8

Last night I read chapter one of Finnegans Wake.  Very soon I noticed the name Haroun mentioned, which struck me as odd because earlier that day I had a conversation with my wife about the Salman Rushdie book Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which I rather liked.  We decided to decide to keep that book (this was during a four hour pruning of our library) though it nearly got added to the sell pile.  After I told her that Haroun popped up in The Wake, remarking on the coincidence, she reminded me that while I spent last summer reading Ulysses, she was reading The Satanic Verses.  And here was another Joyce-Rushdie connection. 

 

Whoa. It was almost as if Joyce was drawing a connecting line between himself, this future writer named Salman Rushdie, and the future readers of these writers: us: me, my wife, our summer of reading, our days at the beach with these thick books in hand, the pleasure of letting the hours pass while we read and soaked up some sun and tried not to get hit by footballs flying over our heads. 

Well, of course this is not exactly possible.  Still, this coincidence does confirm what I’d already assumed: the reader of The Wake will find in it what they bring. Since Joyce spent so many years packing the book with everything he could think of (and why wouldn’t he think of Haroun, a prophet of Islam) written in every language within reach (and he reached far and wide) then of course the book will reflect something of your experience back at you.  This is the best means of encouragement for the early reader of The Wake (that’s me!).  Abandon the need to get every reference and joke and delight in the surprising amount of things you find that speak to you.  See yourself in the text.  Engage with the book rather than insist that it engage you.  Marvel at the connections the book makes to all of time, past and future. 

 

So there, on page 4, I had my mind blown.  Can't wait to see what the other 624 pages bring. 

More soon.