08-05-2016, 11:15 AM
So, about word games and the enjoyment (or not) of them and whether or not they constitute something worth reading, here's an excerpt from the introduction to Finnegan's Wake (yes, I'm still in the in introduction because apparently it takes a novel to introduce the novel):
"Taken most simply, the Wake can be regarded as one huge 'crossmess parzel' -- as an immensely entertaining compilation of puns, riddles, word games, linguistic curiosities, and bits of cultural trivia that everywhere yields, at the least, the pleasure of a 'crossword puzzle.' Who will not enjoy Joyce's wicked single-letter reformation of the familiar cautionary proverb in the Wakean phrase 'look before you leak, dears'; his redubbing of the robust, pottage-craving Esau and his devious brother Jacob as 'Jerkoff and Eatsoup'; his merging of the Catholic Trinity and Hegelian dialectic 'in the name of the former and of the latter and of their holocaust. All-men'; or the discovery that the garbled elements in a naboc and erics and oinnos on kingclud and xoxxoxo and xooxoxxxoxoxxoxxx' -- are simply anagrammatic scramblings of 'steak and peas and bacon and rices and onions on duckling and (if you replace the x's with consonants and the o's with vowels) cabbage and boiled protestants'? Word games like these are the stuff, the medium, and the essence of Finnegan's Wake. Especially because the book is not narrative-driven (Joyce pointed out that 'the book really has no beginning or end...It ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence') it is theoretically possible to start reading Finnegan's Wake anywhere and still derive pleasure and reward from it. Perhaps the only way not to enjoy Finnegan's Wake is to expect that one has to plod through it word by word making sense of everything in linear order."
I hope that makes sense. I'm trying to type this as I boil spaghetti next to me. Yes, my laptop is on the stove. Multi-tasking!!!
"Taken most simply, the Wake can be regarded as one huge 'crossmess parzel' -- as an immensely entertaining compilation of puns, riddles, word games, linguistic curiosities, and bits of cultural trivia that everywhere yields, at the least, the pleasure of a 'crossword puzzle.' Who will not enjoy Joyce's wicked single-letter reformation of the familiar cautionary proverb in the Wakean phrase 'look before you leak, dears'; his redubbing of the robust, pottage-craving Esau and his devious brother Jacob as 'Jerkoff and Eatsoup'; his merging of the Catholic Trinity and Hegelian dialectic 'in the name of the former and of the latter and of their holocaust. All-men'; or the discovery that the garbled elements in a naboc and erics and oinnos on kingclud and xoxxoxo and xooxoxxxoxoxxoxxx' -- are simply anagrammatic scramblings of 'steak and peas and bacon and rices and onions on duckling and (if you replace the x's with consonants and the o's with vowels) cabbage and boiled protestants'? Word games like these are the stuff, the medium, and the essence of Finnegan's Wake. Especially because the book is not narrative-driven (Joyce pointed out that 'the book really has no beginning or end...It ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence') it is theoretically possible to start reading Finnegan's Wake anywhere and still derive pleasure and reward from it. Perhaps the only way not to enjoy Finnegan's Wake is to expect that one has to plod through it word by word making sense of everything in linear order."
I hope that makes sense. I'm trying to type this as I boil spaghetti next to me. Yes, my laptop is on the stove. Multi-tasking!!!