The title of Clay Shirky's great book about the nets, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, comes from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, which has lots of HCE's in it, including the initials of the protagonist, Humphrey C. Earwicker.
Not that I've read FW.
But I rummaged around online and found one of the references:
"...it was equally certainly a pleasant turn of the populace which gave him
as sense of those normative letters the nickname
Here Comes Everybody. An imposing everybody he always indeed looked,
constantly the same as and equal to himself
and magnificently well worthy
of any and all such universalisation, every time he continually surveyed,
amid vociferatings from in front of "Accept these few nutties!"
...
from good start to happy finish
the truly catholic assemblage gathered together in that king's treat house of satin
alustrelike above floats and footlights..."
--James Joyce, Finnegan's Wake, New York: Viking Press, 1939, p. 32.
I really like those last three lines!
Quote found in comment thread about whether or not Joyce was referring to the Catholic Church--seems he meant "catholic" with a small-c (meaning "universal"), here .
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Video of Shirky talking about his book.
Wish you could have been there- went into the best Xmas store in San Francisco day before yesterday, everything glowing and glittering and efflorescing, with the jolliest young man behind the counter who laughed uproariously, like someone out of a Dickens novel.
ReplyDeleteDon't know what people could have managed to have a discussion about - the use of catholic is clear from the context.
I wish I'd been there too, ARTS!
ReplyDeleteThe discussion arises because someone once said Joyce was talking about the Catholic Church, and that secondary quote is the quote that got spread around.
It took some hunting for me to find the original quote.
no one has read Finnegan's Wake. if someone says they have, they're lying.
ReplyDeleteI love the word "alustrelike."
Where did you get that adorable donkey? I think looking at it would make anyone feel better. Unfortunately, the rest of what you say is above my level of brainthought, if that is a word. But boy is that a great donkey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Did some wonderful person give it you?
ReplyDelete