of coinages’ (2007), ‘small press cover ark(ive), the baser pulps’ ‘orrorfaces’, ‘the wheel culture’, ‘netogenic’, the first fiction about a ‘drogulus’, ‘Innerskull’, ‘meganthus‘ (2008), ‘CERN Zoo’ in literature, ‘Real-Time Reviewing‘, ‘ligottum‘, ‘the pit and the pessimum‘, ‘ligottus‘, ‘fubbcuckle’, ‘extraneity creep’, ‘pillowghost’, ‘intowards’, ‘powderghost’, ‘nightmare’s moat’ (2009), ‘THE TENSES’, ‘scream munch’ as another word for ‘captcha’, ‘skight’ – threepenny bit, ‘invitations from within’, ‘novellatory’, ’Ress’, ‘Venn Dreams’, ‘Tearsheet Doll’, scanbuncle, A Götterdämmerung of Guts , Holistic Horror (2010), SFtopia, Salustraders / Overspacers, Novellarette, Inquel, Gaddafery, Jungian autonymity, sudracide, an impesto novel, trendbaffler, our planet as reliquary, fictionatronics, Lovecraftianisation, “To know the worst is also to know the best“, vignellarette, “Nothing is controlled by logic other than logic itself.”, nightgators, Horror Genreators, dicksplay, roman littoral, ghostalt, poltergeistalt, horrasy, Horrasy: The Horrastic and the Heuristic, srednibution, srednidipity, Lovecraftian indescriptivities, bememorise, alephantiasis, reva-menders, metapomorphic, rarifiction, neoloquism, Was the God Particle born instable? (2011), angelivalent, literal-meaning dreaming, the ‘Higgs boson’ of Horror, The Weirdonomicon, Aickmania, shortcomings harnessed are stronger than strengths unused, privacy-trawler, disarming strangeness in connection with Robert Aickman, Fiction is like currency: belief is everything, oblique concomitant / oblique contaminant, age at the edge, A writer should make clouds shine even if the world’s sun has gone, The Call of the Silly, pastilential, eschairtology, e-born, read-tangler, ghorror, the authorial cloud, grosmance, quixotiose, most placating is playacting, ‘friendly fire’ fiction, dilemmachination, absurface, aeontonomous, HobbYiSt / Hobbit, aeontonomy, Horror Without Victims, fuckerlode, Earkth, Pronoun Horror, The Ives of November, PreMonday-ition, NoV – No Victims, an amid-life crisis, God created Ground in His own image by adding ‘run’ to His name, Old boots are always better than no boots, truth is never brash, End tring, Tendring is Trending, HorNET Nest, The empty future expects our arrival soon, if you fit, wear yourself, The Worldwide Cliff (2012), quantitative kamikaze, The Ohm Resistor of Literature, Only real books can be left anonymously on chairs, The Sibling Thing (as monster), lachrymonics, Cold Sororist, Gangster Gongsters, Cathrian, Cathrianity, Cathrechism, the optimum delusion, dogstone as a form of ‘found sculpture’, iDEATH as a form of internet implosion of self, Judge me on my works, not on my request thus to judge me, dyschronous recurrence, Belarhombus, the Palimp’s Zest, abseil-surdity, paradoxilogically, Devolved Fiction, fratrinity, bock-hide, the Ligottian lurch, denouement or deligottiment, Does a Seraph suffer from Harpes?, AickMANN, RTRcausal, irrealoscopic, a Myth Pitch, Versionary SF, pallianthology, Historation Comedy, Holy Grailtrack, Born Ancient, Bringing the Dead to Book, urbographical, genius tempus, sabbaticess, the life-insider, the God in the Goblet, tsunami of humani (2013), broodband, jamjoyance (2014).

It was such a blowick day.

Extract today from my real-time review HERE of FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce.

Page 243
"...it was such a blowick day."
The wildest possible day for our island nations. Meanwhile, I have thought of yet one more of the captured 'captives' of FW, a group of pre- and retro-influences on FW, a group led by Professor Stanley Unwin (who I watched often on 1950s and 1960s b&w British TV) and this extra captive is the eccentric early goth-bangled Dame Edith Sitwell, who like Anthony Burgess (who in his own right was a composer of much opera and other classical music as well as writing Clockwork Orange, Earthly Powers etcicero), appeared on BBC TV Chat shows (she mainly in the 1950s) and she wrote much poetry, including for Walton's Facade, poetry that resonates strongly with the FW prose. I am now beginning to see JJ in FW as a 'captive' or 'captcha' himself, squeezed and flattened within an old-fashioned TV screen morphing into a computer social media Internet screen ... as he narrates from the narrative hospital some coded Jackanory stories for a sort of breed of Children of Midwich. If you are one such child, child-like rather than childish, you will be building for yourself an audit trail of a plot so much easier than anyone else, a plot that cannot be itemised or set out categorically, but a plot you surely are following by a brand of readerly instinct not commonly used, if at all, except in response to reading FW.

Here Comes Everybody!

HERE COMES EVERYBODY from 'Finnegans Wake' by James Joyce may become the motto of the Internet…..? MY review here
A book of captchas and FINISH BEGAN.

*

Gestalt Real-Time Reviews of Older Books

Rameau’s Nephew by Denis Diderot

Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot

The Inmates by John Cowper Powys

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

The Villa Désirée and Other Uncanny Stories by May Sinclair

War With The Newts by Karel Capek

Facial Justice by LP Hartley

PLUS links to my material upon:

A collection of my favourite passages from ‘The Glastonbury Romance’ by John Cowper Powys

My favourite passages from ‘Hidden Faces’: a novel by Salvador Dali

My website for Elizabeth Bowen, including my favourite passages from all her novel chapters and stories

The world’s first detailed review of all the published fiction works of Frances Oliver

Green Dolphin Country by Elizabeth Goudge – Links

The Book I Would Like To Be Buried With… Proust’s In Search of Lost Time

FINNEGANS WAKE – James Joyce

First Published 1939 – This edition 1975

As I am awaiting for a few books to arrive, having pre-ordered them, I thought I would give James Joyce’s FINNEGANS WAKE a revisit, for gestalt real-time review purposes, which would represent a follow-up to similar such reviews in recent months, eg Rameau’s Nephew and Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot, The Inmates by John Cowper Powys and The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. But FINNEGANS WAKE might be a challenge, too far! The passage below represents the first three paragraphs of this book, i.e. about two-thirds of a page, and there are 628 pages in total! But if I do continue with this public review it will appear in the comment stream below.
—————————————————–

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.

 

1. nullimmortalis

   
   

   February 5, 2014 at 1:18 pm (Edit)

   
   

   In the above quote of the novel’s opening, I have decided to remove any line-
   breaking hyphens and thus, as an example, line-breaking above becomes linebreaking. This may not be Joyce’s intention, but seems sensible as one cannot know for certain if any line-breaking hyphen is a real hyphen or indeed a line-breaking hyphen.
   It seems to me that one needs to absorb this text as best as one is able, without worrying about what it is intended to mean. Then one can hope that gestation in the reading-mind will facilitate some sort of meaning gradually to emerge. In other words, taking not just a run but a riverun at the text’s panoply of assonance, graphology and implied syntax but without meticulously prowling or grubbing around in each known word and in each neologism for the desperate hope of uncovering connective entrails of meaningful semantics!

   Reply
2. nullimmortalis

   
   

   February 5, 2014 at 1:54 pm (Edit)

   
   

   Well, I’ve read the text in this fashion up to page 10, i.e. up to a a whole paragraph with just one word, this word: “Phew!”
   It’s like immersing oneself in Professor Stanley Unwin and Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Cowper Powys all crossed with a Joycean automatic writing of a very rarefied kind, yet one knows that there is a linear sense flow being injected somehow straight into the veins of your brain. From the Aristophanic “Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax!” to a passage that happens to contain the word ‘whorl’ that I used this morning on my main blog in a post entitled ‘Craquelure‘ without realising I would be encountering the same word here. ‘The Synchronised Shards of Random Truth and Fiction’ IN ACTION, I’d say!
3. That passage:
   “He’s stiff but he’s steady is Priam Olim! ’Twas he was the dacent gaylabouring youth. Sharpen his pillowscone, tap up his bier! E’erawhere in this whorl would ye hear sich a din again? With their deepbrow fundigs and the dusty fidelios. They laid him brawdawn alanglast bed. With a bockalips of finisky fore his feet. And a barrowload of guenesis hoer his head. Tee the tootal of the fluid hang the twoddle of the fuddled, O!”

   Reply
4. nullimmortalis

   
   

   February 5, 2014 at 2:45 pm (Edit)

   
   

   Page 16:
5. 
   “Jute. — Yutah!
   Mutt. — Mukk’s pleasurad.
   Jute. — Are you jeff?
   Mutt. — Somehards.
   Jute. — But you are not jeffmute?
   Mutt. — Noho. Only an utterer.
   Jute. — Whoa? Whoat is the mutter with you?
   Mutt. — I became a stun a stummer.
   Jute. — What a hauhauhauhaudibble thing, to be cause!”
6. 
   [I have a friend called Jeff, and he has long had a set joke, whereby if anyone says to him: 'Are you deaf?' he always replies: 'No, I'm Jeff!']

Those who intend to follow this 'Finnegans Wake' real-time review over the next few weeks, months, years ... may also be interested in these links: .

A collection of my favourite passages from 'The Glastonbury Romance' by John Cowper Powys .

My favourite passages from 'Hidden Faces': a novel by Salvador Dali .

My website for Elizabeth Bowen, including my favourite passages from all her novel chapters and stories .

My review of 'Valiant Razalia' by Michael Wyndham Thomas .



. TO BE CONTINUED HERE; http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/finnegans-wake-james-joyce/

An extract: [[There is a plot to this book that several have tried to adumbrate over the years, a special Joycean language that others have tried to nail down with a single word of description, characters that chop and change, themes and threads that also chop and change, all of which elements the critics have tried to plumb (see the book's Wikipedia if you must).....But I contest that any attempt to plumb these things will come back to choke you. So I won't. I just know there is an experience to be had here and I hope by the time I reach the end such an experience will have become the whole of me rather than a part of me that I try to examine from outside. Examining life from within the same life, the mind from within the same mind, all doomed to failure - but Finnegans Wake itself is the only 'death' we shall know retrocausally. Our own death experienced after it has happened? We shall see or, at least, I hope, I shall see: "For dear old grumpapar, he’s gone on the razzledar, through gazing and crazing and blazing at the stars." (Page 65) Now reached page 69.]]

Infinite Fall

February 2, 2014 · 1:09 pm

Perpetual Autumn

I posted a blog entitled FOREVER AUTUMN HERE in September 2012, conveying some of my philosophy of life and literature. And this morning just after 5.30 a.m., the BBC Radio 4 weather forecaster stated that our Winter went missing and it was replaced by what he called “perpetual Autumn” – referring to the serial strong Autumn storms that have been besieging our UK islands for most of the Winter so far and into the foreseeable future.

For me, it seems apt to mention, in this context, Thomas Ligotti’s recent mass audience recognition written by Michael Calia in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), a recognition for Ligotti’s bleak philosophy. Death Anxiety plays a part in this – and probably in some of the Scandinavian fiction bleaknesses they often show on UK TV on Saturday nights – but here the WSJ article concerned something entitled TRUE DETECTIVE of which I have no experience (nor do I have any experience of the Scandinavian TV fictions, for that matter!)

Regarding his Fiction art in particular, Ligotti already had in my view a well-deserved mass audience recognition a few years ago with the Virgin paperback of his fiction entitled TEATRO GROTTESCO, a book that I saw in all manner of public places, at least in the UK.

And I am intrigued by this new recognition for his philosophical standing. Although believing such recognition to be well-deserved by Ligotti in respect of philosophy as well as fiction, I wonder whether — with his perceived tenets of such philosophy within ‘the Contrivance of Horror’ entitled THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE (CATHR) — the above heightened profile of personal recognition could be seen to be either counter-productive or irrational for his type of bleak anti-natalist philosophy: a dilemma I first raised HERE in 2007 before CATHR was published. (Ligotti replied at that time as shown on that link.)

I remain to this day open-minded about it and would welcome further input from Ligotti and others. If further thoughts of mine should arise on this matter, I shall include them in the comment stream below.
Meanwhile, I suggest that any writers who propound bleakly philosophical anti-natalism and so forth deserve name recognition for their writing where such recognition is deliberately sought rather than ideally or logically subsumed by the nihilistic subject-matter. Financial reward for such writers (as a symbol of such recognition or simply as a human pragmatic need) may also be a deserved consolation to appease their Death Anxiety that often remains otherwise unconsoled by the sublimated or distractive creativity of hard work employed in writing about such matters. Perpetual Autumn indeed, never Winter’s Death. Infinite Fall.

For the record, THIS was my real-time review of CATHR soon after it was first published as a book.

 

Tagged as CATHR, conspiracy against the human race, Michael Calia, Nic Pizzolatto, Thomas Ligotti, true detective, Wall Street journal