Finnegans Wake ***

Finnegans Wake is the book of Here Comes Everybody and Anna Livia Plurabelle and their family - their book, but in a curious way the book of us all as well as all our books. Joyce`s last great work, it is not comprised of many borrowed styles, like Ulysses, but, rather, formulated as one dense, tongue-twisting soundscape. This `language` is based on English vocabulary and syntax but, at the same time, self-consciously designed to function as a pun machine with an astonishing capacity for resisting singularity of meaning. Announcing a `revolution of the word`, this astonishing book amounts to a powerfully resonant cultural critique - a unique kind of miscommunication which, far from stabilizing the world in meaning, constructs a universe radically unfixed by a wild diversity of possibilities and potentials. It also remains the most hilarious, `obscene`, book of innuendos ever to be imagined.