Book club finishes Finnegans Wake, 628-page novel it started in 1995

The moment a California book club had been working toward for 28 years arrived on a Zoom call last month.

About 20 people who called in from various places across the world took turns reading the final page of “Finnegans Wake,” a 1939 novel by James Joyce that is known to be difficult to read and understand.

“A way a lone a last a loved a long the,” the novel concludes — in the middle of a sentence.

The group began reading the book in October 1995, when about two dozen people sat around a table in a Venice, Calif., library. On the first Tuesday of every month, members have read one or two pages aloud and discussed their interpretations.

Over the years, some members died. Many left the club. Others joined. The meeting place changed multiple times.

But as the world shifted around them, members of the book club continued to meet monthly. After reading in libraries for years, the club began meeting on Zoom during the coronavirus pandemic. Last month, the club finally finished its 628-page edition of “Finnegans Wake.” The book club members who spoke with The Washington Post said they don’t regret a second of the years they poured into the novel.

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Discussing the book has been “the most fulfilling thing in my life,” 38-year-old member Peter Quadrino told The Post.

After Joyce finished “Ulysses,” he spent 17 years writing “Finnegans Wake.” Joyce expected the book to be difficult to get through, once writing that the ideal reader would be someone “suffering from an ideal insomnia.”

The book’s setting and characters frequently change between reality and a dream. And the novel’s meaning has long been a subject of debate, including among the members of the Venice book club.

“It’s about everything that ever happened and ever will happen,” said Gerry Fialka, who founded the club and later nicknamed the book “The Wake.”

Fialka likened the book to a crystal ball and said the experience of reading it is a bit like creating a “secret code language you have with your best friend.”

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“There’s no meaning in ‘Finnegans Wake’ except but that you can have meaning,” Fialka concluded.

Quadrino said Joyce “took the encyclopedia and the dictionary and put it into a blender and extracted a poem out of that.”

Duncan Echelson, a 78-year-old member of the club, said the book is a “cosmological lens, which forces us to really take a deep look at language, relationship, history, religion.”

Fialka, a 70-year-old filmmaker, said finding different interpretations is the point of the book. People will process the words differently depending on what year they are reading it, who they are reading it with and what issues the world is facing at the time of their reading, Fialka said.

While studying modern art and film theory at the University of Michigan in the early 1970s, Fialka was partial to the work of Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan. After he moved to California in 1980 to work as a production assistant, Fialka continued to study philosophy, which led him to Joyce’s work. He dreamed of convening a group with which to discuss and process “Finnegans Wake.”

In 1995, he distributed fliers for his book club around Venice and placed ads in local newspapers. Fialka didn’t think about how long the book would take to get through, but that October, he and a small group of locals interested in philosophy met to discuss the book’s first page. Each meeting lasted about two hours, and Fialka told the Los Angeles Times in 1996 that he hoped to finish one-third of the book by 2010.

Scholars think Joyce used lexicon from more than 60 languages in “Finnegans Wake,” and Joyce also created his own words throughout the novel. He referenced a funeral with the word “funferal,” though some of his made-up words were longer, such as “bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!” which is supposed to represent a fall.

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By reading slowly, the Venice group was able to discuss dozens of the book’s themes — what happens after death, how language is created, how to live in the present and how to avoid becoming dependent on technology.

Quadrino, an accountant, became interested in philosophy around 2009, obsessed with reading Joseph Campbell and learning Buddhist values. When he discovered Joyce, he found a posting on Fialka’s blog about his book club.

Once a month, Quadrino drove about three hours north from his job in San Diego to attend the meetings. Quadrino said hearing interpretations from other club members, who ranged in age from 15 to 95 years old, introduced him to new perspectives.

“It’s a giant friend group, and it’s like you’re reading a poem — basically a multilingual, multi-referential poem — with so many different people,” said Quadrino, who believes Joyce predicted both the atomic bomb and Donald Trump’s presidency in the book.

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Quadrino moved to Austin in 2011 and started his own “Finnegans Wake” book club. Clubs for the book have emerged across the world in the past few decades, including in New York and Boston and in Switzerland and Australia.

Echelson, who lives in Dripping Springs, Tex., has long been interested in philosophy. But he lost his outlet for those types of extensive conversations after the deaths of his wife and best friend. Then, in 2018, he heard about a Texas “Finnegans Wake” club. At his first meeting, he had no idea what members were talking about, but he enjoyed the camaraderie. Two years later, he joined the Venice group.

The Venice club’s members admitted they don’t fully understand the book’s meaning, but they said the novel changed their perspectives on life. Those who spoke with The Post said the book helped them realize how insignificant they are in the grand scheme of history and how everyone is imperfect.

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Before reading the final page on Oct. 3, Fialka asked the approximately 20 members present to take a deep breath with him. Then, each member read two lines apiece until they reached the ending. After the group’s discussion, Fialka scheduled the following month’s meeting.

On Nov. 7, the group met again over Zoom. The book’s final running sentence is thought to line up with the opening sentence on the first page, so the club started the book from the beginning.

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