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Podcast: The Cosmic Library
Episode: 1.1 Finnegan and Friends: Introduction
Description: James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake doesn’t work like other novels. It has lines like: “What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-gods!” In some ways, this makes the book almost impossible to read. H.G. Wells told Joyce, “You have turned your back on common men — on their elementary needs … What is the result? Vast riddles.” The Wake doesn’t have to be difficult, though; you don’t have to read it as a collection of unsolvable riddles. In Finnegan and Friends, we don’t regard the Wake as something to decode completely. Instead, we find in the book a well of...