Reddit mentions of The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture

My 2-cents: In my opinion, Finnegans Wake is a challenge for the reader to wake up and realize that the joy of reading, or the aesthetic effect, is something the reader actively participates in. That participation is usually a story or moral to "get"--an intellectual experience; but, with this book, there is no story...you get out of it what your imagination reads into it--not only an intellectual experience but an act of creation [or, to be specific, an act of the imitation of creation, mimesis, as Aristotle and Giambattista Vico would say]. Rather than give the reader a "plot" (something that Zola would have argued improperly coerces the reader's otherwise free imagination), Joyce gives the reader a rhythm...and, what rhythm, in particular? Try reading it in a sing-song, nursery-rhyme manner [hence, all the nursery rhyme references here and in Ulysses] for a few paragraphs until you get a feel for the music in the words. One rhythm you might try is that of "Poor Old Micheal Finnegan". As you read, and potentially re-read the book (I've read it through many times), you will begin to pick out other rhythms. For instance, about every twenty pages or so you will come across one or more versions of the two references that have continued through Joyce's three narrative works, Portrait, Ulysses, and Wake. The first one is St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Chapter 11, Verse 32, "For God has consigned all to sin that God may have mercy upon all." The other is St. Augustine's comment upon that line in his explanation for why God created sin. Augustine says in Enchiridion, viii, O, felix culpa--oh happy sin, that allows for our redemption. These usually fall in contexts that the text associates with one or more of the main "characters," e.g., HCE or ALP, or either version of Joyce's Cain and Able, Shem and Ham (Shaun).

Furthermore, if you want to look at the book from the perspective of what Aristotle says (in Ars Poetica) that at a minimum every story must have, i.e., "a beginning, a middle, and an end," you might notice that the novel begins along a river running through Eden; that at the exact center of the text (p. 314), while recalling, "eve her sins"...one must "give the devil his....Due" (a reference to John Milton's "Paradise Lost"); and, at the end, one may "End here"...or, you may feel free to "Finn, again!" because the mid-sentence that began the book is only now ending, and the reader may just decide to read again a "way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's...." In other words, this book is not a story; it has no end (no ending, as in the eternal and unchanging peace of Eden); it's only ending comes when the particular Finnegan reading wakes up and decides to stop, a moment the Greeks called an epiphany, an awakening that William Irwin Thompson describes as the moment when Time-Falling-Bodies take to light. In short, as I've said elsewhere, the book becomes less a "story to get" and more of a "chant to sing."

I highly recommend reading The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light as it is a wonderful introduction to seeing the historical and mythological aspects of the Bible versus other older religions. You can get it on Amazon pretty cheap.

>Care to elaborate on the lack of estrus leading to everything about us?

I don't know precisely what matts2 is referring to, but I do know that there are some people who argue that the nature of humans' sexuality is the central mechanic of our world view.

William Irwin Thompson wrote some books about it, arguing that the symbolism seen in all religions and expressive arts (e.g. cave paintings) is of a sexual nature. But his central argument about lack of estrus goes something like this: estrus is preadapted to environments where there are not many natural predators. If we take cues from our chimpanzee cousins, we note that the males often group together to forage and hunt away from the pack of females and young while the females group together for care of young and forage themselves. There aren't too many instances when the males would be forced to defend the group. Since being sexually available (estrus) is one way to attract males back toward females, there was little selective pressure for anything but long periods of non-availability for sexual intercourse.

The transition to savanna life changed that, where the group would have been faced with less protection from the environment (dense foliage) and exposure to predation. So, the argument goes, there was selective pressure for females who were sexually available more often because it would keep the males closer to the group more often. And the males would thereby be available for group defense more often.

Thompson (et al.) feel like this is the nascent emergence of sex-as-definitional to the human experience.

I just read that book recently, which is why I feel qualified to write this ;)