Contradrinking

 Finnegans Wake reading group via zoom. We read pages 94-96 over three hours. Not for the first time we meet “the fourbottle men”, who are the gospel writers (“Mamalujo”) when they aren’t the four provinces of Ireland (“used her, mused her, licksed her and cuddled”) or other quadripartite manifestations. They’re the four judges who sit in the pub “[contradrinking] themselves” into the night telling stories about the owner and his family, until the parting glass. Reading this book, we agree, is a creative act with its own rewards, us inside the play of words, getting references, agreeing, conjecturing, contradicting ourselves…