I am now able to read whole paragraphs and pages at a time, and I feel like I am well aware of what's going on in individual pages and paragraphs, but still at sea as to a pattern connecting the whole. I can see the word play constantly, and I can read at a fairly satisfying pace, connecting subjects and verbs and getting a basic sense of flow. This may sound immensely remedial (which it is!), but after all, I'm having to learn a new language as I go, without the benefit of a teacher or even a dictionary. It is truly a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. I can identify hundreds of details in a close-up, but am unable to pull back into the wide shot and see the whole.
I've also made a host of connections to other types of art, music and literature, all of which have helped me somewhat in understanding what Joyce is up to. I talked about Robert Wilson in a previous post, and I'm also reminded of Jackson Pollock. I read a book a few years back that I found in a used bookstore called Art & Physics, by Leonard Shlain. This is a wonderful study of the historical moments in art and science, and it shows (fairly convincingly) that every scientific innovation was preceded by a similar development in art. So particle physics and relativity were preceded by cubism, and Newton was predated by da Vinci. I don't want to recreate his entire argument here, but the upshot is that if we want to know what the important scientific developments of the future will be, we should look at what's happening in modern art. Just as a baby recognizes an enormously complex variety of images that correspond to a bottle long before learning the word, so, Shlain argues, humanity understands the universe visually and intuitively long before developing coherent explanations. His chapter on Pollock was particularly illuminating for me, because he talked about how what Pollock was doing was (I'm sure I'm oversimplifying this) working himself into an emotional state as he flung the paint on the canvas, and what we are looking at in his art is a souvenir of that state, like a ticket from a theme park ride that has been stained with all the colors and emotions that went with it.
Where this reminds me of Joyce is that, no matter how far I penetrate into the words, I still feel like there is something fundamental missing. I feel there is an experience to be had, but I'm still on the very outskirts of it, looking in. I can't imagine a writer taking 16 years to write a book - begging money all the time - just to create an incomprehensible mishmash of words that no one could penetrate. I also have trouble understanding why an author would write a book that requires critical analysis to be understood, but as my colleague Mil pointed out, the intended audience of the modernists was mostly art critics. The languages they were experimenting in created an experience that really was for insiders, and things like biography, authorial intent, and obscure allusions were all part of the game. Eliot's Wasteland is a prime example, with footnotes that are longer than the poem itself.
I have also arrived back at the point where I wonder if there really is anything more than the Emperor's New Clothes here. Despite the progress I have made, I am feeling deliberately excluded by this work. Not only is there a perceived inner circle that Joyce may have been writing for, but that circle must be extremely small, and I get the sense that he is laughing at us from inside of it. The word play is intricate, but often seems pointless, like when he says
"One's upon a thyme and two's behind their lettice leap and three's among the strubbely beds." (20)
or
"The lads is attending school nessans regular, sir, spelling beesknees with hathatansy and turning out tables by mudapplication." (26)Sure I can see the point of one's/once and two's, and thyme/time coupled with lettice/lettuce, but what higher purpose does this serve? If the purpose is to be witty or funny, it doesn't really succeed at either. The puns are not clever, as far as I can tell, and what is impressive about them is not their insightfulness but their density. They feel like a gimmick - just one step above the way teens write their text messages: idk WTH 4ni uv th15 m3nz 4niwai IYKWIM.
Is the purpose to create a confused state on the part of the reader? Is it like a Zen Koan - intending to short circuit the intellect? Either way, despite all the progress I've made, this still feels deliberately exclusive.
And so what I've decided to do for Round 2 is to read part of Joseph Campbell's Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake. I know that's a scholarly source, and I said I wouldn't read those! While I am very glad to have done this experiment in this way so far, I believe I have now discovered my limitations. Without context and insight, I do not believe that reading 600 pages in this way will be any different than reading 30. The example I have been using is that it is like buying lottery tickets. The difference between not buying a lottery ticket and buying one ticket is an immense difference. But the difference between buying one ticket and buying two makes no difference at all.
My hope is not to get a full-on explanation, but simply to get a new window and context through which to engage with the text. With just a few reinforcements, I think I'll be ready for Round 2.
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