"Finn's Hotel" (1923) is the initial iteration of "Finnegans Wake," the primer of a future masterpiece, the first written riddle of the pan-lingual sphinx of modernist literature.

What is it: a satirical anti-clerical tract? A consistent debunking of a nostalgic national myth at the level of language? Rabelaisian "grassroots" mayhem? The proto-text of psychedelic literature?

Everything, everywhere, at once: Joyce, having already laid all his cards on the table, but not yet crossing the final line of a great linguistic experiment.