Back in Costa's before another stint in Oxfam, a nice toastie inside of me, the coffee still hot in the cup. My mind drifts to something said by Samuel Beckett about Finnegans Wake. He said that the book was not about anything so much as being the thing itself . Joyce was seeking to get beyond art as "representing" or pointing to, anything else. All good art should involve the inter-relationship of the art "object" and the "subject" who looks/reads. Beckett wrote of those waiting for Godot but waiting seems impossible in a way. Reality is always demanding our "answers" in each and every moment. We give them, ready or not, willing or unwilling.
I feel myself the temptation of a book with all the answers, something "out there", given, interpreted for me. That I can then adapt to, mimic, repeat to others as a solution to every question. Although a temptation, I think such is a prison.
All life then is the thing itself, at least for me. A book cannot be life itself, only an integral part of it, therefore Finnegans Wake can only act as an ejector seat that offers freedom to be ourselves - or simply chains, if we get sucked in, insisting all must see as we do.
I was listening to another chapter of Ulysses a day or so ago. Chapter 4, which introduces Leopold Bloom, or "Poldy" as his wayward wife Molly calls him. And calls him often as she lingers in bed, asking him to bring her a pot of tea. Leopold, an Irish jew, shuffles around he kitchen, feeding the cat, then pops out for some mutton kidneys, returns to have them for breakfast. The chapter ends as he goes to the Jakes, a copy of Tid Bits for the necessary paper to wipe himself. His bowel movements and resultant smell are well described by Joyce, who saw all life as having the potential to offer signs, or maybe to be the thing itself.
When it was suggested to him that Ulysses was "unfit to read" he said that, if so, then "life was unfit to live."
Anyway, I waffle. Make of it what you will.