Alok Jha says in this episode that while we’re mostly water-beings on a planet covered in water, “all of those molecules of water came not from the Earth the Earth’s water comes from space,” from the bombardment of meteorites that carried water to us. This is appropriate, because like dreams, water brings us into an ongoing process of expansive life. The book’s language, while dreamy and ceremonial, is also material, and often watery. But it also suggests the wake that follows movement through water. The “wake” in Finnegans Wake means both a joyous funereal gathering (here Joyce invented the word “funferal”) and a rising from sleep. This show celebrates the wonders of the basic stuff of life. We discover, along the way, that the Wake’s infinite complexity comes from attention to our most simple, elemental experiences (of dreams, of water, of local and familiar language). With a range of guests-including a novelist, an actor, a sleep specialist, a philosopher, and several Joyce scholars- Finnegan and Friends follows tangents inspired by Joyce’s novel of dreamy strangeness. Welcome to Finnegan and Friends, a new five-part series about the most mystifying book ever written: James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.
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