Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (review)

In this illustrated folio edition of Finnegans Wake, published by the Folio Society of London in 2014, the editors Danis Rose and John O'Hanlon present a beautiful, clean version of the text interspersed with eleven full-page illustrations by John Vernon Lord. In the introductory material, Seamus Deane contributes a note on the new edition, saying, "Danis Rose and John O'Hanlon have achieved what has been for many readers unimaginable. They have given us both the archaeological sedimented layers and the structuring principles of the famous Work in Progress and then, out of that, the clear reading text" (xi). The new edition differs from the old text in about 9,000 instances, and Rose and O'Hanlon attest that the overwhelming majority of changes were rooted in syntax rather than semantics as an attempt to reflect the musicality of the original: "it is music of sense as much as it is music of sound, and, like all music, it must flow unhindered to be heard" (xiv).

The editors also argue in their preface that the previously available reading text was corrupt and had never been typographically reset; as a result, "its familiarity … seep[ed] into the very words themselves, [and] diminish[ed] the impact of their radical beauty. … The new reading text is restored in that it seeks to recreate and recover the text precisely as James Joyce wrote it" (xiii). While this is a noble, if not an impossible, aspiration, it seems to me that Rose and O'Hanlon have gotten very close to such a daunting goal. Lord's illustrations, created in pen and monochromatic, two-dimensional color, are not only in conversation with the chapters they highlight, but are also in conversation with themselves. Each illustration is broken into a central image, usually representing the crux of the narrative combined with recurring symbols from the chapter, as well as a bottom panel of more abstracted images. The image in the bottom right corner of the panel carries over to the following illustration, appearing in its bottom left corner. These anchoring symbols complement the repetitive construction of the novel: they at once occur in multiple pieces, but also point toward the theme of endlessness and circularity in the Wake.

Joyce began Finnegans Wake in 1922 and for sixteen years worked to create this idiosyncratic nightscape—a somnambular novel in contrast to Ulysses, which marked the span of a day. Joyce told Samuel Beckett that in writing this novel he must "put the language to sleep" to have it succeed in daytime clarity (xix, JJII 546). In the introduction to this edition, David Greetman quotes a letter from Joyce to Max Eastman, wherein he discusses his intentions regarding the language of the Wake. Joyce says, "In writing of the night, I really could not, I felt I could not, use words in their ordinary connections. … When morning comes of course everything will be clear again. … I'll give them back their English language. I'm not destroying it for good" (xix, JJII 546).

In his introduction, Greetman continues to puzzle over the ability to edit successfully a text that inherently obscures linear meaning and has hardly a traceable English lexicon. He compares the editors of Joyce with the editors of Lewis Carroll and Dr. Seuss, stating that "a text to be edited must first be readable" and further concludes that the Wake is, in fact, readable and editable in full (xvi). The editors offer an excellent analogy regarding how one ought to read a text like this—parsing out meaning passively and enjoying its music attentively: "Imagine yourself as a child, leaning over the banisters, listening to the grown-up banter going on below. You are learning a language: a night language. Morning will come and the clouds of unknowing will begin to dissipate" (xiv).

"The novel is essentially a dream," Lord says when describing the binding of the book, which depicts the visible stars of Ursa...