Finnegans Wake: where to begin?

Finnegans Wake, like its older, perhaps more famous brother Ulysses, is a text famous for its difficulty.

Reading Finnegans Wake can, at first, appear impossible. What are we supposed to make of this paragraph, for example?

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) 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.

We might start with the sound of ‘the fall’: bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk. This is one of Joyce’s “thunderwords”: words that are designed to aurally recreate the sound of thunder. The word itself is made up of the word for thunder from lots of different languages: badal from the Hindi, kaminari from the Japanese, toirneach from the Gaelic, torden from the Danish, and many more strewn throughout this gigantic new word. You can find more of Joyce’s thunderwords if you are curious.

Or we could look at what the fall itself represents? We have the fall of Adam and Eve into original sin after eating from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. This is most certainly a tale told ‘down through all christian minstelry’. But we also have another, very different kind of fall – the fall of Humpty Dumpty from the top of his wall. Joyce combines theology and nursery rhymes in a way that is both absurd and profane. Reading Finnegans Wake can sometimes involve this process of decoding or deciphering, and it can be great fun to locate the various overlapping references which make up the text. There are lots of books and resources you can use to guide you through these different references. We like finwake.com, a website that offers an interactive version of the text with annotations attached.

However, reading Finnegans Wake with the aim of total (or even partial) comprehension is not always particularly helpful. We might even have to change the way we think about reading entirely to make the most of reading Finnegans Wake. One approach that can be particularly helpful is to read the text aloud, thinking of the words as music to be absorbed rather than necessarily to be understood. It is not intended to be an easy read – as a reading group in the US have found who have continued to gain new insights after meeting weekly for 28 years!