A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake: Unlocking James Joyce's Masterwork [Hardcover]

Joseph Campbell (Author), Henry Morton Robinson (Author), Edmund L. Epstein (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2005

Since its publication in 1939, countless would-be readers of Finnegans Wake - James Joyce's masterwork, which consumed a third of his life - have given up after a few pages, dismissing it as a "perverse triumph of the unintelligible." In 1944, a young professor of mythology and literature named Joseph Campbell, working with Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the first "key" or guide to entering the fascinating, disturbing, marvelously rich world of Finnegans Wake. The authors break down Joyce's "unintelligible" book page by page, stripping the text of much of its obscurity and serving up thoughtful interpretations via footnotes and bracketed commentary. They outline the book's basic action, and then simplify — and clarify — its complex web of images and allusions. A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake is the latest addition to the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell series.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: New World Library; 2nd edition (May 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1577314050
• ISBN-13: 978-1577314059
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #117,258 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

91 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good fare, May 8, 1998

By 

John McConnell (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake (Library Binding)

First, please accept my disclaimer for this review: I have been a fan of Joseph Campbell for many years. The objectivity may be lacking, therefore, in this assessment - freely admitted, and accept my apologies.

Campbell spent ~4 years, if memory serves, on this book. He said he finally had to get away from the Wake because everything he read started to sound as though it was from the Wake.

Having been an avid reader of Joyce for many years, Campbell's Key is to my mind THE definitive work on the Wake. Anyone can criticize another's work, and perhaps it is unreasonable to expect a critic to be as brilliant as the victim of his wiseacreing, but to my mind criticisms of this beautiful and inspired work are rather worthless.

The Key is always my primary reference for the Wake. Annotations (Roland McHugh) is just a phone book of references; the Key is first-rate scholarship. Infallibility is not a requirement for brilliance, assuming there is merit to criticism of this work.

But as Joseph Campbell would say, don't buy a book because it is said to be important; buy it because it "catches" you. Campbell's grasp of the Wake is a wonderful help to appreciating the Wake in less than a lifetime.

61 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Skeleton Key is still a useful text, and one of the more l, November 16, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (Harrisburg, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (Paperback)

One of the first books written about the Wake, A Skeleton Key has been largely supplanted by the wealth of Wakean research done since its 1944 publishing date, but its value as a seminal text is undisputed, and many -- including me! -- still find it a very useful guide. It opens with a beautiful introduction by Campbell, then explains the purpose of the text, moving on to a synopsis of the overall story. After that, it breaks down FW page by page, stripping the text of much of its obscurity and serving up possible interpretations via footnotes and bracketed commentary. In this way Campbell and Robinson more or less retell the Wake, "prosifying" the text in an attempt to make it more comprehensible to the lay reader. While this is certainly helpful, it must be said that this technique can come across as being a bit dry, and is certainly no substitute for the breathtaking immersion in Joyce's scintillating river of prose! Additionally, many of Joyce's meanings were overlooked by Campbell and Robinson, and a few of their interpretations have long since been "overturned" by more recent and intensive scholarship. Because of all this, A Skeleton Key has lost some of the polished glow of its initial reception, and some Joyceans have gone so far as to call it almost completely tarnished, finding it occasionally more misleading than helpful. Although there may be some truth to that, I still enjoy this book, and I find its mythopoetic angle -- this is that Joseph Campbell, after all -- uniquely refreshing, and some of his mythological insights possess a brilliance that has rarely been matched. Still, however, it is no substitute for the text itself, but for a work written only a few years after Finnegans Wake was published, A Skeleton Key is a pretty amazing accomplishment! I would not recommend it over a more recent guide, but I do occasionally enjoy turning to it -- like a slightly dowdy but favorite aunt, I still like to curl up by the fire and hear her stories over a cup of tea.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still *the* book for entering the "Wake...", October 1, 1997

By 

[e-mail] (honolulu, hawaii) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (Paperback)

This book still represents the single best "foray" into "Finnegans Wake" -- stepping mindfully but surefootedly through the entire riverrun of the text. Starting with an overview, "The Skeleton's Key" attempts to summarize the major "narrative events" of the "Wake." While Joyce scholars might (rightly...) argue the feasibility or advisability of such an approach, it still proves indispensible for the "novice...." Other books have perhaps surpassed it in their analysis of particular issues or themes within the text, but none have so gracefully and appreciatively unpacked the work as a whole. This and McHugh's "Annotations" can serve as an excellent "right- and left-hand pair" for tackling this under-appreciated work of brilliance...."