Finnegans
Wake is the book of Here Comes Everybody and Anna Livia Plurabelle and
their family - their book, but in a curious way the book of us all as well as
all our books. Joyce's last great work, it is not comprised of many borrowed
styles, like Ulysses, but, rather,
formulated as one dense, tongue-twisting soundscape.
This 'language' is based on English vocabulary and syntax but, at the same
time, self-consciously designed to function as a pun machine with an
astonishing capacity for resisting singularity of meaning. Announcing a
'revolution of the word', this astonishing book amounts to a powerfully
resonant cultural critique - a unique kind of miscommunication which, far from
stabilizing the world in meaning, constructs a universe radically unfixed by a
wild diversity of possibilities and potentials. It also remains the most
hilarious, 'obscene', book of innuendos ever to be imagined.
