Reading the Unread Masterpiece: The Finnegans Wake Book Club

Finnegans Wake is one of the world’s great unsolved mysteries.

It is the final work of James Joyce: a titan of the Western literary canon. It was Joyce’s effort to surpass the achievement of Ulysses: the book that made him ‘acclaimed by many as the greatest modern writer of English prose’. And it is indisputably brilliant. John Bishop calls the Wake “the single most intentionally crafted literary artifact that our culture has produced’.

But since its publication in 1939, the Wake has gone almost entirely unread. The wording here matters. Many books are unpopular. Finnegans Wake is unread.

We are going to ask why. Why did Joyce pour the last 17 years of his life into this ‘frightening beast out of legend’? Why has it become ‘the most prominent exile in the colony of unread books’? And why does it change the lives of the very few who make it past the first page?

Join as us we do something ordinary and extraordinary. Join us as we read Finnegans Wake.

Beginners are welcome: No prior knowledge of Joyce or other literature necessary. Come to be curious, come to build community, and come to change the way you look at language forever. Each week, participants will read a section of the Wake in advance and discuss the text together in-person at the Pancras Square Library (5 Pancras Rd, London N1C 4AG), with occasional meetings at the Irish Cultural Centre (5 Black’s Rd, Hammersmith W6 9DT). Meetings will be focused on discussions rather than lectures, with guidance from the moderator. We will use the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Finnegans Wake (ISBN-13: 978-0199695157).

Jack Chellman, the moderator, is a Marshall Scholar and climate campaigner in London. He wrote his undergraduate thesis on feminism and Finnegans Wake and presented that work at the 2019 North American James Joyce Symposium in Mexico City, Mexico. In 2022 he led the Ulysses Centenary Book Club with the London Irish Centre and Camden Council.