Finnegans Web & Wiki

While I may be flying a bit blind here as your humble webmaster, I must admit I have made an assumption about you, the end users, the real stars of this site.

I assume that the traffic spikes in late summer and fall of each year directly correlate with school studies resuming, and that a significant portion of you are visiting this site to supplement coursework on literature, Joyce specifically, or the Wake itself, if you’re lucky enough to have a course solely devoted to the Wake.

I’d like to ask a favor. Could you take a moment to shoot me an email telling me about yourself, your studies, how and when you became interested in the Wake, and your thoughts on this site? My email is bobgerman at the domain bobgerman dot com. I’m really interested in the backstory of each and every one of you, and I might use information you provide to improve the site, if good ideas come up.

I’ll start. I’m a reader. I LOVE to read. I read everything I can get my hands on, at least when I can fit it into my schedule. I came to the Wake after reading several in-jokes along my literary travels about readers getting lost in it. Lost in a book? What a concept? I was hooked by the very first page. But I’ll tell you, what REALLY hit me was when I combined reading the book with listening to it. It helped me to really grasp the dialect.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to hear from each of you soon.

This site, and its corresponding WIKI, have now been up for THREE YEARS. Congratulations too all of the contributors and Joyce fans out there.

Click Here to listen.

In honor of Bloomsday, I worked on my tomato garden, I migrated a number of websites to a newer, faster, bigger server, and I started two new book review sites for my daughters. I THOUGHT about James Joyce, but did nothing special to honor his memory and his legacy. Before I go to bed, I will raise a glass to him.

Check out this interesting Overview of Finnegans Wake:

http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/fwake/index.html

I created this site as a point of reference for my own study. Made it public, and the if-you-build-it-they-will-come adage came true. Now there are a steady stream of regulars coming and redecorating now and again. We seem to have at least temporarily staved off the Vandals.

The Androse th Nodal Nim blog, for example, shows how to use Finnegans Wake for purposes of divination. Perfectly respectable. Like big daddy Crowley taught us, use various sources. Follow a religion until you achieve results, then move on to the next.

Funny, Androse seems to be a follower of Discordianism as well. Those of you who come at this site from the Robert Anton Wilson courses may benefit from this as well. Discordianism was founded by Kerry Thornley (aka Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst) and Greg Hill (Malaclypse the Younger). Another site I enjoy is a site that released a large number of Kerry Thornley’s Decadent Worker series of wall newspapers.

Androse, I am under utterly complete conviction that you will see the ping from this post, and thus will come and visit this post, and thus will come to learn of the Thornley connection, and thus will visit the Decadent Worker page. This I predict, and so mote it be.

-Bob

According to luxmentis, today is the 68th anniversary of publication of Finnegans Wake.  Is this not cause for celebration?  Perhaps we should start Cinqo de Mayo a day earlier as well.  Tequila shooters with Guinness chasers, anyone? 

Today I updated the Wiki software to the latest version, and added some anti-spam protections. It took me all this time to realize that there really is a community of us out here. I don’t know how you all found the Wiki to begin with — maybe from Google, maybe linked somewhere, but this site has developed a good number of readers and editors, and I’m quite pleased with that fact.

If you have the time, perhaps you’d be willing to send me a quick email, letting me know how you found Finnegans Web and Finnegans Wiki, when and how you were drawn to Finnegans Wake in the first place, and how you feel about other works by James Joyce. Also, let me know if this site has helped you in your understanding of the work, or at least to sort through some of it. Thanks

Bob
bobgerman@bobgerman.com

The population of Finnegans Wiki has begun. Due to the method of import, it is far from perfect. However, I have taken a cursory glance, up to page 36, and to that point, all seems well.

The next step is to annotate the text where appropriate, and in the process, decide on a user-friendly means of annotation.