Here’s a quick one while I’m working on more involved posts. Today, I want to brag about a very strange thing to brag about: the time I correctly detected that a word had been omitted from my copy of Finnegans Wake!

Read on for more of my strangeness.

It’s just a fact that books get published with typos and mistakes that require correction. The famed Gabler edition of Ulysses fixed around 5,000 errors that were published in the first edition. So it should come as no surprise that Finnegans Wake was also published with lots of errors that needed to be corrected.

Of course, Joyce’s style — and especially the complex style of Finnegans Wake — not only presents unusual difficulties to a copyeditor, it raises the question of what constitutes an “error” in the first place. I see people ask online all the time “which edition” of the Wake they ought to read, and the answer invariably comes back from many enthusiasts that it doesn’t matter. The book is so complex and dense and confusing and polysemous that having a fully “corrected” version won’t make enough of a difference to matter.

But as soon as the Wake was published, Joyce immediately set about compiling a list of errata and emendations. So it mattered to him, I guess.

I’ve written before about at least one of these corrections. In this post, I argue that the three question marks Joyce added to the very beginning of the book have the effect of linking the opening to a moment in I.8, suggesting that the gossip of the washerwomen is a microcosm of the entire Wake, that the story/stories of the book “live again” in their tales, as it does in all stories.

I’m now going to recount a story that makes me inordinately proud, and it’s a really weird and dumb thing to be proud about: the time I was reading Finnegans Wake and realized that a word was missing. [cue fanfare]

The offending sentence appears in I.4, just after Shem separates from Shaun more completely, and just before he appears under that name for the first time in the book. As Festy King, or rather as part of Festy King, Shem has just been acquitted and has left the court “scotfree.” As HCE had been accosted by a Cad with a pipe (a form of his sons), Shem is approached by a “Switz bobbyguard” (a form of his brother, Shaun, the rational police officer). This Shaunish character asks a confusing question in parallel to the Cad’s. In response, Shem doesn’t stutteringly defend himself like HCE; he unleashes a noxious fart:

the firewaterloover returted with such a vinesmelling fortytudor ages rawdownhams tanyouhide as would the latten stomach even of a tumass equinous 

See the acrostic? Har har, very funny, Joyce. Over and beyond the toilet humor, he’s playing with the phrase “Fortitudo eius Rhodanum tenuit,” which means “His Strength Has Held the Rhône.” This is one of the possibilities scholars have offered for the abbreviation FERT, which was the motto of the House of Savoy and the Kingdom of Italy. The word “tanyouhide” sounds like “tan your hide,” a phrase meaning to whip/spank someone or beat them up, tanning their backside. So Shem’s flatulence is an act of aggression, perhaps paired with some yelling. We are reminded that Shem is often referred to as darker skinned, or tan (does his aggression involve projection on his part?). I’m also reminded of other references to spanking in the novel, such as Shaun’s threats in III.2 or HCE’s statements at the end of III.3.

Oh, right, the missing word. Did you catch it? Read the sentence again.

I guess it sort of makes sense as is. As written, it’s saying that he responded with a fine-smelling, wine-fueled fart, one that is of the sort that the stomach of Thomas Aquinas would also have given forth. By the way, there’s a whole dissertation or twenty waiting to be written on the influence of Aquinas on Joyce — especially young Joyce’s aesthetic theory — and I’m sure such studies could make much of this sentence. When reading this sentence, it’s also useful to know that in real life, Aquinas was apparently a big fat guy.

But anyway, back when I read it, I got the distinct impression that a word was missing after “would.” It felt to me like there should be a verb phrase beginning with “would” there. I guess the sentence works without it, but the rhythm is such that I would suspect a verb phrase goes there. Also, the stomach isn’t the part of the body that directly gives forth flatulence, so that’s a clue that there’s a problem here — though it is a dream, so that’s not solid evidence.

I recall that I grabbed my other edition of the Wake — the one that says, “Embodying all of the author’s corrections” on the cover — and turned to page 93. And low and behold, that edition reads,

the firewaterloover returted with such a vinesmelling fortytudor ages rawdownhams tanyouhide as would turn the latten stomach even of a tumass equinous 

Aha! The corrected text doesn’t say his fart is like one of Aquinas’s. It says that his fart would turn stomachs, even the tough stomach of a big, gross guy like Aquinas. [“latten” is a brasslike alloy, used to make crosses in churches, but it also sounds like “Latin”; “tumass” suggests Aquinas’s great mass, and the Roman Catholic Mass; Stephen Dedalus calls him “Aquinas tunbelly” in Ulysses] 

I know I said earlier that the exact edition of the Wake doesn’t really matter, but this particular revision actually does pretty substantially change the meaning. Shem — who resonates with Stephen Dedalus and James Joyce, especially in his younger days — isn’t presented as resembling or echoing Aquinas but as disgusting him. There’s much food for thought here, and there’s probably a lot that a dissertation could do with the omission: the “error” actually suspends this sentence between two interpretations: Shem/Joyce mimicking Aquinas, and Shem/Joyce breaking from him.

Dare I suggest that this sentence, mistakes and all, captures the energies of Joyce’s complex relationship with Aquinas? Dare I suggest that the gross materiality of the content here is related to Joyce’s break with Aquinas? Dare I suggest that this apparent “error” is really a…portal of discovery?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I’m being kind of silly. But it’s fun to think about, and a lot of truth is said in jest.

I’m not sure what the moral of all this is, but I hope you enjoyed reading this post.