Penguin-Holt-Penguin

[Tim Strzechowski]

I seem to recall reading that FW was originally published in installments in 
a variety of periodicals, including Harriet Monroe's _Poetry_ or some such 
publication thru Shakespeare and Co.  At that time it was simply known by 
its working title, "Work in Progress."

from Margot Norris, "Finnegans Wake" in _The Cambridge Companion to James 
Joyce_ (1997): pp. 161 - 84.

"Joyce began writing _Finnegans Wake_ early in 1923.  His prepatory moves in 
December of 1922 included sorting out old notes for _Ulysses_, and Joyce 
claimed that the unused notes alone weighed twelve kilos.  This suggests, 
along with the evidence of the Buffalo Notebook VI.A (edited by Thomas E. 
Connolly as the 'Scribblehobble' notebook) that _Finnegans Wake_ is 
constructed, among other things, out of the earlier Joycean works, perhaps 
even with the earlier works serving as rubrics, although there is 
controversy about the degree of continuity between _Finnegans Wake_ and 
Joyce's previous fictions" [...] (170).

In discussing the composition of the work, Norris focuses on how Joyce would 
write sections and have friends read aloud and proofread those sections 
(often while he was convalescing from his numerous eye surgeries).  Joyce 
would edit as he went along in this fashion, and likewise pay close 
attention to reader reactions when the installments were published.

Continuing from Norris:

"Joyce's most important convert and new ally during the early days of 
writing _Finnegans Wake_ was Eugene Jolas, who embraced the nascent text as 
a major document of his 'Revolution of the word,' and published portions of 
it in _transition_.  Jolas's manifesto for the 'Revolution of the word' 
included such directives as 'Time is a tyranny to be abolished' [...] Jolas 
armed Joyce with an aesthetic and intellectual rationale that made 
_Finnegans Wake_ congruent with other avant-garde movements of his day" 
(173).

Norris then explains that Joyce, paying close attention to critics (i.e., 
his friends William Carlos Williams, Beckett, Rebecca West, et al) as the 
WiP unfolded in installments, may have incorporated some of their 
associations and suggestions in his revisions as he completed the final 
draft (174).

But, all told (at least according to Norris) there doesn't seem to have been 
a strong presence of one "editor."




> That is a very good point.  How the HELL does one edit Finnegans Wake?
> How did he even write it?  And finally, how the hell did he convince
> anyone to publish it?
>