![]() You could begin reading from the start of any chapter, in the middle of a chapter, in the middle of a line, and still end up in the same place. to which one might think to add, “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s…”, making the whole book a circle. The closing sentence of the Wake’s final chapter reads-Ī way a lone a lost a last a loved along the If one makes it all the way through Joyce’s abstruse text, they’ll see why. Riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.Ī reader unfamiliar with the Wake might wonder if I’ve misquoted here, omitting the first word or neglecting to capitalize the already-puzzling compound “riverrun.” I have not: Finnegans Wake opens lowercase, mid-sentence, mid-thought. ![]() ![]() Its first line dumps the reader into the middle of Dublin’s murky River Liffey, starting the story literally mid-stream: Can there be a “first” line in a book which is a circle?įinnegans Wake, James Joyce’s notoriously perplexing final work, takes beginning in medias res to a whole new level. ![]()
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