June 2011 Meeting: Festy King!

Notes for the June 2011 Meeting
Pages covered 85-87.

Meeting was short today. Little did we know that the Irish Times features Wednesday Night Quizzo (Bar Trivia) 8pm-11pm (our meeting was 7pm-9pm). In related news, Team Qui Sta Troia (86) was right in the mix until the final round – 80s television series – which did us in!

Starting with the paragraph “But to return to the atlantic and Phenitia Proper” (85.20).

We are introduced in this opening line to the confusion that will ensue in Festy King’s trial. Are we to turn to the Atlantic, to move west, to emigrate to the New World, or are to return to Phoenicia Proper, east, to past civilization, the ancient world? We are warned that “little headway, if any, [will be] made in solving the wasnottobe crime conundrum” (85.21-2). It is here that we are introduced to the Festy King, “a child of Maam,” (85.22-3), who allegedly operates under the “elois [alias] Crowbar…Meleky” as well as anagrams to these names “Tykingfest and Rabworc” (86.7-8; 13). If it is at all possible, we are told that Festy King comes from a family “honourably associated with the tar and feather industries” (85.23-4). Honor from ridicule? It seems Joyce is setting up a dynamic of extremes that contradict, confuse, or distort meaning in this courtroom. Or in another sense, we will be presiding over two very different ideas of events that have happened between accuser and accused, two “equinoxious points of view” [equinox + noxious], (85.29) where “one fellow’s fetch being the other follow’s person” [one fellow’s fish being another fellow’s poison] (29-30).

Festy King is on trial, it seems, for reasons: “flying cushats out of his ouveralls [stealing coal] and making fesses immodst his forces on the field” [making faces/feces (like the Russian General) amidst his forces on the field] (29-31). He is on trial soaked in alcohol “methylated” (31-2). And he appears in court already “Karikature[d]” (33): as “ambrosiaurealised” [Ambrosius Aurelianus – a general who led the Roman-Britians against Saxon invaders in the 5th century]. But his garb, we discussed, also harkens to that of false saviors, like those in Kersse’s Korduroy Karikature [KKK]. Leaders of a blind and ignorant form of justice, we speculated whether or not Joyce had seen the 1915 D.W. Griffith film Birth of a Nation and/or its follow-up film Intolerance. [Prankquean says: probably! But John McCourt would know.]

On 86, we hear more allegations coming from the Crown (86.7) about the the history of the Festy King. He is alleged to also have “impersonat[ed] a climbing boy [chimney sweep]” by “rubb[ing] some pixes of any luvial peatsmoor o’er his face” [possibly a subtle reverberation of Shem writing on his body in later episode or going in blackface as the actors in Birth of a Nation] in order to “disguis[e] himself” (86.10-11) and sell an unlicenced “pedigree pig” at the “middlewhite fair in Mudford on a Thoorsday” [robbing “Peeler” to pay “Polee”?] (86.10-15). We discussed why a pig would be involved. Possibly, we discussed, it was a Joyce allusion to the pig [the old sow] that eats her farrow from Portrait of the Artist (206) as here, the pig is seen eating “some of the door[way]” and “a whole side of his (the animal’s) sty…in order to pay off…six doubloons fifteen arrerars of his, the villian’s…rent (FW 86.26-31).

What ensues is referred to as “Remarkable evidence” (86.32), though this does not seem to make much sense in context of what was alleged against Festy King, by “a plain clothes priest W.P.” (34). *In Joyce’s Scribbledehobble notebook, the term “Remarkable evidence” falls under the section title “Eumeus.” What becomes interesting with this note, is that the episode Eumeus in Ulysses is an episode Enda Duffy refers to in The Subaltern Ulysses as a “garrulous narrative” of “hidden identities, doubts, and failures of language” (176) and also a “police interrogation” (181). Within this section of Finnegans Wake, this reading of Eumeus from the notebook seems appropriate. It does appear that the brothers Shem and Shaun are present in these characters, that is Festy King and W.P., one acting as accuser, the other as accused.

Within the group, we discussed scholarly interpretations on the Festy King – who is he – what is happening within the new trial. Campbell’s Skeleton Key suggests that the Festy King is a stand-in for Shaun, Swartzlander suggests Festy King is a Shem figure (after reading the article Artie submitted to the members of the bar room, I agree that Swartzlander’s argument in “Multiple Meaning and Misunderstanding: The Mistrail of Festy King” to be much stronger, a more compelling and logical argument).
We are confronted with the failure of this trial when we are introduced to W.P. He is an “eye, ear, nose, and throat witness” (86.32-33) [possible allusion to Gogarty + Medical Square + reverberation from Meleky (Malachi “Buck” Mulligan)]. What this witness lacks, however, sensually is touch [whether that is “feeling” in an empathic context or in a courtroom sense, tangible evidence. He appears impolite in court, having to be “cautioned against yawning while being grilled [questioned]” (86.36-87.1) before smiling (87.1). Allusions to war, insurrection and treason follow. W.P. remembers the “filth [Fifth] of November” (87.4) or Guy Fawkes Night, the gunpowder plot that attempted to destroy the British House of Lords and an allusion to Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade “theirs not to reason why” (87.10). W.P. also gives testimony against Hyacinth O’Donnell “described in the calendar as a mixer and wordpainter” [HCE?] (87.12-3) suggesting O’Donnell “sought…to sack, sock, stab and slaughter singlehanded another two of the old kings” (87.15-6). Regardless, it seems W.P.’s testimony is counter to the charges levied against Festy King and are more in line with the fighting between the brothers, Shem and Shuan “because they could not say meace, (mute and daft) meathe. (87.23-4). We tried to remember the story of the fox and grapes and the ant and grasshopper [“creepfoxed andt grousuppers” (86.22-3)] but could not remember entirely the significance if any to this section.

This is when Quizzo started at the Irish Times, and we concluded our meeting.

Could Joyce, in the coming section, be commenting on the future with the polarbeeber hair (87.22) [Justin Bieber’s haircut originating in the Arctic-Polar North that is Canada] or the P.C. Robort (86.7) [Microsoft PC Robots] that will consume modern culture? We will find out more in just a few days when the fun at Finnegans Wake continues!