8. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

Finnegans Wake was known throughout a good part of its history as Work in Progress, and was published as such in instalments from 1924 to 1939. The real title was a secret that Joyce revealed only to his wife Nora; not even Beckett knew it, as we can see from a critical study of the book by Beckett and others from 1929: Our Exagmination Round his Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress. The closely-guarded title has resonances from Irish ballad (Tim Finnegan, the hod-carrier who fell from a roof) and Irish legend (Finnegan is a second Finn McCool, or ‘Finn again’), and possibly a French pun relating to the theme of circularity (fin again). The lack of an apostrophe is key: if ‘Finnegans’ is plural, then the title is an exhortation to all Finnegans to awaken, that is, to Everyman, or all who have fallen – whether from roofs or from grace.

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