Tag Archives: Buddhism

It’s Plurbin’ Time: Pluribus and Finnegans Wake

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Vince Gilligan’s latest show, Pluribus, is a departure from his previous hits, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Eschewing the crime drama and action associated with those earlier shows, Pluribus takes a premise that sounds like an episode of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror and uses it as the backdrop for gorgeous cinematography and scenes of impressive performances from Rhea Seehorn, who often has the challenge of acting alone in a scene or with one or two other actors who are playing essentially brainwashed people with little personality.

It is also Gilligan’s first show to mention Finnegans Wake by name!

Read on for my thoughts about Pluribus, its relationship to the Wakean theme of the “Fortunate Fall,” and some musings on whether the show can be read as a criticism of Communism, Capitalism, Buddhism, Christianity, or something else.

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It Belongs in a Museyroom: Artifacts (and Alphabet) in Finnegans Wake

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In Finnegans Wake I.1, the Wellington Monument becomes a museum that is also a “museyroom”: a phallic mushroom as well as the home of the muse. It reminds us that history as well as sexuality can inspire art.

I’ll eventually be posting my thoughts on the “Willingdone” paragraph of I.1, but until inspiration strikes, I’ll write a little about artifacts in Finnegans Wake. I’m always put in mind of Indiana Jones declaring to would-be graverobbers that an artifact “belongs in a museum!” The fact that one of the Indiana Jones sequels named his son “Mutt” also amuses me because of the Mutt and Jeff passage in I.1.

In a way, Finnegans Wake itself is a kind of museum, gathering together and displaying linguistic artifacts and cultural references from all around the world. Like real museums, the Wake might be considered either a benevolent display of such objects or a cynical, colonial appropriation of them. In a Wakean spirit, we might regard it as both at once.

At various points in the book, artifacts appear, left behind by HCE from his Fall and gathered up by ALP. Read on for my thoughts, especially about the ways that the letters of the alphabet can be seen as such artifacts.

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Someday We’ll Find It

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Recently, I’ve been thinking about the song “Rainbow Connection” from The Muppet Movie (1979). My daughter heard it for the first time the other day, and she immediately hated it (ha). But as I listened to it to appreciate her distaste for it, I was struck by the idea that rainbows symbolize a connection between our reality and our dreams and hopes.

The rainbow is a significant symbol in Finnegans Wake, and this post considers it alongside some of the ideas about “storytelling” I’ve been developing on this blog.

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