A white man in a patterned shirt and red hair standing at a podium and reading aloud from a copy of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. An expression of intensity is on his face and his hands are clasped in front of him.

Published: November 18, 2024
By: Alison Lang, UTL News

On October 21, the first floor of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book library came alive with the voice of James Joyce, as part of One Little Goat Theatre Company’s live reading of Chapter 5 of Joyce’s magnum opus Finnegans Wake.

In front of a rapt crowd, Irish/Nova-Scotian actor Richard Harte recited the chapter with extraordinary relish, while the theatre company’s director Adam Seelig filmed the performance from several cameras placed around the room. It’s all part of One Little Goat’s ongoing project to stage, perform and film each chapter of “the Wake” in a variety of locations and cities– an ambitious and expansive six-year undertaking that has been in the works since 2023. The project seeks to honour Joyce’s landmark text the way it was meant to be shared – read aloud, with great vigour, to audiences of all sizes.

The choice of the Fisher as the setting for this particular reading was no accident – One Little Goat artistic director Adam Seelig was drawn to the Fisher’s collection of books, maps and art relating to Joyce’s novel. Seelig and Special Collections Librarian John Shoesmith curated a selection of the materials to be presented during the reading, including the religious manuscript the Book of Kells along with texts by Oliver Wendell Holmes and Dante.

For Seelig, the Fisher and Chapter 5 of the Wake are inexorably bound. “It’s so resonant to have this reading here, with a chapter that is so focused on books, on manuscripts, on Irish Christianity and the medieval,” he said. “It feels very special to have this event here, just surrounded by books.”

During breaks, audience members browsed the items on display, including a very special text on display - Marshall McLuhan’s heavily annotated first-edition copy of Finnegans Wake. McLuhan's working library was acquired by the Fisher in 2014, and included his copy of Joyce's tome, an object of much fascination and obsession for the philosopher and media theorist. If you scanned the crowd carefully during Harte’s reading, you may have also caught McLuhan’s grandson Andrew sitting quietly at the back. Like a few attendees, he was listening attentively to Harte’s recitation and following along with his own dog-eared copy of the book. McLuhan had taken care of his grandfather’s library for many years; the Finnegans Wake event marked the first time he had seen his grandfather’s copy of the book since it had changed hands.

A white man in his 30s wearing a baseball cap sits at a desk in front of a stack of books.

“It’s odd,” he laughed. “I’m not allowed to touch it! I’m so used to being hands on with his books, with my father’s books – it’s certainly different. I really miss pulling his books off the shelf, so the chance to come here, to see the Fisher and be here with his books is really special, and always an occasion to take advantage of.”

In addition to McLuhan, there were two Finnegans Wake superfans in the Fisher that evening who had made a considerable journey of their own. Joe Hanvey and Richard Vogel respectively traveled to Toronto from New Jersey and Boston just to attend the reading. For Hanvey the draw was hearing Joyce read live, and finding community and meaning in the experience.

“Hearing the text read aloud in such a deliberate and interpretive way by Richard Harte - that was eye-opening, a true paradigm shift,” he said. “Joyce’s words are complex - definitely, but when you hear them performed by Richard, it’s like they take on a life of their own. The rhythm, the playfulness of the language, the journey word by word by word—it makes the impossible seem just a little more accessible to me.”

A yellowed manuscript of Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce is spread open with written annotations from the media theorist Marshall McLuhan.

Unraveling Finnegans Wake at the Fisher Library