WAKE: Cold Reading Finnegans Wake

The hundred-letter 'thunderwords' are arguably the most enduring, well-known, and mystifying feature of Finnegans Wake , jumbles of letters cobbling together words from far-flung languages to create a word salad of difficulty that seems to stand as emblematic of the overall challenges of the Wake . In this bonus episode, we spend a few minutes considering all ten thunderwords, their 1001 letters,...

Hooraymost! It’s the dirtiest chapter featuring insect erotica in all of literature, so grab your doodlers and bungholes, we’re going spizzing! Best of all, beloved Wakexpert Lucy Brazier finds room on her fagroaster to get down to some Clowntalkin about the savage rivalry between Shaun and his brother as we cover chapter 3.1! We wonder about narrative-minded donkeys, ponder what it would take to...

We find ourselves at the end of Book Two, and you know what that means: another ever-popular recap episode! Using the mind-bending brilliance of the László Moholy-Nagy Finnegans Wake Diagram as a jumping-off point, Toby and TJ try to rank the chapters of Book 2, nostalgically reconsider Night Lessons, and compare the text to a disparate collection of cultural touchstones. Topics may include, to va...

This week we break things down to the quark level to bring you mythical love stories (featuring a king named Mark), ghost-written historical romances, interminable sentences, and Joycean numerology. Jackie Mahoney joins the team and expertly weaves their way through questions of whether chapter 2.4 is about Tristan and Isolde, or if it's more about about the four perverts leering at them from the...

Hray! This week TJ's fiancé Taylor Hoover joins us to close down the bar, avoid the insults, and drink up all the dregs left over! Find out just what disqualifies one from becoming a limousine lady, the logistics behind transcribing crowd noise, and the relationship between Joyce, Charles Marowitz, and Tron: Legacy . Don't hide, seek this week's episode of WAKE! (Apologies for the sound quality on...

Richard Harte is one of the world's preeminent interpreters of Joyce: a 25 year veteran of Bloomsday performances, and the undisputed star of One Little Goat Theatre Company's parallel (not competing) Finnegans Wake podcast, currently under development as a film and exhaustive live chronicle of the Earwicker clan. When Toby joined the audience to watch his old friend Richard perform 1.5 of the Wak...

WAKE buys you a third round and settles in for yet another Tale at the Inn, where we prominently feature multiple guns, KC Jowls and the little-known horror film Coach with the Six Insides . We bid welcome to another of Toby's former students, Ryan Benson Smith, for a lively discussion that includes a Wake-Ramones mashup, the Bluey theme song, and how media romanticises the Irish. Along the way, w...

As the whiskey and Guinness flow, the Tales at the Inn get all the more outlandish, Taff and Butt get out of hand, and a Russian general cops it. This week in WAKE, we geek out about geeking out with Carly Derderian, consider whether Thornton Wilder cribbed The Skin of Our Teeth from Finnegans Wake , relax our mouths enough to speak like a Newfoundlander and unlock the meaning of the language of t...

It's a milestone episode of WAKE, as we sail past the halfway point on an auspicious anniversary day for Toby. TJ is out sick this week, so we checked our list of dream interim co-hosts and came up with a winner: Toby's brilliant former dramaturgy student, K'hari Constantine! Toby and K'hari dive into the first part of Tales at the Inn, with the detailed story of the Norwegian Captain, and along t...

Welcome to WAKE, where language is king! This week we reach the thrilling conclusion of the Night Lessons episode, and get into a little bit of analysis amidst the chaos that reigns when TJ's internet drops out mid-recording. We discuss Neil's ongoing beef against Cognitive Science and the laws of language, discover the benefits to earning knowledge, and establish all the reasons we should...

Just like a well-ordered barndance, Toby, TJ, and Neil shuffle one step the right to find new dance partners, with all new takes on the mighty columns of Night Lessons! With footnotes that would make David Foster Wallace blush, Latin, French, and a parenthetical that spans five entire pages, Joyce is really making us work this week. Come sit in the back of the classroom, keep your spitballs to you...

Grab your notebooks and start practicing your filthiest marginalia, it's Night Lessons time! When confronted with the most logistically challenging chapter of the Wake (columns! footnotes! diagrams! marginalia!), Toby and TJ sent out the Neil-Signal, and brought in our favourite purist-in-the-nicest sense, Neil Wechsler, to establish order. In this first part of three episodes reading this com...

The games are afoot on WAKE, but we are fortified and ready to cast our disapproving glances over the debauchery! For the second half of Chapter 2.1, we welcome genuine teenager, Cormac Malone, to start us off, before we churn our way to the door-slammiest of thunderwords yet. We consider whether reading the Wake is just like a Tough Mudder race, and whether HCE is Neo from the Matrix. Toby reveal...

Book Two is underway at the Wake, and it's taking the voices spanning three different continents to take us there. This week Toby and TJ are joined by the delightful Brit Lucy Brazier, author of Finnegans What? Finnegans Wake - a Guide by an Idiot to discuss inappropriate sibling games, river poo, Oscar Wilde, underwear fetishes, and Francophobia. Despite her book's subtitle, Lucy is no idiot, but...

We pause the reading of the Wake this week to look back on Book One: HCE, ALP, Shaun, Shem and Izzy have led us on a wild, rumour-filled ride, and we want to process that before we move on! In a free-wheeling conversation, we consider Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812 , theatre riots, The Magus , Beowulf , the prophetic dream lucidity of Buffy Summers, Cain's Jawbone , I Think You Sho...

It's the most watery episode of WAKE so far, as we cruise past the 1/3 complete mark and tackle the legendary 1.8: "Anna Livia." Toby takes hubris to a whole new level by attempting to read the entire chapter, cold, without breaks, or assistance, as TJ furiously circles all of the river-name puns. We discuss remarkably knowledgeable washerwomen, the fine line between gossip and mythology, how Joyc...

TJ is back, and WAKE, the podcast of the history of the future, rolls on its unstoppable way! This week, we consider just why siblings are generally awful to one another as Shaun reads Shem to filth to round out chapter 1.7. We discuss Toby's favourite bookstore (Lane Bookshop Claremont, represent!), Latin stories of bowel evacuation, the Mighty Ducks, Moby-Dick, and Alan Ayckbourn: so, in general...

It's a WAKE of firsts: the first episode recorded in Australia, the first episode with two guests, and, most difficult of all, the first episode without TJ! When schedules don't mesh, there's nothing for it but to plough on, for the Wake waits for no man (or musical workshop). This week comes to us from the echoey comforts of Toby's parents' house in Perth, where Mick and Jo Malone unveil their ro...

We would never consider ourselves mooks , nor would we gripe about the task in front of us, but finishing 1.6's Quiz (along with the needlessly complicated tale of the Mookse and Gripes) made us wonder whether Joyce might learn a little from Sad Girl Lit. We get a call from the other side of the planet and welcome Toby's hugely accomplished arts administrator sister, Georgia Malone, to talk about...

For this week's perzacto episode, we are joined by world-changing director and all-round delight Aili Huber, as we consider the first half of the least user-friendly quiz in literary history. We have our first ever tap-out (it's easy to get lost on the page if your eye wanders), consider Dr Seuss, the gish gallop, and e.e. cummings, before we bring it all home by considering how Finnegans Wake mig...

Neil is back, and we are going to hear some opinions ! TJ and Toby welcome the brilliant Neil Wechsler back to the pod to finish reading 1.5 and then get into some analysis of what we've heard over the last two episodes. We'll talk about the unexpected benefits of reading aloud, find out what feels just like a really good university course, and establish the Neil Wechsler drinking game to get you...

The purists are here! The purists are here! Toby and TJ get legit with the presence of long time lover of Joyce, a man who has read the Wake multiple times, and has used it as a major inspiration for his own work. Neil Wechsler is your favourite playwright's favourite playwright: an award-winning, cerebral, self-deprecating ball of energy who is here to show us that there are plenty of ways to be...

This week is the total piece of work that Wagner dreamed of, with GMWKS co-creator Jordan Morille joining Toby and TJ to take on the Wake! With a baby on his hip, and delving deep into his actor's experience, Jordan popcorn-reads from the second half of 1.4, where we meet disguised ex-nuns, Dirty Daddy Pantaloons, and TJ's 'Wake' tattoo quotation. Then, we consider the gesamtkunstwerk , Dada, Sigu...

WAKE loves guests! This Bloomsday week, Toby and TJ welcome the incomparable Dr. Natalie Hoskins, professor of communication, to give us her professional perspective on pleasure reading, broadcasting thoughts, and desperately looking for meaning in the subtext. Also, Natalie joins us to read from 1.4 of the Wake, where Festy King defends himself, HCE hides in a coffin, and Kate Strong seeks more t...

The attacks come thick and fast on HCE in this week's reading of WAKE, from court appearances to name-calling, from canoodling to gun violence, it's amazing that he's able to rest at all. This week TJ reads the palimpsest that is Finnegans Wake, along with Toby and Toby’s brilliant 12 year old daughter, Bridie Malone, as we confront our growing international audience by producing little of actual...