Finnegan's Wake

[Sebastian Michael]

Loving the idea of a thread on this most intriguing and vexing of books I've ever come across (currently reading it - I'm on about page 140 and I can't, predictably, as yet make head or tail of it. Then again, as you suggest, that may be exactly the point...).

But at the risk of sounding pedantic, I should perhaps point out that for his book, James Joyce changed the title of the ballad Finnegan's Wake, from which he took it, by omitting the apostrophe, and so the novel is actually called Finnegans Wake.

The Wikipedia explanation for this goes:

"Finnegan's Wake" is famous for providing the basis of James Joyce's final work, Finnegans Wake (1939), in which the comic resurrection of Tim Finnegan is employed as a symbol of the universal cycle of life. As whiskey, the "water of life", causes both Finnegan's death and resurrection in the ballad, so the word "wake" also represents both a passing (into death) and a rising (from sleep). Joyce removed the apostrophe in the title of his novel in order to suggest an active process in which a multiplicity of "Finnegans", that is, all members of humanity, fall and then wake and arise.[citation needed]
"Finnegan's Wake" is also featured as the climax of the primary storyline in Philip José Farmer's award-winning novella, Riders of the Purple Wage.
A scene very similar to that of Finnegan's Wake is present in The Shipping News, when the character Jack Buggit is presumed to have drowned after being caught in the rope of a lobster pot, only for him to regain consciousness at his wake.

All the very best
Sebastian

[Cattleman]

I thought is was "Spiders of the Purple Mage" from the Thieve's World series, but then Farmer was quite prolific, and loved world play, so maybe he worte both.

[Sebastian Michael]

I thought is was "Spiders of the Purple Mage" from the Thieve's World series, but then Farmer was quite prolific, and loved world play, so maybe he worte both.

That went straight over my head...

[Cattleman]

To Sebastian Michael:

Concerning my Philip Jose Farmer note. Farmer was a very prolific writer and science fiction and fantasy. He also loved word play (sorry about 'world' play in my prior post), puns, anagrams and palindromes. He often would take a title of a line of dialogue from another source, rearranging it, or changing some words. I don't know if you have heard of Zane Grey, he was an American writer of western (cowboy) fiction. One of his novels was "Riders of the Purple Sage," sage being short for sagebrush. In the Theives' World series, sci-fi and fantasy writers were invited to contribute stories. Farmer wrote one, and which his usual sense of whimsy, titled it "Spiders of the Purple Mage." Hope this clears up any confusion.

[Sebastian Michael]

To Sebastian Michael:

Concerning my Philip Jose Farmer note. Farmer was a very prolific writer and science fiction and fantasy. He also loved word play (sorry about 'world' play in my prior post), puns, anagrams and palindromes. He often would take a title of a line of dialogue from another source, rearranging it, or changing some words. I don't know if you have heard of Zane Grey, he was an American writer of western (cowboy) fiction. One of his novels was "Riders of the Purple Sage," sage being short for sagebrush. In the Theives' World series, sci-fi and fantasy writers were invited to contribute stories. Farmer wrote one, and which his usual sense of whimsy, titled it "Spiders of the Purple Mage." Hope this clears up any confusion.

Thanks! That is all so wonderfully random and quite exceptionally tangential, I'm enjoying it enormously. I still have no idea what it has to do with Finnegans Wake, but then I have no idea really what Finnegans Wake has to do with Finnegans Wake, so it fits into the picture perfectly...

[Cattleman]

In an earlier post you quoted:

"Finegan's Wake" is also featured as the climax of the primary story line in Philip Jose Farmer's award-winning novella, "Riders of the Purple WAGE." (empahsis added.) I was merely wondering if the wikipedia people had make a mistake.

Sorry to have confused you.

[Sebastian Michael]

In an earlier post you quoted:

"Finegan's Wake" is also featured as the climax of the primary story line in Philip Jose Farmer's award-winning novella, "Riders of the Purple WAGE." (empahsis added.) I was merely wondering if the wikipedia people had make a mistake.

Sorry to have confused you.

You know I completely overlooked that - I think my brain just edited out the extraneous bits of information there and so I never even noticed that part of the quote. It all, I'm glad to say, now makes perfect sense. So: not at all; sorry not to have followed you!