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Swany’s swarm of etext sites32 sites - updated November 14, 2003 |
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jan sis mown
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations Search for the mot juste.
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The Network Library: reference, fiction, poetry. The Interpretation of Dreams now online.
Master list of texts available online.
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable The classic work of reference since 1870.
And if you look at the coalition that is being formed against terror it tells you a lot more. A leading member of the coalition is Russia which is delighted to have the United States support its murderous terrorist war in Chechnya instead of occasionally criticizing it in the background. China is joining enthusiastically. It's delighted to have support for the atrocities it's carrying out in western China against, what it called, Muslim secessionists. Turkey, as I mentioned, is very happy with the war against terror. They are experts. Algeria, Indonesia delighted to have even more US support for atrocities it is carrying out in Ache and elsewhere. Now we can run through the list, the list of the states that have joined the coalition against terror is quite impressive. They have a characteristic in common. They are certainly among the leading terrorist states in the world. And they happen to be led by the world champion. Maybe we should have an academic conference or something to try to see if we can figure out a way of defining terrorism so that it comes out with just the right answers, not the wrong answers. That won't be easy. There was a sort of a play a week or two ago when Tony Blair was set up to try to present it. I don't exactly know what the purpose of this was. Maybe so that the US could look as though it's holding back on some secret evidence that it can't reveal or that Tony Blair could strike proper Churchillian poses or something or other. Whatever the PR reasons were, he gave a presentation which was in serious circles considered so absurd that it was barely even mentioned. So the Wall Street Journal, for example, one of the more serious papers had a small story on page 12, I think, in which they pointed out that there was not much evidence and then they quoted some high US official as saying that it didn't matter whether there was any evidence because they were going to do it anyway. So why bother with the evidence?
A newsstand of Web magazines.
How to set special characters in HTML.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911 The best encyclopedia ever written was published nearly 90 years ago! And now you can find right here on the web! This 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is filled with historical information that is still relevant today.
Premier web encyclopedia.
Encyclopedia of mythology, folklore and legend.
Poetry publisher.
From Aeschylus to Woolf, links to online versions.
Homer's Odyssey resources on the Web
Joyce’s works, essays, links...
Reference source.
Under renovations.
Mother Jones.
The National Library of Canada gathers, makes known, preserves and promotes Canada’s published heritage.
Book clubs in numerous professional, scientific, and educational fields.
Digital Imaging services
Interface for accessing the various dictionary services on the Internet.
Awesome digital library of ancient Greece and Rome.
An effort to put the world’s great literature online.
The Elements of Style
Finnegan's Wake
Written and Directed by Craig Walker
Starring Mo Bock, Patricia Murray and Esther Barlow
At Tarragon Extra Space in Toronto
Rating: ***1Ž2
F
innegan's Wake is, as a book, unreadable. Everyone agrees on that, including James Joyce's patron, Harriet Weaver, who called it the Wholesale Safety Pun Factory and said Joyce was wasting his genius writing it.
Yet it persists. Reading groups wallow in it, and theatre companies -- like Theatre Kingston in this case -- create performances (in this case a brilliant one) from it.
The truth is, it's not really a book as such. It's more like the auction-house back room of Western civilization, well worth a wander so long as you're not surprised to come out with something different from the last person. And given that the entire culture and history of humanity has recently slipped our minds, Finnegan's Wake can be a bracing tonic.
Here's an idea of what goes on in the book (courtesy of the Net, since I never finished it myself): The "wake" records the nighttime dreams of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (HCE). He has a wife named Ann, or Anna Plurabelle Liffey (APL, also the Liffey River running through Dublin) who is the source of all life. His daughter is Isabel (Izzy), and his twin sons are Kevin and Jerry (also known by the vaguely Biblical Shem and Shaun, and a host of other names) who are always fighting.
Earwicker the patriarch/creator, played in this production by the unflappable and sixtyish Mo Beck, builds cities but must eternally keep rebuilding them, as they tend to fall down. The parallel with the futility of the eternally collapsing and rebuilding male erection is not coincidental.
The strategy behind this show is to string together the liveliest bits of the book, so there is plenty of sex, fighting, teasing and drinking. But it's delivered with amazing theatrical panache, like the scene where Joyce's version of the grasshopper and ant story is recounted by grotesque six-legged insect puppets, each with Joyce's face. The ant works hard, while the grasshopper leaps onto Isabel's lap and vigorously humps her. All of this delivered to the melody of a lascivious jig.
At the left side of the set is an ur-pub, a homey little shebeen located apparently in the roots of a giant tree. On the right, separated by the empty stage, is a lighted door with a pane of frosted glass, a typically "respectable" door leading perhaps to a Dublin lawyer's office circa 1920. On the door is projected, in the neat printed script of the period, the name of whatever scene is unfolding. The more ribald passages of the book, such as the scene of the teenage girls urinating in the park, are enacted in silhouette by actors on the other side of the door.
The cast has three professional and four amateur actors, the latter apparently from the theatre faculty at Queen's University. They have rehearsed the show much longer than is possible in the professional theatre, judging by its complexity and split-second timing.
Not to mention the elaborate inventiveness. It opens with the "family" sharing a pint at the pub. They are interrupted by the legendary giant Finn MacCool, in the form of a huge puppet head lying near the river Liffey, with a fleshy, animated mouth. MacCool and the river, the archetypal male and female, are other incarnations of Earwicker and Ann, and the early scenes explore their tormented relationship (the sexually voracious and taunting Ann is played by Rosemary Doyle).
The play then shifts to Shaun and Shem, with bizarre vignettes including Italian philosopher Gianbattista Vico explaining his theory of humanity, and an occult interrogation performed by four bearded Jewish priests, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; or, as Joyce prefers to describe them, Mamalujo.
The ensemble work throughout is remarkable. Especially good is Esther Barlow, the young actress who plays Izzy, as well as a hilariously overfocused student in the Vico lecture, not to mention a comically ethereal Isolde bestowing herself on Mo Bock's overly elderly Tristan. Mark Hauser and Stephen Sheffer are the bug-eyed and mutually suspicious duo of Shaun and Shem.
Given that the cast isn't entirely professional, there are occasional moments where focus is lost while transiting from one character to another. But given the nearly magical level of theatre imagination throughout, this has to count as a genuinely meaningless quibble.
Finnegan's Wake runs at Tarragon Extra Space in Toronto until June 3. For information: 416-531-1827 or http://www.tarragontheatre.com.
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