{"id":40265,"date":"2012-10-19T15:00:03","date_gmt":"2012-10-19T19:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=40265"},"modified":"2013-04-07T14:11:37","modified_gmt":"2013-04-07T18:11:37","slug":"finnegans-wake-an-illustrated-panorama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/19\/finnegans-wake-an-illustrated-panorama\/","title":{"rendered":"Finnegans Wake<\/em>: An Illustrated Panorama"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wanted to illustrate something impossible, so I chose Finnegans Wake<\/em>. It would be silly for me to draw in a few panels a work that took James Joyce seventeen years to complete. So I cheated.<\/p>\n

\nThe name of the book comes from a nineteenth Century drinking song, \u201cFinnegan\u2019s Wake\u201d (note the apostrophe). The song is about death and rebirth, and ends in a whisky-fueled brouhaha. There is little in agreement, on the other hand, on what Joyce’s book is about. Reading a page at random from Finnegans Wake<\/em> is a bit like trying to read while drunk. But death and rebirth are undoubtedly major themes, as the book begins halfway through its final sentence. So here\u2019s a single strand of DNA\u2014perhaps the first\u2014in Joyce\u2019s impossibly dense opus infinitum.<\/p>\n