The Mask of Sanity - Finnegan's wake

"Renowned critics and some professors in our best universities reverently acclaim as the superlative expression of genius James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, a 628-page collection of erudite gibberish indistinguishable to most people from the familiar word salad produced by hebephrenic patients on the back wards of any state hopsital.

Let us illustrate briefly with the initial page from this remarkable volume

:Riverrun, past Eve and Adarn's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a
commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from
North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his
penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttened a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.
The fall bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhoun
awnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnukl) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed
and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.

The adventurous reader will, I promise, find any of the other 627 pages equally
illuminating. It is not for me to say dogmatically that Finnegan's Wake is a volume
devoid of meaning. Nor could I with certainty make such a pronouncement about the
chaotic verbal productions of the patient on the back ward of an old time state hospital."