For the umteenth time I started FW yesterday. This explanation from Burgess is fantastic

The more he drinks the Guinness the more Irish he sounds lol 😂

James Joyce was an highly intelligent man, I think we all can agree. Had he wanted Finnegan’s Wake to be intelligible, certainly he could and would have written it so. All the parsing and all the glosses are interesting but ultimately they are irrelevant. This book is a metaphor for human existence. All of us spend our lives with a giant question mark over our heads, and we die with the question unanswered. Of course we can find beauty and joy in our mysterious existence, just as a reader of the Wake can appreciate the music and the spirited play of Joyce’s language. But what it all means is completely obscure. The key to this novel is contained in one totally intelligible sentence: “Patience is the main thing.” Obviously Joyce felt it was important for us to comprehend that. Whether reading the Wake or living your life, patience is the main thing. So keep trudging onward, enjoy what you can, accept the incomprehensibility of it all, and above all don’t fret, because, however difficult it may be, you will soon come to the end.

It also should be noted that the Lethe is a River in Hades which prepares the souls of the dead for their reincarnation in a physical form by erasing all the memories of their past life. It symbolizes the cycle of death and rebirth.

I keep coming back to this as I'm completely fascinated by Joyce. The Wake is on my reading list along with A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. Ive been completely in awe of JJ since reading Dubliners, Portrait & Ulysses. You could easily spend the rest of your days on earth studying his work

I'm sorry that someone with such a profound command of language believes that there is anything behind Joyce's gibberish. Only someone who spent too many years in the academy could delude themselves into thinking there's meaning there.

In one of their concerts, the Clancy Brothers sang Finnegan's Wake, with an introduction explaining how Joyce saw in it "The entire cycle of life, birth, death and resurrection!" I had no idea they also contributed the music to Burgess analysis of the book! I wonder if they discussed this much with Burgess?

Very little is ever mentioned about the fact that Joyce spoonerized the title of a smutty under-the- counter little nasty called Winnegans Fake, about Humpy C. Wacker, who not only always fakes his orgasms but also paints fantastic forgeries of "forgotten" masterpieces by the likes of Van Gogh, Goya, Rembrandt, Banksy, etc., under the alias "Winnegans". As the insatiable lothario he's known as the Keltic Kock and is pursued through many boudoirean escapades by a young lady who calls herself An Celtic Sunt. They finally end up together doing it doggy-style and when he reads the word ALPO tattooed above her coccyx he begins to hallucinate that he's the one on all fours with her behind him with a strap-on---a black one 'cause he's Gaelic---ramming him proper while he ate dog food from a metal bowl labeled Snoopy (it'd be interesting to investigate whether C. M. Schulz also mighta perused this turn-of-the-Century pornography!). The climax of course is his climaxing, finally, earthshakingly, as he returns to this reality and sees her thrust off him by the force of his and her own tremendous earthshaking ecstasy-spraying orgasms. But then it ends, and just goes back to the beginning again, retelling the same story! Weird. (Oh, and if yer thinkin' my including Banksy in that list above seems "anachronistic"---pause while I look that up---oh . . . right: I shoulda said, "Banksy l [paternal grandmother/maternal uncle?]".) Also, I have two copies of this, and on one the title on the cover has no apostrophe but on the title page inside it does---the other is exactly opposite! (I wonder which copy Joyce had?) I should mention that the author, Drummond Hornbeck, also wrote a children's book, purportedly one of---if not the first---"pop-up" books, about a lachrymose Proustian pachyderm named Borbor: IL Baiserait N'Importe Quelle Pouffiasse/Tout Lui Est Bon Pour Piner/IL S'Enverrait Meme Une Chevre, Borbor! (The title is in French, but the text is in Esperanto!) It may only be apocryphal but purportedly he was crushed on the sidewalk below the Empire State Building when a strafed and mortally wounded King Kong finally fell from its pinnacle. This grisly detail was left out of the movie they made with Fay Wray a year later, though its oft-misquoted last line (“It was”, not “Twas”) is eerily similar to the last sentence in his children's book---“Twas booty felled the beast” ---though since it was written in Esperanto, “Tiu ĉi rabaĵo faligis la beston”, no one ever really noticed.

The BBC broadcast a coded warning every single day for 40 years. It's explained in a video called Hidden Meaning of Test Card F

Absolutely brilliant from Mr Burgess, "Finegans Wake" is my favourite book.

The internet justifiably gets a loit of bad press but for things like this it's almost worth it. This is one of the best things I've ever seen online.

This is amazing. Also, nice lid dude - A Flock of Seagulls only wishes to pull off this look.

I miss Elton and Betty! Originally from Little Rock, Arkansas then moved to Venice Beach

Genius Burgess.

A wonderful period piece. The only strange thing is the way Burgess’s outrageous barnet remains immovable and rigid right down to its finest tendrils, however fast he wags his head.

The one important take away from this video was that he didn't wash his hands after using the bathroom❤

Always Irish ☘️of Gods and Fighting Men ☘️

Took me 15 minutes to figure out that this was not a comedy sketch

I need this version of Finnegan's wake at the intro

Maybe James was just like the leading character in "Being There".

The interpretation of ALP's final monologue I think is completely off base. She is disappearing, because she is only the dream-wife, not the real wife, and she only exists in the sleeping time, and now it's all woking up time, so she will die until the next cycle of night. Her father is the sea, and she rushes into the sea by daybreak, and asks only that he remember her. And we know he won't remember her any more than we remember an average dream. It's such a sad and beautiful monologue, I think the best Joyce ever wrote.

This is a poor reading, rather superficial. I am not clear that Earwicker is actually Scandinavian, or if he just fancies himself that way in his dreams. The real person doesn't resemble the dream person. He obviously isn't guilty of anything, Issy isn't even conceived yet, any incest just a dream event, which bothers him. The only incestuous part is in book 3 ch 1, and the violence is sublimated into manic commands which he gives with a threat of a beating. There is no reference to incest elsewhere, not in book 1, not in book 2, despite commentators inventing it with their sex-obsessed minds.

He was a Joyce scholar before Clockwork, wasn't he?

What did Tim Finnegan say? Sounds like "source the devil".

appropriate for current events too!

I love how he ends it in ... in the WC!

Thanks for uploading- what a unique document of FW‘s earliest live reception.

For those who don't know, Jean was the wife of comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell, famous for popularizing the concept of the Hero's Journey starting with his book "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" in 1949 and getting a big boost from George Lucas (Lucas credited Campbell's work with helping to plot out Star Wars as a modern myth) and the "Power of Myth" TV series with Bill Moyers, filmed at Lucas's Skywalker Ranch shortly before Campbell's death. Joseph was a big fan and scholar of James Joyce and co-wrote one of the first (I'd assume the first) deep analysis of Finnegan's Wake with the 1944 book "A Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake." Joseph died in 1987 age 83 from cancer, but Jean lived to be 104! (d. 2020)

Kitty MC Shea ?

Why did nobody think to teach poor Mr Burgess how to pour a Guinness?

Such a masterpiece as Finnegans' can't be done these days. Despite the information we've got at our disposal, coming up with such a dense and pregnant of meaning novel (arguably. I like calling it "dream-vel") requires tones of wisdom rather than simply info.

what a mind the flush at the end was genius

After his maid gives a tour at the Wellington Museum (shrug), HCE was caught in this vague sin (as Burgess mentions) and is caught by the pipe-smoking "CAD," who after a promise not to tell anyone else, tells his wife, who tells everyone else until the story becomes so popular this Ballad is written to dramatize it, but the story has gotten the can and the string treatment for so long that no one knows what is true or made up. The story keeps getting morphed which is why we do not know exactly what happened. Then it gets a little weird. His wife defends him through a note as scratched out by a hen, with the clarity of a note scratched out by a hen.

Brilliant.

thanks

Actually cut the following comment 50/50. This is good stuff. However, follow my instructions below on how to read FW for fun. This is why he wrote it.

I love Burgess' writing, but he is a self-centred cunt. This is the method for reading 'Finnegans Wake' - smoke a joint and open at any page. That's it. Eat it like popcorn.

I would comment except Key & Peele have said it much better. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rsqIopumr5-yg58.html

This video is completely incomprehensible but I keep watching it

Donald Trump must have really liked this guy, tried so hard to capture his image.

Over the years I've become really well-read, even tackling some "difficult" books. But Finnegan's Wake beat me up and tossed me aside. One day maybe I'll manage, but I had to stop after 30 pages. I hear listening to it is useful....

Fillmet feather onna moonlight night, nokt thrice and three more there and then beween sliv and sliver water watches Walter whistling. “In in I say” no in the inn in enniskillen, out and about abode abroad. Nokt but once more an prehips a slips would run more, let feather waltz past passes Walter on water, what are eyes good for if not a look aye?

Tim Finnegan lived in Walkin Street, a gentle Irishman mighty odd He had a brogue both rich and sweet, an' to rise in the world he carried a hod You see he'd a sort of a tipplers way but the love for the liquor poor Tim was born To help him on his way each day, he'd a drop of the craythur every morn Whack fol the dah now dance to yer partner around the flure yer trotters shake Wasn't it the truth I told you? Lots of fun at Finnegan's Wake One morning Tim got rather full, his head felt heavy which made him shake Fell from a ladder and he broke his skull, and they carried him home his corpse to wake Rolled him up in a nice clean sheet, and laid him out upon the bed A bottle of whiskey at his feet and a barrel of porter at his head Whack fol the dah now dance to yer partner around the flure yer trotters shake Wasn't it the truth I told you? Lots of fun at Finnegan's Wake His friends assembled at the wake, and Mrs Finnegan called for lunch First she brought in tay and cake, then pipes, tobacco and whiskey punch Biddy O'Brien began to cry, "Such a nice clean corpse, did you ever see, Tim avourneen, why did you die?", "Will ye hould your gob?" said Paddy McGee Whack fol the dah now dance to yer partner around the flure yer trotters shake Wasn't it the truth I told you? Lots of fun at Finnegan's Wake Then Maggie O'Connor took up the job, "Biddy" says she "you're wrong, I'm sure" Biddy gave her a belt in the gob and left her sprawling on the floor Then the war did soon engage, t'was woman to woman and man to man Shillelagh law was all the rage and a row and a ruction soon began Whack fol the dah now dance to yer partner around the flure yer trotters shake Wasn't it the truth I told you? Lots of fun at Finnegan's Wake Mickey Maloney ducked his head when a bucket of whiskey flew at him It missed, and falling on the bed, the liquor scattered over Tim Bedad he revives, see how he rises, Timothy rising from the bed Saying "Whittle your whiskey around like blazes, t'underin' Jaysus, do ye think I'm dead?" Whack fol the dah now dance to yer partner around the flure yer trotters shake Wasn't it the truth I told you? Lots of fun at Finnegan's Wake Whack fol the dah now dance to yer partner around the flure yer trotters shake Wasn't it the truth I told you? Lots of fun at Finnegan's Wake

This is the kind of U Tube I live for,Thank You !

Sorry but FW is just one of those tools the egotists use to signal their intellectual supremacy. Dubliners was great, but after that Joyce just got further and further up his own rectum. Love DH Lawrence myself, he left a great record of his experiences through which we can sense the Eternal in everything. Joyce just left self-referencial cryptic puzzles that go nowhere.

this is awesome!

I watched this when it originally aired on the (very) early morning adult education show "Sunrise Semester" in 1973, and it started my life-lomng love of Joyce. I've been trying to find a copy ever since - THANK YOU for posting this!

Bloomsday was the day When James 'knew' Nora? "Bid Adieu to Girlish Days" celebrated the deflowering. In 1904 Joyce had tried unsuccessfully to publish this poem in the Dublin magazine Dana. He also submitted it to Harper’s in January 1905, but again it was rejected. With two other poems from Chamber Music (I and XII), “Bid adieu to girlish days” was anthologized in The Dublin Book of Irish Verse (1909), edited by John Cooke. (This is the first time a work by Joyce was anthologized.) Joyce’s partiality toward this poem can also be seen in his efforts to have it set to music. In 1909 he tried actively to interest G. Molyneux Palmer in setting the poem musically: “It seems to me a pity you did not do the song ‘Bid adieu’ which I tried to music myself and hope you may turn to it some day” (Letters, II.227). (For more information see Letters, II.73, 77, 80, 117, and 227. Palmer eventually did set the poem to music.) Here, in this video, it's sung by Giorgio in 1949 and put to images in Paris on or around 02022020 featuring Joyce, Sylvia Beach, Samuel Beckett and Ezra Pound, all three who played key roles in James Joyce's life. Share this little item of literary history. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fdaVpsR91sqadJ8.html

Videos like this make me appreciate the internet.

for those of you who do not know, this man wrote a clockwork orange.