ABSTRACT
After an initial gasp of astonishment over a text that looks like English yet seems to be in a foreign language, readers encountering Finnegans Wake for the first time may be even more daunted by popular handbooks on Joyce to which they turn for encouragement and explanation:
Everything in the book ought to be information, but much of it continues to be noise, and perhaps always will be. 1
We have to remember not only the appearance of images but the appearance of individual words, and, individual though the words unquestionably are, this cannot be done. 2
Any set of standards that will account for the essential greatness of Ulysses must, I feel, find a certain sterility in Finnegans Wake. … In Ulysses, parody and satire have direction because they serve a moral vision; but in Finnegans Wake they turn in upon themselves and destroy their own foundations. 3
