Ladies and Gentlemen,
Finnegans Wake begins, “riverrun, past Eve and
Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay”. Such
music!
Trickster Joyce was full of puns. Even in his title we’re Huckleberry Finn-again, drifting down the mind’s river.
Finnegan, in the old ballad, wakes
at his own wake and joins the party, and indeed Irish wakes were uninhibited—they took the corpse out of the coffin and danced with it—till the Church
suppressed them.
In Ulysses Molly has
the last word, “he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was
going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes,” and it seems to me that, about
the whole mess, Joyce
Said Yes.
HCE in the Wake may
think he’s Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, but he’s really all of us, Here Comes
Everybody. And in my humble way, oh, my humble way, the
tourists in Toby’s care are my HCE.
Ever yours,
Roibeárd
Joyce
Made a dubious choice
When he had a headmaster cultivated enough to know Shakespeare, albeit without a graduate degree from the University of Chicago,
Quote Iago.
(Which I suppose is less baloneyous
Than quoting Polonius.)
Robert MacLean is an independent filmmaker. His The Light Touch is on Amazon Prime, Tubi and Scanbox, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a film reviewer, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, live Greece, Irish citizen. Committed to making movies that don't matter. No brains, but an intellectual snob.
“The worst vice of the fanatic is his sincerity.”—Oscar Wilde
The Light Touch on Amazon Prime
The Natural Wish to Be Robert MacLean
Also on YouTube:
Boccaccio’s "The Husband"
Boccaccio's "The Horse Trade"
Boccaccio's "The Stupid Friar"
Chaucer’s "The Miller's Tale"
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