Finnegans Wake - James Joyce

Finnegans

Wake is the book of Here Comes Everybody and Anna Livia Plurabelle and

their family - their book, but in a curious way the book of us all as well as

all our books. Joyce's last great work, it is not comprised of many borrowed

styles, like Ulysses, but, rather,

formulated as one dense, tongue-twisting soundscape.

This 'language' is based on English vocabulary and syntax but, at the same

time, self-consciously designed to function as a pun machine with an

astonishing capacity for resisting singularity of meaning. Announcing a

'revolution of the word', this astonishing book amounts to a powerfully

resonant cultural critique - a unique kind of miscommunication which, far from

stabilizing the world in meaning, constructs a universe radically unfixed by a

wild diversity of possibilities and potentials. It also remains the most

hilarious, 'obscene', book of innuendos ever to be imagined.