"Here Comes Everybody"

(32.2-34.9)  Today's reading picks up with the conclusion of the story explaining the origin of HCE's last name.  The narrator implores us to "[h]eave . . . aside the fallacy, as punical as finikin" that is was not the king, but rather his two "inseparable" sisters who actually named Earwicker.  With that out of the way, we learn that from that fateful day forward, every "exhumed" "holograph" initialed by our hero bears the siglia "H.C.E."  Since one can never have enough names in Finnegans Wake, the narrator explains that the patrons of HCE's pub call him "good Dook Umphrey," his "cronies" call him "Chimbers," and the general populace recognizes his status as Everyman by referring to him as "Here Comes Everbody."

Joyce makes sure that we don't miss HCE's importance by beginning the next sentence with clear but significant language:  "An imposing everybody he always indeed looked, constantly the same as and equal to himself and magnificently well worthy of any and all such universalisation . . . ."  This very long sentence continues by situating HCE as "folksforefather" with "the entirety of his house about him" in a packed theater for the 111th performance of the play about HCE's life, the "problem passion play of the millentury," A Royal Divorce.

But, as we're already well aware (given what we've learned about HCE's archetype, Finnegan), HCE's life isn't care- or slander-free.  The narrator explains that "a baser meaning has been read into these characters the literal sense of which decency can safely scarcely hint."  Some say that HCE "suffered from a vile disease."  The narrator refutes this attack by (as McHugh notes in his Annotations) paraphrasing/lampooning a reviewer who took issue with Joyce's portrayal of the cruder aspects of everyday life in Ulysses:  "To such a suggestion the one selfrespecting answer is to affirm that there are certain statements which ought not to be, and one should like to hope to be able to add, ought not to be allowed to be made."  We also learn that others believe HCE is "a great white caterpillar capable of any and every enormity in the calendar" and say that he annoyed Welsh fusiliers in Phoenix Park.  The almost too-fervent tone of this defense of HCE continues when the narrator says that this charge "rings particularly preposterous" to "anyone who knew and loved the christlikeness of the big cleanminded giant H.C. Earwicker."  With this said, there remains one accusation that the narrator is compelled to address, and that address is located in tomorrow's reading . . . .

Obviously, one of the faults (which I think I've noted before) with my method of reading two pages a day is where to stop when I'm in the middle of a long paragraph.  For instance, the second chapter's first paragraph -- which I started reading yesterday and finished today -- is three pages long.  This can make for some disjointed reading for me.  There's only so many hours in the day, though, so for now I'm going to continue sacrificing neatness (and, I suppose, reason) in favor of manageability.  And really, when a man spends more than a quarter of his lifetime writing something, the least you can do as a reader is take the time to savor it.