Thinks For The Housespitality

The Berkeley Tuesday Night Finnegans Wake Group has been having a good time from 6 to 7:30 every Tuesday for nearly twenty five years. The tradition of meeting, reading, glossing, laughing,  and then eating out continued for another Tuesday, but last night was a special one, as we were “living it up” in celebration of writer Karen Laws, a member of the group for 18 years, and a gracious host of the Wake Group for 11.

The Tuesday NightWake Group started in Mid-June 1986 by Geoffrey, an eager UC Berkeley student of John Bishop (who is a long-time, sporadic attendee) whose plan was to meet at the cafe/music store The Musical Offering and read the entire book over the summer. Ambitious! The plan pretty quickly evolved into a slower format: we cover about a page a week, read aloud at first by a volunteer, then discussed for 5-10 minutes as a whole (what made sense/seemed funny/baffled us/seemed to be a pattern and so on) then we go through word by word and line by line.

In early years, Roland MacHugh’s “Annotations to Finnegans Wake” was kept open by a few people to help out; now it’s augmented by hand-helds, iPods and iPads tuned into Wikipedia, Google and  FWEET have popped up on the table too.

The Berkeley Tuesday Night Finnegans Wake Group moved in the first year from the Musical Offering on Bancroft Avenue, (which kept turning up the music louder and louder each week) to the cafe The Beau Sky Hotel, one block over on Durant Avenue. The cafe was well-lit, and had a nice outdoor patio we used in the summer. We were all gathering to meet at the Beau Sky the fateful Tuesday of October 17, 1989, when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit, killing member John Lauritz, who was driving from Alameda to the Wake group for the very first time after hip surgery when the Nimitz Freeway collapsed on his car. John Lauritz was one of 13 San Franciscans killed that day, and deeply missed. He was coming to hear and gloss the start of the final paragraph of the book.

Shortly after that sad event, Tuesday Waker John Choppy suggested that a change of venue might be welcome, offering the front parlor of his nearby rental house, three blocks away, for the group to meet. For the nearly ten years, the reading, questioning, joking and postmodern dinners continued at Chez Choppy.

Some Summer Tuesdays from 1992 to 1994 were spent reading in the garden of the Poltroon Press, on nearby Carleton Street, about 8 blocks away, in the good company of host Alastair Johnston. But the bulk of the 1990’s Tuesday evenings were at John Choppy’s. His front parlor had benches along the window, and enough chairs so everyone could fit into a rough circle. It was a great arrangement and served everyone well through the decade. In 1999, however, John Choppy’s landlady decided to sell the house on Ellsworth. Choppy chose to move to Oakland when the house was to be vacated in September. Karen Laws generously stepped in, offering her front parlor to continue the reading, explication and fun.

So, the group began meeting at the house of Karen in South Berkeley, not far from all the other locations. For more than a decade, from fall of 1999 until December, 2010 — 11 years, week in and week out (OK, we did call off a session if it fell on Christmas Day), over 600 Tuesdays, we assembled in the front parlor of Karen’s house, a beautiful 1900’s three-story abode once owned by Moe Moskowitz of Moe’s Books. The orange-hued room had a Steinway Piano (Karen’s entire family can and does play songs on the piano), a big yellow chair, a wicker chair, a comfy brown leather sofa, and a set of wooden chairs. The front parlor also has wooden sliding doors to help muffle the sounds of interpretation, hilarity and digression from the ears of husband, sons and the assorted orange animals who put up with the weekly literary visits in good-natured fashion.

Recently, Karen’s house has been overrun with different cultural activities, from jazz groups to jam bands to piano groups. She decided to cut back the house’s foot-traffic. Karen’s reclaimed her front parlor for the new decade, and the Tuesday Night Finnegans Wake Group has moved once again, to the Espresso Roma Cafe on the corner of Ashby and College. It’s a return the Tuesday Night Finnegans Wake Group’s roots, though in truth I am the only currently attending member who remembers the early days. The nearby location and wide variety of food, drinks hot and cold, caffeinated and alcoholic, are very nice indeed. Karen still attends and likes the arrangements at the new location too. Good light, not too noisy, plenty of tables and free wi-fi — it looks like this venue will work out fine.

We wanted to honor Karen Laws for welcoming the Tuesday Finnegans Wake explicators into her home every week. So after we did the reading Tuesday, the whole group went to the Cafe Venezia to treat her to a grand meal. The restaurant, Karen pointed out, was appropriately festooned with clotheslines filled with ladies underwear. We had a great selection of food, lime drops, whiskey and scotch.

Before the Gorgonzola Salad, I presented Karen with a drawing I did (see it at the top and click to enlarge) containing all the current members with small thought balloons filled with the hand written best wishes of each member. Top: Bruce L. Second row: Diane C., D. J. Schiff, Matthew N.  Bottom row: Ben, Joanna H, Mark-Andre S., Brad C. Then we toasted her and lived it up.