Toward this end, I seek to highligh

Toward this end, I seek to highlight an issue more fundamental than the accuracy of a particular exposition. The problem facing readers of the Wake—though articulated in various forms —has always been the same: How can I acknowledge its complexity yet at the same time approach it with a system of criticism simple enough to encompass its magnitude? Because Cartesian reasoning privileges logical consistency through clearly defined linear relationships, it serves as the default interpretive response to Finnegans Wake. In fact, this approach inhibits analysis. It suppresses impressions that do not fit the patterns created by this methodology, and by leaving out ostensibly unrelated observations from the criticism, it produces an artificial rendering of natural reader response. We comprehend the complexity of Finnegans Wake through complicated models of discernment, and efforts to articulate those models according to a linear form prove hopelessly simplistic