Editing Finnegans Wake (section)

==Background and composition==
Having completed work on ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'', Joyce was so exhausted that he did not write a line of prose for a year.<ref>Bulson, E. J., ''The Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce'' (Cambridge University Press, 2006), [https://books.google.com/books?id=OjX8IGVydoYC&lpg=PP1&hl=cs&pg=PA14&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 14].</ref>{{rp|14}} On 10 March 1923, he wrote a letter to his patron, [[Harriet Shaw Weaver]]: "Yesterday I wrote two pages—the first I have since the final ''Yes'' of ''Ulysses''. Having found a pen, with some difficulty I copied them out in a large handwriting on a double sheet of [[Paper size#Traditional British paper sizes|foolscap]] so that I could read them."<ref>Joyce, James. ''Ulysses: The 1922 Text''. Oxford University Press, 1998. Page xlvii.</ref> This is the earliest reference to what would become ''Finnegans Wake''.<ref>Crispi, Slote 2007, p. 5</ref>

[[File:Djuna Barnes - Joyce.PNG|alt=Head and shoulders drawing of a man with a slight moustache and narrow goatee in a jacket, low-collared shirt and bow tie. He wears round glasses and an eye patch over his right eye, attached by a string around his head.|thumb|250px|A drawing of Joyce (with eyepatch) by [[Djuna Barnes]] from 1922, the year in which Joyce began the 17-year task of writing ''Finnegans Wake''<ref>Barnes, D., "James Joyce", ''Vanity Fair'', Apr 1922, [https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/17/djuna-barnes-interviews-james-joyce/ p. 65].</ref>]]

The two pages in question consisted of the short sketch "[[Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair|Roderick O'Conor]]", concerning the historic last [[king of Ireland]] cleaning up after guests by drinking the dregs of their dirty glasses.<ref>The piece would eventually become the conclusion of Part II Chapter 3 (FW: 380.07–382.30); cf Crispi, Slote 2007, p. 5.</ref> Joyce completed another four short sketches in July and August 1923, while holidaying in [[Bognor Regis|Bognor]]. The sketches, which dealt with different aspects of Irish history, are commonly known as "[[Tristan and Iseult|Tristan and Isolde]]", "[[Saint Patrick]] and the Druid", "[[Kevin of Glendalough|Kevin]]'s Orisons", and "Mamalujo".<ref>Hofheinz, p. 120.</ref> While these sketches would eventually be incorporated into ''Finnegans Wake'' in one form or another, they did not contain any of the main characters or plot points which would later come to constitute the backbone of the book. The first signs of what would eventually become ''Finnegans Wake'' came in August 1923 when Joyce wrote the sketch "Here Comes Everybody", which dealt for the first time with the book's protagonist HCE.<ref>Crispi, Slote 2007, pp. 12–13.</ref>

Over the next few years, Joyce's method became one of "increasingly obsessional concern with note-taking, since [he] obviously felt that any word he wrote had first to have been recorded in some notebook."<ref>Mailhos 1994, [https://books.google.com/books?id=vzoDSaeygawC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA491&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 49]</ref> As Joyce continued to incorporate these notes into his work, the text became increasingly dense and obscure.

By 1926, Joyce had largely completed both Parts I and III. Geert Lernout asserts that Part I had, at this early stage, "a real focus that had developed out of the HCE ["Here Comes Everybody"] sketch: the story of HCE, of his wife and children. There were the adventures of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker himself and the rumours about them in chapters 2–4, a description of his wife ALP's letter in chapter 5, a denunciation of his son Shem in chapter 7, and a dialogue about ALP in chapter 8. These texts{{nbsp}}... formed a unity."<ref name=lernout50>Lernout, in Crispi, Slote 2007, p. 50</ref> In the same year, Joyce met [[Maria Jolas|Maria]] and [[Eugène Jolas]] in Paris, just as his new work was generating an increasingly negative reaction from readers and critics, culminating in ''[[The Dial]]'''s refusal to publish the four chapters of Part III in September 1926.<ref name=lernout50/> The Jolases gave Joyce valuable encouragement and material support throughout the long process of writing ''Finnegans Wake'',<ref>Crispi, Slote 2007, p.22</ref> and published sections of the book in serial form in their literary magazine ''[[Transition (literary journal)|transition]]'', under the title ''Work in Progress''. For the next few years, Joyce worked rapidly on the book, adding what would become chapters I.1 and I.6, and revising the already written segments to make them more lexically complex.<ref>quoted in Crispi, Slote 2007, p. 22</ref>

By this time, some early supporters of Joyce's work, such as [[Ezra Pound]] and the author's brother [[Stanislaus Joyce]], had grown increasingly unsympathetic to his new writing.<ref>Ellmann 1983, pp. 577–585, 603</ref> In order to create a more favourable critical climate, a group of Joyce's supporters (including [[Samuel Beckett]], [[William Carlos Williams]], and others) put together a collection of critical essays on the new work. It was published in 1929 under the title ''[[Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress]]''.<ref>[[Derek Attridge|Attridge, D.]], ''The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce'' (Cambridge: [[Cambridge University Press]], 1990), [https://books.google.com/books?id=KzGS8gR_wBUC&pg=PA174&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 174]. {{ISBN|0-521-37673-4}}</ref> In July 1929, increasingly demoralised by the poor reception his new work was receiving, Joyce approached his friend [[James Stephens (author)|James Stephens]] about the possibility of Stephens completing the book. Joyce wrote to Weaver in late 1929 that he had "explained to [Stephens] all about the book, at least a great deal, and he promised me that if I found it madness to continue, in my condition, and saw no other way out, that he would devote himself, heart and soul, to the completion of it, that is the second part and the epilogue or fourth."<ref>quoted in Crispi, Slote 2007, p. 23</ref> Apparently Joyce chose Stephens on superstitious grounds, as he had been born in the same hospital as Joyce, exactly one week later, and shared both the first names of Joyce himself and his fictional alter-ego [[Stephen Dedalus]].<ref>Ellmann 1983, pp. 591–592</ref> In the end, Stephens was not asked to finish the book.

In the 1930s, as he was writing Parts II and IV, Joyce's progress slowed considerably. This was due to a number of factors including the death of his father [[John Stanislaus Joyce]] in 1931;<ref>Bulson, E. J., ''The Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), [https://books.google.com/books?id=OjX8IGVydoYC&pg=PA15&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 15]. {{ISBN|0-521-84037-6}}</ref> concern over the mental health of his daughter [[Lucia Joyce|Lucia]];<ref>Eide, M., ''Ethical Joyce'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), [https://books.google.com/books?id=IfP1hN9kGGUC&pg=PA110&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 110]. {{ISBN|0-521-81498-7}}</ref> and his own health problems, chiefly his failing eyesight.<ref>Bristow, D., ''Joyce and Lacan: Reading, Writing and Psychoanalysis'' ([[Abingdon-on-Thames]]: [[Routledge]], 2017), [https://books.google.com/books?id=7qCuDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA129&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 129].</ref>

''Finnegans Wake'' was published in book form, after seventeen years of composition, on 4 May 1939. Joyce died twenty months later in [[Zürich]], on 13 January 1941.