This post looks at the phrase “apathy of the stars” in Ulysses and its relationship to Finnegans Wake.
Continue readingThe Apathy of the Stars
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Category Archives: Close Reading
The Incertitude of the Void
In re-reading Ulysses, I was struck by the word “unlikelihood” occurring in a significant place (Stephen’s Shakespeare theory, Chapter 9). The word has a prominent place in the Prankquean episode in Finnegans Wake , where a variant of the word is one of the PQ’s rejoinders to Van Hoother.
This post looks at the word “unlikelihood” in Finnegans Wake and Ulysses.
Continue readingThe Past Lives in You
I recently had the opportunity to see The Lion King on Broadway with my daughter. It was the first time I had seen it, and the first time I heard the song “He Lives in You.”
As I found myself humming it this week, I realized that it sums up a major idea of Finnegans Wake, that we each embody the past. An Eternal Story plays through all of history, and it is present right here, right now, in each of us.
In this post, I explore this idea and discuss the one sentence I found in the Wake that contains the name “Simba.”
Continue readingIllysus Distilling
I had the opportunity recently to visit the Great Jones Distilling Company in Manhattan and take a tour of their distillery. [No, they are not sponsoring this post] It was a marvelous time — an excellent tour I took with a friend — at the first distillery opened in Manhattan since prohibition (and it opened in…2021!).
The experience put me in mind of references to distilling in Finnegans Wake, which is what this post will be about.
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The Suspended Sentence 