Books 1939: Finnegans Wake By James Joyce

Night Thoughts

FINNEGANS WAKE—James Joyce—Viking ($5).

All children are afraid of the night; when they grow up, they are still afraid, but more afraid of admitting it. In this frightening darkness men lie down to sleep and dream. This week, for the first time, a writer had attempted to make articulate this wordless world of sleep. The writer is James Joyce; the book, Finnegans Wake—final title of his long-heralded Work in Progress. In his 57 years this erudite and fanciful Irishman, from homes in exile all over Europe, has written two books that have influenced the work of his contemporaries more than...