Day 14.

Pages 18 and 19 today.

After the dialogue between Mutt and Jeff ends, Joyce starts with more poetic myth. Some good stuff this time. Implications of inbreeding and mixing of the races, stupidity and another dick joke. Foreskin. Foresin. More cycles. Dogs death. Bitches death. Some implications of living on the surface of the earth. Is Finnegan just another animal dying unknown? Is he unimportant? Are we learning this early that his death doesn't matter? Mention of oxen and bellicose billygoats, plowing fields.

Much to process.

There are so many jokes and references to cartoons. I wonder if Joyce watched movies a lot and enjoyed the cartoon intermissions. Or were some of these phrases just part of the zeitgeist?

Orangutan and Ragnarok mentioned in the same breath? Of course both are misspelled. Not the first time I've read humans being compared to apes or that we will bring about our own end. But in the 1930s?

Once again, another animal reference.

Page 18 mentions Futhoric, the Norse alphabet. Page 19 misspells runes. He's just mentioning myth to mention it, I think. More Virgil loving Aeneas kind of writing.

Time is flat. Cycles are cycle. Myths are just stories. Death is inevitable. Finnegan is just another animal.

Feels like this could have been 50 pages. Not 600. That feeling is never gonna go away.