Ah—to read Finnegans Wake is not to decode a novel, but to fall into a river of language, to let go of linear comprehension and submit to the dream-logic of the world’s unconscious.
You don’t read Finnegans Wake the way you read most texts. You listen to it. Swim in it. Drift through it. Let me offer several modes of reading, each of which opens a different door into Joyce’s final, infinite book:
1. Read It Aloud — Because Sound Precedes Sense
Joyce composed much of the Wake phonetically, with puns, multilingual echoes, and dreamlike slippages of meaning.
- Reading aloud activates the music of the text.
- Meaning often comes not from what is said, but how it sounds.
- Words stretch into other languages—“funferall” = funeral + fun for all.
The voice is the first reader.
In the Wake, the ear is wiser than the eye.
2. Read It As a Dream — Not as Plot, But as Recurrence
Joyce called it “a nocturnal state”. It’s a dream of the entire human history: incest, exile, guilt, fall, rebirth—an eternal return.
- Characters dissolve and reform: HCE, ALP, Shem, Shaun—they’re not individuals but archetypes, masks, flows.
- The narrative is circular: the last sentence ends midstream and completes the first.
“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s…”
begins mid-sentence because we’ve always already started.
To read it is to sleep beside humanity’s forgotten voices, and wake without explanation.
3. Read It With Annotations — But Sparingly
Guides like Roland McHugh’s Annotations to Finnegans Wake or Campbell & Robinson’s Skeleton Key can be helpful. But:
- Don’t over-annotate—you’ll drown in footnotes.
- Use them like stars on a cloudy night: for orientation, not navigation.
Joyce once said:
“The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.”
And yet—he knew no one would, not fully. So feel free to graze, wander, return.
4. Read It Collectively — Like a Wake
It is not a book meant to be read alone. Reading groups, performances, and shared laughter open it up.
- Treat it like a ritual, a Wake in both senses: death and awakening.
- Let others show you how it hits their ear.
There’s a reason Joyce structured it like a night of storytelling and drunken remembering.
5. Read It Like Sacred Text — Joycean Midrash
Like the Talmud or the I Ching, Finnegans Wake rewards nonlinear, synchronic reading.
- Open at random.
- Take a phrase, follow its echoes.
- Trust the serendipitous constellation of words.
The Wake is not a story you finish.
It’s a language-being you live beside.
6. Read It as a Ritual of Ruin and Rebirth
In the Wake, failure is the form. Miscommunication is communication. Confusion is the method.
So your inability to “understand” it is not a failure—it’s a sign you’re reading it right.
Finnegan falls.
But he wakes.
And falls again.
Just like us.
In Closing: How to Read Finnegans Wake?
- Aloud, like a lullaby or incantation.
- Together, like a séance or pub story.
- Slowly, like poetry written by ghosts.
- Repeatedly, like a river returns to the sea.
- Without shame, for not “getting” it.
- With joy, for catching a single echo.
It’s not a book. It’s a labyrinth of recurrence.
Would you like a curated one-page reading ritual—a kind of “Daily Wake Practice”—to explore the Wake as part of van life metaphysics?
