I’m re-reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man right now, and I was surprised to find the word “immodest” in one of the most significant sections. This post will briefly look at that word in Portrait, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake.
Continue readingThis post extends my discussion of gaps in Finnegans Wake, which I first wrote about here. I want to look at a few instances of the word “blank,” as well as another instance of horseracing that describes HCE in terms of absence.
Continue readingAnother metaphor for life in Finnegans Wake is a horse race. This post will look at some instances of horse racing in the novel.
Continue readingOver the last decade, I have been adamant that a necessary part of education is instruction in grammar: it is the very structure of thought. What people often overlook, especially in an age of “AI” slop, is that writing is not just a delivery system for ideas but a tool for generating and refining thought. The process of writing — and particularly revising drafts — helps writers sharpen their own ideas. And a working knowledge of grammar greatly aids in that process.
One point I made on the “How to Read Finnegans Wake“ page is that even though the vocabulary of the book is obscure, the structure of its sentences, their grammar, can be a guide to understanding it.
This post comes from notes that I wrote years ago on my third read of the book, where the grammar of a passage helped me to grasp its meaning.
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The Suspended Sentence 