"Oh the great big river rolls on and on . . . "

It might be understating things to say that the first two pages of Finnegans Wake aren't easy to get through.  This is dense, dense stuff.  In the Skeleton Key, Campbell and Robinson spend 12 pages explaining what's going on in these two pages, and you get the sense that there was a lot more they could've written.

But I feel like I have a good sense of what's happening, and when I reread the passage tonight after going through my secondary materials, I both enjoyed and appreciated Joyce's opening flourishes.  It's helpful to keep in mind that the first four paragraphs -- which have been perennially headache-inducing for me -- essentially serve as the introduction to the book.  At the most basic level, we're situated in Dublin, riding down the River Liffey into Dublin Bay and then moving along the shore up to Howth.  On another level, we're in the Garden of Eden ("Eve and Adam's") at the dawn of existence.  We're in prehistoric time, and we witness The Fall (denoted by the 100-letter thunderword . . . I could hear the rumbling as I very slowly tried to sound it out).  The third paragraph takes us through human history -- love and war -- and promises us a resurrection:  "Phall if you but will, rise you must . . . ."

The last paragraph of today's passage (I read through the whole paragraph, onto the beginning of page 5) introduces Finnegan -- the master builder -- and while it's still dense stuff, it's not as rough as what came before.  I'm looking forward to picking up on Finnegan tomorrow.

 The opening word of the Wake -- "riverrun" -- got me thinking of "Rio Grande," the final song on Brian Wilson's self-titled solo album from 1988.  I guess the song, which points to the Rio Grande as a source of life and a metaphor for the American Experience, is a kind of pop music parallel to Finnegans Wake.  Anyway, "Rio Grande" is stuck in my head now.  This may or may not be the last time that I create a link between James Joyce and the Beach Boys.