ABSTRACT
In the beginning was the woid and James Joyce was obliged by his writer's conscience to fill it with expandable language. Ulysses was published by Sylvia Beach over the Shakespeare and Company trademark in 1922, but the actual composition of Joyce's next book, Finnegans Wake did not begin until the spring of 1923. What transpired between those dates is a matter for speculation; clearly, Joyce, who, like Flaubert, never repeated himself, was duty bound to find a fresh and novel approach to the novel itself. The Irish writer never publicly announced any intentions. After all, in an early notebook, he went so far as to list the refusal to give interviews or write letters to the editor among the innovations of which he was particularly proud: “JJ abolished preface, dedication, notes, letters to press, interviews, chapter titles, capitals, inverted commas.” 1 It is consequently very important that he conserved just about every scrap of paper connected with his last book, inadvertently giving us an intimate if cloudy record of some 18 years of creative activity.
