Ê[Image][Image]                        [Image]

Ê[Image]            Book through eternity junction
               [Image]
               "Literature is news that stays news."
               [Image]--Ezra Pound

          [Image]
          The Canon: The Four Main Works
          [Image]The following page contains information on Joyce's
          four greatest works: Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist
          as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. Because the
          experienced Joyce enthusiast is undoubtedly quite
          familiar with these books, I have designed this section
          with an eye on the beginner. So for those who already
          feel comfortable with his ouevre, forgive me if my
The       explanations appear overly simplistic -- remember, we all
Essential started somewhere; and "nicens little boy named baby
Canon     tuckoo" certainly raised our eyebrows no matter how
          postmodern we thought ourselves. . . .
          [Image]
          A Note on the Bibliographical Data
          [Image]I have provided simple information for each book,
          including ISBN and publisher. I realize that many of
          Joyce's works are out in several different editions from
          a myriad of publishers, particularly for those outside of
          the US. The criteria I used when selecting which editions
          to highlight were simple: they are the versions I own, so
          they may reflect a bias towards American and Irish
          editions.
          [Image]All the indented quotes in green are Joyce's own
          words, taken from his books and letters.
          [Image]
                              [Image]The Canon:
                          The Essential James Joyce

          [Image]
          Dubliners

          Everyman's Library, Alfred A. Knopf; ISBN 0-679-40574-7,
          Hardcover $15.00

               "My intention was to write a chapter of the
               moral history of my country and I chose Dublin
               for the scene because that city seemed to be
               the centre of paralysis. I have tried to
               present it to the indifferent public under its
               four aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity,
               and public life. The stories are arranged in
               this order. I have written in for the most part
               in a style of scrupulous meanness. . . ."

          [Image]A collection of short stories published in 1907,
          Dubliners revolves around the everyday lives of men,
          women and children in the Irish capital of Dublin during
          the late Victorian period. Although there is little
          action and almost no plot (a shocking and discomforting
          thing to their original audience!) these short stories
          stand as some of the finest written in the English
          language, and they explore an elusive spectrum of human
          emotion with a mesmerizing deftness that can only be
          called genius.
          [Image] The stories are minimalist in nature, painted in
          a limited palette of what Joyce called "scrupulous
          meanness." Colors are faded, themes of confusion and loss
          appear as constant lietmotifs, and the whole cycle of
          stories seems to spend its spare supplies of energy in
          dissolution and frustration. And yet, despite all this,
          they are not dull, repetitive, or even overly depressing;
          as a matter of fact they provide a very real sense of
          catharsis and often display moments of beautiful
          transcendency. Joyce weaves many of these stories around
          the thematic idea of the "epiphany," an idea he developed
          when he was writing Stephen Hero. As described by Joyce,
          an epiphany is "a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether
          in the vulgarity of speech or gesture, or in a memorable
          phrase of the mind itself," and they "are the most
          delicate and evanescent of moments." Each of the stories
          end upon one of these epiphanies, a moment when all the
          themes in the story find a sudden convergence, and
          through the character's thoughts, words, or actions, the
          reader is momentarily gripped by a quiet moment of
          realization -- a second where we perfectly understand one
          of the many facets of the human heart, for good or ill.
          The stories evoke the deepest and most intangible
          emotions; self-hatred, vanity, disillusionment,
          paraylsis, and regret are some of the principle states of
          being brought into focus; but there are also moments of
          joy, peace, and happiness; and a few haunting moments of
          nostaligia and bittersweet longing. When these epiphanies
          occur, the reader can almost physically sense a change,
          and time feels suspended as his mind undergoes a subtle
          rearrangement in perspective. It is almost impossible not
          to see yourself in each epiphany, each story a mirror to
          reflect one part of the human soul. As Joyce has said, ".
          . . Dubliners is about how we are everywhere -- it's the
          experience of modern urban life." Many of these stories
          have a way of staying in your mind, and it's often very
          difficult to shake off the mood long after the story is
          finished. Even years later, I occasionally find myself
          comparing an emotional state I'm experiencing to a
          situation from Dubliners.
          [Image]Although each story may stand alone, taken as a
          whole they form a powerful mosaic crafted from the tiles
          of paralysis and disllusionment, and each story's
          sequence in the book has been carefully planned. The
          stories flow, one into the other, building a powerful
          momentum that finally comes to a head in the last story,
          "The Dead," the longest story in the book. Of all the
          stories, this final one gets the most attention. I
          mention it especially because it is often read as a
          separate work, and while it remains quite powerful even
          when divorced from its companions, its impact is greatly
          intensified when read as the culminating story in the
          Dubliners. Indeed, in many ways it acts as the crowning
          epiphany to the whole collection.

          Advice for the First-time Reader
          [Image]Upon reading this book for the first time, I
          strongly recommend learning a little bit about Irish
          history, particularly Anglo-Irish relations during the
          late Victorian period. Joyce makes many references to the
          events outside the characters' lives, particularly Irish
          politics, religion, and music, and a basic understanding
          of these subjects can be very rewarding. I would focus
          especially on Charles Stewart Parnell, an Irish MP who
          devoted himself to land reform, working at odds with the
          British until his fall from grace. The "betrayal of
          Parnell" is a theme that appears in all of Joyce's works,
          and can often serve as a a key to understanding some of
          the psychology that motivates his characters. Many of
          them are partially defined by their reaction to Parnell,
          and the narrative invests him with an almost mythical
          resonance. (This would come to a peak in Finnegans Wake,
          where Parnell really is translated into mythical
          stature!)
          [Image]Many annotated versions of Dubliners can be found,
          but my advice is simple: study up a little on the
          politics, then just simply read the book. Reading these
          stories is an experience too delicate and too powerful to
          interrupt with constant trips to a reference work. That
          can wait for a second reading.
          [Image]
          A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

          The Portable James Joyce, Penguin Books, ISBN:
          0-14-015030-7, Paperback $12.00

               "I will not serve that in which I no longer
               believe whether it call itself home, my
               fatherland or my church: and I will try to
               express myself in some mode of life or art as
               freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using
               for my defence the only arms I allow myself to
               use, silence, exile, and cunning."

          [Image]Portrait, published in 1916, is certainly one of
          Joyce's most accessible works, but it also contains the
          seeds from which Ulysses would be born. Divided into five
          chapters, it tells the story of Stephen Dedalus. Each
          chapter corresponds to a different part of his life, from
          childhood through adolescence to the beginnings of
          adulthood. What sets this apart from other such "coming
          of age" books is how Joyce skillfully manipulates the
          narrative technique -- the language and syntax used at
          each point in the book reflect the age and intellectual
          development of Stephen at that time. This means that the
          book starts with the half-formed phrasings of a child and
          ends with the rebellious and occasionally inflated prose
          of an adolescent artist just beginning to find his voice.
          But through this tour de force of linguistic genius,
          Joyce never loses sight of the actual story: a young man
          growing up Catholic in Ireland, as Stephen matures he
          begins to rebel against his family, his country, and his
          religion. Finally, in order to establish himself as an
          individual and to find his identity as an artist, he
          seeks exile in Paris.
          [Image]As with many of his writings, the book is largely
          autobiographical. "Stephen Dedalus" is the name Joyce
          uses for his fictionalized version of himself, and
          Stephen appears in Portrait, Ulysses, and the earlier
          Stephen Hero, the earliest form of Portrait.

          Advice for the First-time Reader
          [Image]In this novel, Joyce really begins to make use of
          a style that incorporates hundreds of references to the
          "real" world around his characters, allusions that reach
          far beyond politics and religion. Historical persons,
          popular songs, advertisements, actual places, and
          contemporary events are hopped into the narrative malt to
          form a brew which can be, at times, quite heady and a bit
          disorienting. I recommend an annotated guide; I find
          Gifford's Joyce* Annotated to be particularly helpful.
          Again, this is only a suggestion -- the book can be read
          without assistance, especially if you don't need to know
          the the biography of every Christian scholar mentioned or
          the meaning of every French phrase that Stephen tosses
          out. I would still advise, however, that you gain a
          simple understanding of both Irish politics and the Roman
          Catholic church, again focusing on Parnell and the
          Jesuits. While "going in cold" is possible, like all
          Joyce, the book rewards a prepared and careful reading.
          [Image]
          Ulysses

          Modern Library, New York; ISBN 0-679-60011-6, Hardcover
          $22.00

               "It is an epic of two races (Israelite-Irish)
               and at the same time the cycle of the human
               body as well as a little story of a day (life).
               It is also an encyclopedia. Each adventure
               (that is, every hour, every organ, every art
               being interconnected and interrelated in the
               structuarl scheme of the whole) should not only
               condition but even create its own technique.
               Each adventure is so to say one person although
               it is composed of persons -- as Aquinas relates
               of the angelic hosts."

          [Image]Ah . . . this is it, this is the biggie -- the
          book where a "day be as dense as a decade," Ulysses has
          sent more beginning readers scrambling for cover than any
          other work since Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
          And why? Is it big? Yes. Is it difficult? At times, yes.
          Is it boring and dull? NO! Hell no! (Unlike Kant.) And is
          it impossible for the average person to read? Absolutely
          not! (Again, unlike Kant!) Speaking as an average person
          -- a chemistry teacher who has never once in his life
          taken a course on Joyce -- I can honestly say it is my
          favorite book, hands down. So what is Ulysses?
          [Image]Published in 1922,Ulysses is one of the most
          ambitious works in the English language. Its story is
          simple: it tells of the adventures of two men during the
          course of a single day. The first we meet is Stephen
          Dedalus (the semi-autobiographical character from
          Portrait), a young writer whose mother's death has
          precipitated his return to Ireland from a self-imposed
          exile in Paris. Our second protagonist is the indomitable
          Mr. Leopold Bloom, a middle aged advertiser and a
          non-practicing Jew who has never quite fit in with his
          Catholic countrymen. Bloom also comes to us with a few
          sexual hang-ups and a rather interesting wife named
          Molly, who is about to commit adultery with her musical
          director behind her husband's back: or so she thinks. The
          book is set in Dublin, and it covers the events of one
          day -- Thursday, June 16, 1904. (This day was special for
          Joyce because it was the day that Nora, his future wife,
          gave him clear indication she liked him. Um, at
          Sandymount beach. Er, when they were alone. Heh. You
          figure it out.) In the course of this day, Stephen
          discovers that he doesn't like his roommates, becomes
          discouraged teaching a class, gets in an argument,
          attends a birth, gets drunk, goes to a brothel, gets more
          drunk, pulls a Siegfried number on a poor chandelier,
          gets in a fight, passes out, talks for a few hours, and
          then goes to bed. Bloom, on the other hand, has
          breakfast, takes a bath, goes to a funeral, goes to work,
          eats, um . . . relaxes on a beach, gets in an argument,
          attends the same birth which Stephen is attending, then
          spends the rest of the day taking care of Stephen until
          he finally goes to bed, where his wife, fresh from a day
          of adultery, sleepily dreams of her life and her
          returning husband.
          [Image]Oh yes, and of course, the whole book is a
          parallel of the Homeric epic, The Odyssey. I mean,
          obviously.
          [Image]Well, or not too obviously; but that's half the
          point. Joyce employs the Odyssey for a basic framework,
          constructing the lives of his characters around this
          heroic model to create an ironic mock-epic, a parody of
          anti-heroes and common mortals. And yet Joyce's mock-epic
          is never mean, cruel, or even sardonic: paradoxically,
          Joyce brings out the nobility of his characters through
          their very failure to measure up to epic proportions.
          Indeed, there is more kindness, tenderness, love and
          forgiveness in Ulysses than in any other work I've ever
          read. And additionally, the Homeric parallels provide a
          convenient structure, and literary tradition (with a
          little prodding from Joyce) has taken to naming each of
          the book's eighteen untitled chapters after an episode
          from the Odyssey. Knowledge of each chapter's Homeric
          counterpart opens up a world of intriguing associations,
          delightful allusions, and delicious ironies, further
          enriching a reading of this wonderful novel.
          [Image]Ulysses is famous for many things, but none so
          much as its revolutionary prose. The narrative is
          mutable, plastic, fluid, and always surprisingly
          inventive, and Joyce uses style and technique not just to
          express the story itself, but to bring out different
          layers and counterpoints that would be impossible in a
          straighforward telling. If the plot is the melody, the
          narrative flow is the basso continuo of this baroque
          masterpiece, and Joyce uses it for an astonishing varity
          of effects. No device is left unused; and the style
          itself readily adapts to whatever mode best fits the
          situation. When Gertie dreams her romantic girldreams on
          the beach, the prose sprouts the flowery embellishments
          of a gothic romance. The narrow-minded conversations that
          fill the air of a nationalist pub are mocked by the
          narrative's tendency to break out into styles more suited
          for to narrowly focused arts of journalism, technical
          writing, and epic poetry. A chapter devoted to the art of
          music is written in a style that restructures language
          around a vast array of musical forms. And in perhaps one
          of his most virtuoso performances, Joyce forces his
          entire instrument -- the very language of the narrative
          itself -- into a sympathetic pregnancy that parallels the
          birthing scene it's assigned to narrate. Like a growing
          fetus, we watch the narrative evolve from its Anglo-Saxon
          and Latin roots through various stages of use --
          represented as stylistic parodies of authors from Milton
          to Swift -- until a thunderous birth into a modern
          whirlpool of polyglot slang. But even after this, Joyce
          is not finished -- the climactic chapter of the novel,
          "Circe," takes the form of a surreal drama, setting a
          stage upon which Bloom and Stephen's innermost thoughts,
          fears, and fantasies are brought to life in an
          hallucinatory trip through a brothel district, a
          Walpurgis Nacht in which all the day's themes are
          reintroduced, exchanged, remodulated, and brought to
          varying degrees of resolution. Virtually nothing that can
          be done with language is ignored; and many who feel
          uncomfortable in the absence of a straight plot and
          consistent narrative may find this book too "difficult"
          -- but only in that life itself may be considered
          difficult, and what we are willing to "put in" is
          proportional to the value of what we can carry away.

          Advice for the First-time Reader
          [Image]As wonderful as Ulysses is, it is still a hard
          book to read, and if you want to approach it seriously,
          it's best to be prepared. First of all, clear your
          reading calendar -- set aside a full month or two, at the
          very least. Accept the fact that you are about to
          undertake a project -- enjoyable and rewarding, but a
          little more demanding than curling up with an old
          favorite like Horatio Hornblower.
          [Image]I would also advice that you brush up on two other
          great works before you take on Ulysses: Homer's The
          Odyssey, which provides the loose framework for the book,
          and Shakespeare's Hamlet, which is discussed at length by
          many of the characters and forms the basis of one of the
          earlier chapters. You might also wish to read Yeat's
          short poem "Who Goes with Fergus?" This poem surfaces
          from time to time in Stephen's mind, and some of its
          images occasionally float through the novel. While these
          "prerequisites" are not absolutley necessary, they may
          help anchor you more firmly to the narrative and provide
          you with a few useful frames of reference. I also
          recommend that you pick up a guide or a book of
          annotations; Joyce makes a zillion references to outside
          events, politics, music, celebrities, and such, and it is
          often helpful to know what he is talking about. I
          recommend Blamires' New Bloomsday Book, which is a
          detailed walk-through, and more importantly, Gifford's
          Ulysses Annotated, which is sort of the Ulysses bible.
          [Image]Another thing I would like to add is this: Ulysses
          rewards multiple readings! Once you've made it through,
          it will become like a friend, always waiting on your
          bookshelf to provide you with a few quotes or even a
          re-reading of a favorite chapter. And each time through,
          the book grows more and more comfortable, eagerly
          revealing new meanings and fresh surprises. It is a
          labyrinth, indeed -- but one that you can cheerfully call
          home, and one whose delights you will treasure forever.
          [Image]
          Finnegans Wake

          Penguin Books, ISBN 0-14-006286-6, Paperback $11.95

          [Image]Finnegans Wake is one of the most controversial
          books of our century. Completed in 1939 after 17 years of
          labor, many people initially dismissed it as a waste of
          paper -- a tangled web of nonsense and gibberish, without
          plot, without content, without meaning. More than a few
          even questioned Joyce's very sanity!
          [Image]Why?
          [Image]Well, Finnegans Wake is not a standard book; and
          certainly not a novel in any real sense of the word. It
          even makes Ulysses look like Grisham. On the surface, the
          book is the story of a family; an amiable but strangely
          guilty husband and his forgiving wife, their lovely
          daughter and her two competetive brothers. Their tale is
          told during the course of one night, a night in which the
          father dreams, and his dreams dream dreams of their own.
          . . . and the dream encompass the whole of history, with
          all its races, religions, mythologies, and languages; all
          its loves and hates, enmities and affinities -- all
          melting and flowing into each other and all revealing the
          cyclical, unchangeing nature of life. Essentially,
          Finnegans Wake is a tale of the subconscious, that
          nebulous place with taproots into the collective
          unconsciousness of the human race. Here, time is
          collpased and finally annihilated, and all identities are
          mutable -- a series of masks to be shuffled and discarded
          as the need arises. And, like a dream, the book reflects
          this mercurial plasticty -- characters melt into each
          other, identities are in constant flux, and mythological,
          historical, and allegorical counterparts exist for
          everything and everybody: even the words themselves are
          impossible to pin down to any one clear definition.
          [Image]So how do you tell the story of a dream? How do
          you create a language that reflects the plastic and
          elusive logic of the subcionscious mind? Not an easy task
          . . . So Joyce did not use standard English. Finnegans
          Wake is told in a sort of dreamspeak, basically English;
          but all-inclusive and extremely malleable. All languages
          merge into the narrative, like a thousand tributaries
          streaming into the collective sea of English, swirling
          into each other as they forever change the chemistry of
          the body that recieves them. Joyce uses this charged pool
          to form a new atomic theory of language, smashing
          language into atoms and then rearranging the elements to
          form fresh molecules of meaning: a system of portmanteau
          words, Jabberwocky coinages, and complex puns fertile
          with multiple layers of meaning. The words themselves are
          charged, almost alive, and even exert a strage magnetism
          over other words near them, so one suggestive noun or
          verb will colour an entire sentence with related
          associations, ripples in a sleepy river as the flow winds
          forever on. . . .
          [Image]The end result is beautiful to read, but
          deliberately elusive to understand -- or at least to the
          waking mind, which so often demands an immediate
          comprehension based on a firm system of logic. To read
          Finnegans Wake this way -- which is, after all to read it
          normally! -- is to set yourself up for a frustrating
          disappointment. It is best to approach this new language
          with an relaxed mind, one receptive to the sudden
          metamorphoses and slithy slippages common in sleep.
          (Think about those precious moments before sleep -- the
          hypnogogic stage where images flow through your mind,
          relaxing and delicvate, so full of a heiratic meaning
          that immediately dissolves upon waking. Do we demand
          sense from these dreams? Or do we just accept their
          messages, quitely and without undue stress?) But unlike
          many of our own dreams, Joyce's great dream is still the
          product of a waking mind, and therefore has a very real
          message for us: and often, upon reflection, we find that
          the language does indeed make sense -- but a different
          kind of sense, a mercurial, playful, joyous sense that is
          hard to really explain. When comprehension comes, little,
          silent explosions of understanding detonate in your
          subconscious, blowing away the bridges and walls we build
          from language, and letting in the eternal flow of the
          collective unconscious. Finnegans Wake is near that
          primal stratum, where "countlessness of livestories have
          netherfallen by this plage, flick asÊ flowflakes, litters
          from aloft, like a waast wizzard all of whirlworlds."
          [Image]OK, so what about structure? Well, in order to
          accomodate both a sense of timelessness and to reflect
          the cyclical nature of history, the structure of the book
          is circular: ideally Joyce felt it should have been bound
          in a loop, and you could start reading anywhere, never
          really finishing the book, but passing around and around
          again, learning more, a spiral winding its way into your
          mythic subconscious. ("Language is a virus," whispers
          William S. Burroughs. . . . ) Indeed, the book begins in
          the middle of a sentence -- which turns out to be the
          first half of the final sentence in the book.
          [Image]So what about a plot? Is there even a plot at all?
          [Image]Well, yes and no. There is definitely a "surface
          level" to the book. In Ulysses, Joyce used a Homeric
          parallel to frame the actions of his cast of Dubbliners.
          In FW, he uses Viconian theory to frame a family and
          their fortune. But even this is not as simple as it
          seems, for there are several layers to this surface level
          as well! The first is the most simple, and may be taken
          as the "waking world." One Mr. Porter, the owner of a
          tavern in Chapelizod, his wife, his daughter, and his two
          sons, Kevin and Jerry seem to form the principle cast.
          Mr. Porter is dreaming at night, and all through the book
          we hear the tap tap tapping of a branch at his window.
          But this book does not concern itself with the waking
          world, so the Porters are hardly the protagonists; and
          besides sleepily checking in on his sons and making
          groggy love to his wife in the early morning, we really
          don't hear much from the dreamers. Let's move to the
          second level: in his dream, however, Mr. Porter is
          Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, and his wife is Anna Livia
          Plurabelle. Earwicker is of Scandanavian stock, and is
          something of an outsider in Dublin. (Shades of Bloom?)
          Apparently he feels guilty of two sins: one, he was
          observed peeping (or exhibiting himself, it is never
          exactly clear) at two temptresses in Phoenix Park, where
          he was unfortunately observed by two soldiers. The other
          is a slight feeling of incestous desire for his daughter,
          Isabel, who reminds him of her mother as a youth, and
          consequently of his own faraway youth. Yes, HCE is
          getting older, and mortality is very much in his mind.
          His sons -- Shem and Shaun -- are opposites; Shem of the
          artistic temperament, and Shaun of the political. There
          is also Kate, an elderly servant, twelve men who frequent
          his tavern, and four old men who appear in the capacity
          of judges. And so now we get to the third iteration down
          this fractal. Here we begin to add mythological
          associations to the characters, and we discover that
          identites flow like water. Joyce does, however, provide
          us with one anchor -- initials. HCE pops up in many
          places and under many guises, but there is usually and
          occurance of the initials HCE to warn us. Same with ALP.
          Well, on this third level, HCE becomes something of a
          debased Zeus-like figure, a hero who sails in after the
          close of the age of titans. The titans? Oh, yes, of
          course -- the book begins on this note, with the Fall of
          Finnegan. What?
          [Image]I told you this would get tricky. Joyce structured
          his book around the cyclical history theory of Giovanni
          Vico, an Italian philospher who saw history as four main
          cycles: the mythic-theological, the heroic-aristocratic,
          the human-democratic, and the chaotic ricorso, or return.
          The turn of the cycle was heralded by the thunderous
          voice of God, which accompanied a Fall -- a Fall which
          precipitates the next Rise, and so the cycle turns again.
          The structure of Finnegans Wake follows a turn of this
          cycle, hence its four sections, each one representing an
          aspect of Vico's cycle. Well, Joyce's main emblem of the
          past mythic cycle is Finnegan, who in his "waking"
          manifestation is the famous hod-carrier from the old
          "Finnegan's Wake" song, who falls off a ladder and dies,
          only to be resurrected when someone spills whiskey on his
          lips at his wake. Finnegan's mythic counterpart is Finn
          MacCool, the giant from Irish history, whose fall opens
          the novel and sets the stage for the coming of HCE, the
          way the titans had to be cast down to alow the gods of
          Olympus their moment, or the Teutonic gods had to have
          Ragnarok's GštterdŠmmerung to allow an age of man. . . .
          So essentially the book opens at the very end of the
          mythic age, which is where it also closes -- remember the
          circular loop?
          [Image]Now back to the mythic and historical aspects of
          our illustrious cast. In his mythic aspect HCE is Adam,
          and Noah, and Moses; he is the Flying Dutchman, Persse O'
          Reilly, and even Parnell; -- he is the Patriarch,
          representative of the Heroic age, who must one day
          himself fall to allow his sons their moment in time. But
          HCE is stained by guilt, and his sin in the park and his
          "insectuous longing" burden him the stain of "original
          sin." This usually manifests as a stuttering; and as the
          rumours about him spread through this dear dreamy Dublin,
          he will eventually be sentenced to a similar Phall as
          Finnegan's. His wife, ALP, is all women -- and all
          rivers. She is forgiving and healing, Eve and Isis and
          Mary. It is her job to start youth as a fresh, tempting
          spring and flow on through riverly status to finally wash
          the filth of the cities of men back into the arms of the
          great ocean -- where she is taken to the heavens (via
          evaporation) and returns again, the eternal feminine, In
          her younger emanation she is Isobel, their daughter, who
          mythopoetically is Iseult, Tristan's illicit love, and
          represents temptation and youth. She is also the twin
          temptresses in the park. In her older aspect she is Kate,
          the crone, "ygathering gnarlybird," who picks up the
          pieces of man's fall in preparation of their eternal
          renewal. But it is Shem and Shaun that get the most
          attention in the book -- these warring brothers are all
          warring brothers, and they pass through enough
          mythological permutations to dizzy the brain. Shem
          usually represents the artist, and at times stands in for
          James Joyce himself. (In one chapter Joyce, as Shem the
          Penman, parodies himself brilliantly!) Shem's job is to
          uncover the Word, to reveal the naked truth about
          humanity, and he is often vilified for it. Under other
          guises he is Mutt, Glugg, Nick, or Lucifer. Shaun is the
          Postman -- his job is to deliver the Word, but he by
          nature changes it, censors it, manipulates it. He is
          politician and warrior; and often despoiler. In other
          guises he is Jute, Yawn, Jaun, Chuff, and the Angel
          Michael, and he is the Yang to his brother's Yin. But
          both alone are incomplete -- they must resolve themselves
          in the Father, in HCE.And don't forget the twelve
          pubcrawling wakegoers, who seem to represent society; the
          four old men, annal-chroniclers and all-judges, including
          Matthew Mark Luke and John; and the three soldiers, who
          become the various forces of invasion. . . .
          [Image]Ah, yes . . . and the forth iteration? The next
          layer? Well, I better stop here before I end up outlining
          the entire damn book. Let me just say that HCE, ALP,
          Shem, Shaun and Izzy have quite a lot of other
          adventures, and over the course of the night their
          permutations mirror the turning of a Vioconian cycle.
          There are dreams within dreams, letters within letters,
          and even a complete drama -- a drama which out-Gonzagos
          Hamlet, because in this play, the characters are played
          by actors, who themselves are portrayed by Shem and
          Shaun, who are of course manifestations of Jerry and
          Kevin, who are being dreamed by HCE, who is being dreamed
          by Mr. Porter, who is -- ultimately! -- being "dreamed"
          by James Joyce!
          [Image]At this point I would like to add that Carl Jung
          believed Joyce was writing Finnegans Wake to stave off
          impending schizophrenia. Oh well. . . .

          Advice for the First-time Reader
          [Image]Finnegans Wake may not be the most accessible book
          ever written, but it has many enthusiastic supporters,
          including Samuel Beckett, Joseph Campbell, John Cage,
          Robert Anton Wilson, and Murray Gell-Mann, the scientist
          who developed the quark theory of matter. (He drew the
          name "quark" from its pages!) And of course, little old
          me.
          [Image]There are several schools of thought on the best
          way to read Finnegans Wake. Some think you should gird
          yourself with reference books and annotations, and dive
          in like a scholar on an archelogical dig. Others feel
          it's best to just read it, passing over what seems like
          nonsense and savoring whatever passages you find
          striking. Others even feel that you should read the book
          out-loud -- and, in truth, many of Joyce's puns are
          revealed in that way. My recommendations?
          [Image]Hm. All of the above, and all at once --
          naturally. How else would you read a book like Finnegans
          Wake?
          [Image]
          The "Joyceworks" Pages
          [Image]This section is the heart of the Brazen Head. Here
          you will find a wealth of information about James Joyce's
          style, information about his complete works, and some
          advice for the first time reader. As this is a pretty
          tall order, I've taken the liberty of breaking it up into
          separate sections:

          Book through eternity junction-- Back to the "Joyceworks"
          main page. There you will find the standard Brazen Head
          menu.

          The Artfull Eye-- "Why read James Joyce?" A somewhat
          fanatical essay on Joyce, his works, his importance, and
          why people write somewhat fanatical essays about him.

          Quailigans Quake-- A small essay on Joyce's narrative
          technique, and a few general words of advice on how to
          first approach to his work. This is, essentially, a
          continuation of the "Artfull Eye" essay.

          The Minor Arcana -- A listing of Joyce's "lesser" works,
          including his poetry, Stephen Hero, Giocomo Joyce, and
          Exiles. Each entry includes a short synopsis, and a few
          words in way of a review.
          [Image]
          ----------------------------------------------------------

          Lash/Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh --
          Send email to the Great Quail -- comments, suggestions,
Ê[Image]  corrections, criticisms, submissions . . . all are
          welcome!

                                                            [Image]
                                                          --A. Ruch
                                                   18 February 1999
                                                           [Image]