Word: reader
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...page) has just taken the following action, or that GOT (the Government of Tanzania, or Turkey, or Transylvania) is about to take the following action, unless USG (backwards for the Government of the United States) does something about it. Sooner or later, the faithful cable reader gets the idea that the governments he reads about in the cables are entities that have an existence of their own, quite apart from the flesh and blood human beings whose continuing quarrels and occasional agreements are dimly reflected in the statements (and the rumors) emanating like so much ectoplasm from the anonymous mouths...
...more than just a grammarian's funeral. He has reduced the text by about two-thirds, added an introduction that is admirable for clarity, good sense and erudition, and has placed commentaries here and there to help any dog-Latinist through the Joycean style. Even so, the plain reader (if such exists) will soon find himself in waters deeper than the River Liffey...
Furthermore, in Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, "we have the hump of sexual guilt he carries on his back (he is a different porter now), a hint of the ape, and more than a hint of the insect." To the straightforward reader, it may appear that the explanation only compounds the problem, especially when Burgess points out that the French for "earwig" is perce-oreille, which "can be Hibernicized into Persse O'Reilly," a name appropriate to H. C. Earwicker's dream career as an Irish patriot. His initials also mean "Here Comes Everybody" (turning the sleeper into Everyman...
Dream Logic. With such details in mind, and with Burgess' assurance that Joyce was not a deliberate mystifier but "an intellectually superior writer unwilling to compromise with subject matter of great complexity," the reader is presumably in shape to cope with the first sentence of Wake: "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs"-a reference, on one level, to the Liffey, which runs past Adam and Eve's Church and Howth Castle in Dublin...
Metaphysical Mystery. The reader is told nothing of Y's origin or personality; he is an abstraction. There are no women in the novel, and sex is never mentioned. Just before the trial scene, however, the book offers a few clues to Y's wherefore. Y admits to himself that he sought out the Henhouse; that he is responsible for allowing it to become a prison; that when he visualized himself as another Hen, what he really wanted was to remain a part of the system. Finally, he realizes that before he can assert his autonomy, he must...