August 2009 – Page 3 – hexachromatic

apostrophization

“We rightly shudder at promiscuous or misplaced apostrophization, for instance when a family named Bennett puts up a sign in front of their house that says The Bennett’s, thereby suggesting that there is only one, self-aggrandizing Bennett. (The Bennetts or The Bennetts’ would do.) But sometimes we hear that apostrophes should never be used in a plural. For instance in The Alphabet Abecedarium, by RIchard A. Firmage: ‘For clarity I have occasionally inserted the mark (usually with vowels, e.g.,O’s) although my preference is to be technically correct and omit them.’ Hey, Richard, don’t apologize. It’s helpful to use an apostrophe in the plural of a letter or number: T’s, w’s, 9’s. What is the reader to make of Ts and ws or even 9s? That last looks like nine shillings, or a typo. If you were to write, ‘There are four is in Mississippi,’ or for that matter, ‘four ss in Mississippi’—you see what I mean. ‘Four i’s and four s’s’ is the only way to go.”

—Roy Blount Jr., Alphabet Juice, 2008.

The missing apostrophe of Finnegans Wake

“Finnegans Wake. What only certain readers of Joyce’s text hear as I say these words is the absence of the apostrophe marking the possessive position of ‘Finnegan’ in relation to ‘wake.’ Others not aware of Joyce’s grammatical revisions will hear—rather predictably—the operation of the apostrophe that they cannot see: Finnegan’s wake. Although the apostrophe cannot be enunciated, it makes itself heard. It also insists on being seen, precisely because it is not there: helpful editors and printers continue to reappropriate the apostrophe to its (appropriate) place. Indeed, the missing apostrophe of this title announces its presence and finds a life of its own against all efforts to eliminate its subversive workings in the Wake. The missing apostrophe of Finnegans Wake creates discomfort, if not outright embarrassment. . . . It produces a sense of unease, a stepping out-side comfortable boundaries of the known and predictable because it demands a putting aside of familiar reading strategies.”

—Shari Benstock, Apostrophizing the Feminine in Finnegans Wake, MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Volume 35, Number 3, Fall 1989.