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| James Joyce |
For this series of articles on James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake I have been using The Restored Finnegans Wake as my preferred text. Danis Rose and John O’Hanlon’s critically emended edition of the work, which was first published in 2010, is still in copyright and I am not aware of any recordings of its text. The original 1939 text of Finnegans Wake, however, is in the public domain, and there are several free recordings online, as well as some commercially available audiobooks.
The online recordings of the Humphriad are of uneven quality. This is understandable. No one really knows how we are supposed to read a book like Finnegans Wake. What tempo should we adopt? How should we pronounce words that are not to be found in any dictionary? Does it even make sense to talk of a correct way to read this book?
There is something very Irish about a text that sounds different every time you hear it. Traditionally, our myths and legends were not written down as works of literature to be read or recited—like, for example, the Bible or the Iliad. Instead, a trained storyteller known as a seanchaí—a custodian of our native traditions, if you like—was entrusted with this material. The seanchaí, or shanachie, was expected to improvise oral performances of traditional tales, adding his own flourishes and fleshing out the bare bones of each story. Every performance was meant to be unique.
This native tradition is reflected in the following online recordings of the Humphriad, which are all available free of charge. Most manage to cover the Humphriad in approximately three hours.
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| Patrick Horgan |
Patrick Horgan
The English actor Patrick Horgan—the narrator in Woody Allen’s Zelig—recorded the whole of the Wake in 1985. This, the first unabridged recording of Finnegans Wake, was produced by the American Foundation for the Blind for the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.
Horgan reads fairly quickly but, as one would expect from a professional actor, his delivery is clear and precise and he brings the text to life. It is still one of the best readings of the book. The audio quality of the freely accessible online version, however, is quite poor. The Humphriad begins in the middle of the second audio file at 23:40 and continues through the end of the fourth audio file:
I imported the relevant files into Audacity and tried my best to clean them up. The result has been uploaded to the Internet Archive:
Horgan’s reading can also be accessed on YouTube on Joseph Lavy’s channel:
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| Waywords and Meansigns |
Waywords and Meansigns
Waywords and Meansigns is an online project to recreate Finnegans Wake in its Whole Wholume. It is a library of audio files in which the different sections of Finnegans Wake are read and interpreted through music by a variety of musicians and writers, artists and scholars, weirdos and generally adventurous people. It was co-founded in 2014 by Derek Pyle and Kelley Kipperman and currently includes more than seventy hours of material. Its three editions—the third is still a Work in Progress—will comprise three recordings of Joyce’s novel from cover to cover. The first two editions consist of recordings of entire chapters, while the ongoing third edition focuses on shorter passages. The following links are to the playlists for the first two editions:
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| The Most Ever Company |
The Most Ever Company describes itself as a mysterious, anonymous & very cryptic art collective in Oklahoma. Their YouTube channel includes an audiobook of Finnegans Wake:
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| Patrick Healy |
Patrick Healy
The Irish writer and scholar Patrick Healy’s recording of Finnegans Wake is also available online. It was made over a period of four days in January 1992 at Bow Lane Recording Studios in Dublin. Healy reads at breakneck speed and his pronunciations are often bizarre. I am not a fan of this reading, but it has been widely acclaimed by some Joycean scholars. The Humphriad comprises Tracks 9-26:
Audiobooks
It has been said that the advent of audiobooks has revolutionized the reading of Finnegans Wake. Irish actors Barry McGovern and Marcella Riordan’s reading for Naxos Audiobooks is the first commercially available unabridged recording of Finnegans Wake. It is now available as an Audible download, making it easier than ever for anyone to make their way through this mighty tome. The recording lasts more than 29 hours and is exceptional. It is surely worth one credit. The Humphriad lasts about 3 hours and 23 minutes:
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