Joyce's Rare View

Richard Beckman argues that readers of Finnegans Wake must develop a new method of reading that flows from the text itself. Focusing on the mode of perception in the Wake --seeing the world obliquely because that is often the only way to get at the nature of things--Beckman maintains that Joyce's satire depends on looking at the public scene from behind, a view at the same time vaudevillian and philosophic.