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Real-life Daria invited me to participate in her biweekly Zoom Finnegans Wake book club.
Sounds horrifying, doesn't it?
But actually, it was fun!
We take turns reading each other paragraphs from Finnegans Wake and then babble about anything that comes into our heads. Riffs on the weirdly haunting & allusive words Joyce invents. Rants about how since public libraries no longer maintain stacks, of course no one is going to love reading anymore since the the only way the love of reading can be implanted at an early age is if you can sit at one of those ancient, battered oak tables and browse your way through a huge stack of books. I got to play-act the complete plot of Tom's Midnight Garden!
I have no intention of actually reading Finnegans Wake. But I can see what Joyce was trying to do in it: Just as Ulysses is the story of a single day, Finnegans Wake is the story of one night. Its phrases actually do have the allusive quality of dreams, its made-up language leaves little residual streaks in one's consciousness, each word a shooting star.
Joseph Campbell's Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake arrives Wednesday. (Joseph Campbell's Masks of God was a hugely significant work to me in my 20s, and of course, I wrote around a third of a novel about Campbell's affair with Carol Steinbeck when Joseph, Carol, & John all lived together in Pacfic Grove during the Depression.)
And I'm trying to recruit Carl A________ to join the group. Carl is one of my old People Magazine colleagues and a huge Joyce freak. Has a pretty fascinating backstory of his own, as well as a rent-controlled apartment on W.86th St. in the City to which he keeps issuing invitations—Come hang out!— which I keep declining because the last time we saw each other was 20 years ago when we were young(ish) and beautiful(ish), and I'm not sure I could accommodate the changes.
###
Apart from that, I Remunerated, studied tax law, and tromped. I got all sweaty when I tromped, and thought, Really? You're in that bad a shape? And it wasn't until I drove by the electronic Bank of Wallkill sign on my way home that I noticed the temperature was—ulp!—88°.
I'm storyboarding the action for the Work in Progress's third chapter. I think it takes place durig COVID, and it must involve Grazia being floated to one of the wards where she's surrounded by gurgling, Cheynes-Stoking COVID patients who all die while she's watching, thereby setting her up for some kind of spiritual conversion process. Fifty Shades of Mucus!
And then, at the very end of the chapter, I'm gonna have to somehow circle back to the proximal present, the sister wives on the porch when they decide to take a road trip to scatter Neal's ashes.
Gotta foreshadow Mimi's suicide attempt somehow 'cause she sure as hell ain't goin' on the road trip. Maybe turn Tracy, Flavia's cousin, into L___ S_____, real-life Flavia's friend? Cutting down on extraneous characters: always good.
Sounds horrifying, doesn't it?
But actually, it was fun!
We take turns reading each other paragraphs from Finnegans Wake and then babble about anything that comes into our heads. Riffs on the weirdly haunting & allusive words Joyce invents. Rants about how since public libraries no longer maintain stacks, of course no one is going to love reading anymore since the the only way the love of reading can be implanted at an early age is if you can sit at one of those ancient, battered oak tables and browse your way through a huge stack of books. I got to play-act the complete plot of Tom's Midnight Garden!
I have no intention of actually reading Finnegans Wake. But I can see what Joyce was trying to do in it: Just as Ulysses is the story of a single day, Finnegans Wake is the story of one night. Its phrases actually do have the allusive quality of dreams, its made-up language leaves little residual streaks in one's consciousness, each word a shooting star.
Joseph Campbell's Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake arrives Wednesday. (Joseph Campbell's Masks of God was a hugely significant work to me in my 20s, and of course, I wrote around a third of a novel about Campbell's affair with Carol Steinbeck when Joseph, Carol, & John all lived together in Pacfic Grove during the Depression.)
And I'm trying to recruit Carl A________ to join the group. Carl is one of my old People Magazine colleagues and a huge Joyce freak. Has a pretty fascinating backstory of his own, as well as a rent-controlled apartment on W.86th St. in the City to which he keeps issuing invitations—Come hang out!— which I keep declining because the last time we saw each other was 20 years ago when we were young(ish) and beautiful(ish), and I'm not sure I could accommodate the changes.
###
Apart from that, I Remunerated, studied tax law, and tromped. I got all sweaty when I tromped, and thought, Really? You're in that bad a shape? And it wasn't until I drove by the electronic Bank of Wallkill sign on my way home that I noticed the temperature was—ulp!—88°.
I'm storyboarding the action for the Work in Progress's third chapter. I think it takes place durig COVID, and it must involve Grazia being floated to one of the wards where she's surrounded by gurgling, Cheynes-Stoking COVID patients who all die while she's watching, thereby setting her up for some kind of spiritual conversion process. Fifty Shades of Mucus!
And then, at the very end of the chapter, I'm gonna have to somehow circle back to the proximal present, the sister wives on the porch when they decide to take a road trip to scatter Neal's ashes.
Gotta foreshadow Mimi's suicide attempt somehow 'cause she sure as hell ain't goin' on the road trip. Maybe turn Tracy, Flavia's cousin, into L___ S_____, real-life Flavia's friend? Cutting down on extraneous characters: always good.
