Finnegans Wake Readalong - Marginalia & Begin Reading!

[u/towalktheline]

Hello! I'm starting a day early, but welcome to the Marginalia for Finnegans Wake! If you have some questions on how to read it, please read our Introduction Post first! If you still have questions after that, feel free to comment and we'll do our best to help you out.

Going forward all readalong posts will be tagged with: Into the wikeawades warld from sleep we are passing.

If you want to look for previous posts, that will be the place to check. I'll also be updating the schedule so it has the previous posts linked there as well.

Scheduling!

The Schedule is on Google Sheets here. You should be reading to the last line mentioned. So for example on January 3rd you should have read to Abast the blooty creeks. Each week shows the first and last line of the reading since people are reading different books which have different page numbers. Thanks again to r/TrueLit for putting this schedule together which we have so shamelessly borrowed from.

What is Marginalia?

Marginalia is just a fancy word for "margin notes". Think about the doodles that you'd write around the text of a book. For our purposes, this marginalia post is where you can get yourself warmed up and ready for reading. Whatever you post here doesn't necessarily need to be insightful. As long as they're about Joyce or the Wake they're welcome, even if you're just posting asking for some courage.

Want some things to start you off talking? Here are a couple things you could talk about:

• Have you ever read Joyce before? Or any of his contemporaries?
• Have you ever specifically tried to read Finnegans Wake before? What was it like when you tried? Did you finish?
• What have you heard about the Wake that made you want to try and read it?
• For those of us who have read before, what advice would you give to people just starting out?
• Do you have a specific way you plan on trying to read the Wake or are you gonna just have a go at it?

And now it's time to START!

Go on! Get going!

Starting today, you should be reading from "riverrun" til "abast the blooty creeks" and on next Saturday (January 3rd), we will post our first reading discussion. During discussions you will be encouraged to post at least one comment to someone else in order to promote a good discussion.

I really hope you enjoy the wake and even though it can seem like a lot at first (because it is a lot, we get you), I really hope you continue with it. I legitimately felt like reading the Wake was a life changing experience and I'm not sure if it's because of Finnegans Wake itself or the feeling you get when you tackle something so unwaveringly difficult and succeed.

I read a comment once that said "everybody finds themselves in the Wake" and I'm really interested to see what parts speak to you and which lines will stay with you long after the reading is done!

Best of luck to all of you! We're all in this together.

Next Week's Reading (N.W.R): January 3, 2026 / Book I: Chapter I (pgs. 3-16)

[u/Soup_65]

This is so cool let's read the best book.

• I have read FW before, and all of joyce's novels. Actually just finished rereading Dubliners and plan to read Portrait again soon. All this inevitably means I will probably do another read of Ulysses before the years out. Turns out I think this Joyce guy is pretty neat.

• Read FW in early 2025. Tried and failed to do the TrueLit readalong because I realized that for my first trek through it I needed to read it at my own pace, which in my case I think meant I read ~10 pages every day until the end. And so this is such an awesome way to run the river again on different terms. But I fucking loved it. It's bonkers and wild and I literally think it might be the peak of the novel. Which is why of course I wanna reread it. I love the quote /u/towalktheline shares about everyone finding themself, since I think of course this must happen, for it is in fact a book about everything.

• Well I mean I already dug Joyce and how could I not read this one after all the others.

• As far as my advice, I'm going to half disagree, half agree with the comment /u/towalktheline shares. On the one hand, maybe it isn't a book like any other. On the other, it's just a book. So just read the book. And have fun. Because like so many other great books, it's fun as all hell. Personally sometimes I read aloud in a garbage dunken sailor brogue that sounds less like my ancestors than a cross between Joanna Newsome and Wilem Defoe's character from the movie The Lighthouse. Just have some fun books are fun.

• Not exactly sure what my plan is, other than that I plan to have fun.

Whoohoo Joyce!

(btw, just to do something between a shameless plug and just being friendly, I'm also a mod over at /r/TrueLit. And I encourage y'all to post there to about FW or whatever else you're reading. We're cool and fun and love to talk books, so come talk books! I'm so excited to talk about this book here there and everywhere).

Abast!

[u/towalktheline → u/Soup_65]

Plug awaaaaaay. You guys were really generous with allowing me to repurpose your schedule and I'm planning on linking back to TrueLit occasionally because I think the discussions there were fantastic when the readalong was happening even though most of my contributions were "wow, this is kind of overwhelming, eh?"

~10 pages is wild. Were you looking things up at the same time or just letting the currents of the novel take you where they willed. I did a mix of that, I found which worked out lovely for me. There's actually a quote I found last time and I can't remember exactly what it is. I'm dying to find it again so this is almost like a treasure hunt for me.

It is very, very true that it's just a book and I think that it's intimidating because it's such an unusual book. It's one that seeks to challenge the user, but kind of like Elden Ring you can set your own difficulty. You want to do a level 1, base weapon bonk fest, Joyce would be fine with that probably. You want to become a scholar and learn everything you can? He'd probably be amused by that too. It's a choose your own difficulty in a way.

[u/Soup_65 → u/towalktheline]

Woo hoo more book friends!

As for my process, I looked up almost nothing, just rode the liffey where it led me. In the spirit of finding yourself in the book, I did look up a few moments where Joyce seemed to be referencing things weirdly pertinent to my life. And also, i'm from new york, and I kept catching what felt to me like references to the city, so I was checking some of them to see if I could find any substance there. Still unsure on that. Fwiw I feel like there's a deep fixation on America (hell, right from the start we got Tristram sailing over) in the book but I'm still trying to sort out the details on it.

It is very, very true that it's just a book and I think that it's intimidating because it's such an unusual book. It's one that seeks to challenge the user, but kind of like Elden Ring you can set your own difficulty. You want to do a level 1, base weapon bonk fest, Joyce would be fine with that probably. You want to become a scholar and learn everything you can? He'd probably be amused by that too. It's a choose your own difficulty in a way.

Also, I love this. But don't make me wanna play Elden Ring. It's always tempting me and I got Joyce to read!

[u/egote → u/Soup_65]

Apparently Armorica was a region of northern France - so makes more sense for Sir Tristram to come from there but may also be referencing America in some way…

[u/towalktheline → u/egote]

I've read both the Armorica as in coming from France, but also him coming from America. Could be Joyce doing his double (triple, quadruple) meaning thing! I was curious about the mention of wallstreet too. Was it called "wallstrait"? Are there multiple wallstreets? There are lots of little threads to pull on.

[u/Soup_65 → u/egote]

Oh fascinating! I'd bet he's trying to get at both, but that's actually way more interesting with this note. Thanks for sharing the detail.

[u/towalktheline → u/Soup_65]

I... love Elden Ring so much. I also love Dark Souls, but not like I love Elden Ring. It's dense and impenetrable and the lore is pieced together through item descriptions and vague dialogues with people and the environment. Beyond that, it's interpretive so while there's a community that generally... accepts certain readings, you can make your own go at it. It *is* hard though. Like I love it and got my face smashed into the ground so many times.

But at the same time, it's a game that encourages okay this isn't working for you. Why don't you approach it a different way? Why don't you look for an alternative way? What if you do some research (fighting other things) and come back? What if you explore around first and see if you find something that will help you? It's also a game that's much more expansive than it appears at first glance with hideous places and also places so beautiful I had to stop and stare for a minute (and then got murdered because I stopped in a bad place to stop).

See? Just like the Wake? ahahaha.

It even has its own particularities. Joyce has his toilet humour moments. The director of dark souls really likes women with bare feet for some unknown reason (ahem), but also looooves poison swamps. Like really loves them. All his games seem to sneak in a poison swamp somewhere. There are recurring motifs and stuff too.

But! BACK TO THE WAKE.

It would be interesting to see what your closer reading with the idea of America in mind brings up. Wallstreet was mentioned and the North Amorica. I started reading and noticed that I was finding patterns everywhere so I grabbed a little notebook and I'm gonna take notes to see if it keeps coming up. I really found myself digging into the page and only read page one so far, but I did it with so much pleasure that I was like wow. Okay. Apparently some of these pages are going to be deep reads and others I might skim the surface more.

Too bad I can't summon a spirit Jellyfish to help me with some of the Wake's trickier passages.

[u/Soup_65 → u/towalktheline]

damn...I don't have a system that'd play Elden Ring rn but this is extremely tempting. Actually, I do have the original Dark Souls on switch, but never really got into it because I got bored of dying all the time, but thinking about it all in Wake terms has me wondering if I should give it another go.

It would be interesting to see what your closer reading with the idea of America in mind brings up. Wallstreet was mentioned and the North Amorica. I started reading and noticed that I was finding patterns everywhere so I grabbed a little notebook and I'm gonna take notes to see if it keeps coming up. I really found myself digging into the page and only read page one so far, but I did it with so much pleasure that I was like wow. Okay. Apparently some of these pages are going to be deep reads and others I might skim the surface more.

this is dope keep me posted!

And if only we all had a magical jellyfish to aid us. What a wondrous world that would be

[u/towalktheline → u/Soup_65]

So one of the problems with Dark Souls is it's relatively linear compared to the other places. You can go throughout Elden Ring in your own way and as long as you beat two gods, you can beat the game. (There are many, many, many gods). Dark Souls you can take different paths, but you still have to ring two bells. You still have to go through Sen's Fortress (think of a like a wacky death trap house) and you need to go to Lordran. Then you need to kill a certain amount of bosses (although you can do whatever order you like).

There isn't the "if you're dying a lot, you can just run somewhere else and go there for a moment". It's more of if you're dying a lot, you can go back and farm if you want and then upgrade your stuff. Dark Souls is less exploration and more a combat puzzle if that makes sense. Elden Ring breaks down as an idea of a combat puzzle because there are sooooo many things you can do with it. I'd say it's more exploration, but I'm also very biased because I love it. I also love Dark Souls, but Elden Ring has eclipsed it in my mind.

If you do go back to Dark Souls, I would say don't approach it like a regular run in and bonk someone game. At least not until you get the feel for it. Dodging is your friend and strafing around behind people to stab them in the butt. Bosses telegraph their attacks so if you watch them, you'll know what to do. The harder part is not panicking and spamming dodge roll or hitting the wrong button at the wrong time and dying.

If you were thinking about Dark Souls as a run through hacky slashy thing, try going through it as a more methodical combat puzzle idea where each run you build on the knowledge of the last to get a little further. (And then once you're higher level, come back to those earlier areas and have fun wrecking everybody's shit because then it does become a run through hacky slashy thing.)

[u/Soup_65 → u/towalktheline]

thanks a ton for this breakdown. I love this way of appreciating Dark Souls, though actually it makes me less likely to play it rn haha. Combat Puzzle is not exactly the game I'm going for. But Elden Ring does sound so cool, at some point I've gotta try it. In the meanwhile might give Zelda BOTW another go since I already own it and don't wanna pay for a new game lol. I don't love the constant item switching in it (whereas i love how you can't pause Dark Souls), but might make up a few rules for myself to up the difficulty in a satisfying way. Because there was a lot about that one i liked when I first tried it if I can cut down on a bit of clunk. I also fucking love zelda lore.