The Top Ten Things You Should Know
Before You Read Finnegans Wake

1. There ain't no Cliffs Notes for FW. You're on your own, buckaroo.

2. Okay, so you're not totally on your own. FW has inspired more great works of explication, exigesis, and interpretation than any other work in the history of literature.

3. Despite the claims of many critics, FW is in fact an elaborate hoax on the literary community. Just because Joyce obsessed over it for seventeen years doesn't mean it isn't a hoax. Joyce even said "This should keep them guessing for awhile."

4. Okay, so Joyce didn't say "This should keep them guessing for awhile." What he actually said was "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what it meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality." And he wasn't talking about FW, he was talking about Ulysses. But you know if he was thinking that about Ulysses he was thinking that about FW too.

5. Just because FW is a hoax doesn't mean it isn't fun, or valuable, to read and study.

6. FW may or may not be ABOUT a dream, and it may or may not BE a dream.

7. Sometimes things that appear the same are different, or not; sometimes things that appear different are the same, or not; and vice versa; and vice versa.

8. The Library of Congress Subject Headings for FW are:

Aged men--Fiction
Dreams--Fiction
Family--Dublin--Ireland--Fiction
Dublin (Ireland)--Fiction
Psychological Fiction
Experimental Fiction
One day, Action in
Stream of consciousness fiction

There, that clears things up a bit, doesn't it?

9. There is a recording of Joyce reading a portion of FW. The reading begins at 213.11 and continues to the end of I.viii at 216.5. I have a nagging suspicion that Joyce chose to read this section because, hidden somewhere in it, is a valuable key to the work as a whole. Or maybe he read this section because that is what he wanted us to think.

10. You'll never make sense of FW, but that is as it should be. What Joyce attempted to express in FW was that life is full of spiritual contradictions, dichotomies, dualities, and conundrums. The central message of FW is that we should not despair over this; rather, we should revel in it. In doing so, Joyce got closer than any other artist to what it means to be spiritual; he showed us, more than any other artist, that the mystery of the unknowable was not to be feared, but celebrated. So, when you find yourself unable to make heads or tails out of FW, don't agonize, rejoice! and thereby connect deeply with your spiritual soul.