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Title: Annotations to Finnegans Wake by Roland McHugh ISBN: 0-8018-4190-9 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: December, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 (5 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Disappointing
Comment: Roland McHugh is an admirable Joyce scholar and most certainly knows more about the Wake than I, but I must say this book is not at all what I was looking for in an annotated guide. I was expecting the format of Ulysses Annotated, but instead was confronted with a very different mode of operation. McHugh's book is very useful in two areas, those being 1.)Foreign Words and 2.)Joyce's compound words. This is because the author presents the annotations as if they were personal notes in his own copy of the Wake, rather than full explications as found in Ulysses Annotated. McHugh argues that this will force the reader to make his own connections and lead to more frutiful conclusions, but the same goal could be accomplished by simply doing what McHugh has done, read FW, study it, and make notes of your own. Any beginner who is not familiar with some of the primary themes of the Wake will be sorely disappointed. The best example of the way McHugh skims over these is found in the preface (which I believe can be previewed on this site), where he shows how in a regular annotated guide a reference to Giambattista Vico would take up 9 lines of text, briefly explaining his theory, and in his own method it is simply referred to as 'Vico'. This reference would mean absolutely nothing to a reader unfamiliar with Vico. For a reader seeking to add a little convenience to their own personal study, this is perfect. For the reader seeking (relatively) full explanations of historical and literary allusions and such, this is most certainly not the guide to get. This book would have been exponentially more useful had it simply been integrated into the text of FW, ie one page of FW, one page of annotations.
Rating: 2
Summary: okay
Comment: so many things he misses, so much obvious stuff he includes, and so little detail on the meaning of some of the annotations end up making this book somewhat of a nuisance, breaking up the flow which makes the Wake enjoyable. I still prefer Joseph Campbell's Skeleton Key to FW, though it admits that it does not try to catch every allusion. I find that most of the things that I really do want to find out, where I hear some echo of something, he doesn't touch on, or doesn't touch on to my satisfaction. Really, this project should be a collaboration online where people would add their comments to the possible meanings of different lines, because there are so many. Each man comes at it with his own knowledge, interests and needs, and can't get everything. So while this is useful for some, it's more of an impediment for me. A tattered security blanket that trips you up while you walk, you feel like Linus from peanuts lugging out this big blue thing.
Rating: 4
Summary: To use the code book, you need the code-DEcoding book...
Comment: The Annotations is a very helpful reference, pure and simple. Even for those familiar with the nightlife of the Wake, ANNO. invariably points out redlight districts which have escaped the reader's attention.
It is simple to use; my hardcover copy is identically paginated and so there is no confusing looking for the right page. (Apparently the softcover versions conform to this, also.)
Etymology is provided where necessary, and there are the usual plethora of abbreviated historical allusions.
Reviewing ANNO. before reading considerably helps in "getting" at least an increased small percentage of the numerous puns, parodies, allusions, etc.
Not an absolute requirement for reading the Wake, but doubtless a very great help.
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Title: A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake (Irish Studies (Syracuse Univ Pr)) by William York Tindall ISBN: 0815603851 Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr (Trade) Pub. Date: June, 1996 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Finnegans Wake (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by James Joyce, John Bishop ISBN: 0141181265 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 1999 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary (Irish Studies (Syracuse, N.Y.).) by John Gordon ISBN: 0815623968 Publisher: Syracuse University Press Pub. Date: February, 1987 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Ulysses Annotated by Don Gifford ISBN: 0520067452 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: October, 1989 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Joyce's Book of the Dark: Finnegans Wake by John Bishop ISBN: 0299108244 Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press Pub. Date: October, 1993 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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