FW doesn't have a textual beginning, since the last sentence leads into the first, but that does not mean that there are not beginnings to the book in the normal way we encounter this book. Book I.1 ends with the waking of Finnegan (taking "wake" literally) before his replacement comes on the scene. Before that, alongside the stereoscopic depiction of the ur-ancient monumental tomb and the pages of the annal resolved together into the landscape of Dublin and environs (see yesterday's post), there is preparation for what is coming in the book: characters...and characters changing shapes and combining, each with a potential story (see my notes below on 20.20-23).
The first story told in FW is the tale of the Prankquaen (21.5ff). This realization has come to me late today, and I want to send this post off soon, but I am still going to re-read the story with this idea in mind.
In the paragraph leading up to it, I feel like I can make out someone (the same tour guide as before?) listing examples of stories that are there to be told ("One's upon a thyme...", "That one of a wife with folty barnets", Of a noarch and a chopwife; of a pomme full grave and a fammy of levity; or of golden youths that wanted gelding." They are about the members of the nuclear family that dominates the book or figures surrounding them. The last one listed (perhaps): "what the mischievmiss made a man do." This seems to describe the coming Prankquaen story. So this story has been picked out from among others there, ready for the telling. We're even told to listen: "Hohore!" (some seepage in the directive from the content to come). Or, is it not until 21.2, near the end of the paragraph, that this story is finally chosen ("So weenybeenyveenyteeny. Comsy seee!": eeny meeny miney mo: comme ça! "Lissom! I am doing it. Hark, the corne entreats! And the larpnotes prittle": a story about HCE and ALP).
* * *
Cry not yet! There's many a smile to Nondum...But look what you have in your handself! The movibles are scrawling in motions, marching, all of them ago, in pitpat and zingzang for every busy eerie whig's a bit of a torytale to tell. (20.20-23)
FW is coming alive before my eyes. Unlike other books, printed after the movable type is shaken and lined up (I'm at a loss for the actual way to describe this, or the terms for the different component of a printing press and typeface), the type is still moving, the final impression not yet made.
This responds to the affirmation in the preceding paragraph that every word in the book will have 70 meanings, and that so many characters (signs on the page, and personas in the story) will be encountered in the book of "Doublends Jined." A long road awaits ("There's many miles to Babylon"). The characters on the page will be constantly moving and coming to life. How do you read a letter that continually changes shape? Maybe this is how we should think about JJ's dream/pun language in FW: as words in constant motion. It reminds me of what it is like to try and read in my own dreams: the words never seem to be fixed, and never make sense except for one or two words at a time. And, as asserted here, not only do they all include different meanings, but different stories. Each character (again, the two meanings) has a story. And there will be contradictions, or opposing forces: Whigs vs. Tories.
This also seems to evoke the difficulties of reading with bad eyesight (which JJ famously suffered from), or when drunk.
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