The initials of the
protean hero of
James Joyce's
Finnegans Wake, the sleeping
Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, tavern keeper, and a good example of the sort of
word play/association of which
Joyce was fond.
Among a myriad other things, HCE suggests:
- Here Comes Everybody (Earwicker's customers' nickname for him)
- Howth Castle and Environs (the setting for the story)
- Hush! Caution! Echoland!
- how charmingly exquisite
- He'll Cheat E'erawan
- huge chain envelope
- Hyde and Cheek, Edenberry, Dublin (a law firm)
- Haveth Childers Everywhere (the title of an early published fragment of the book)
- happinest childher everwere
- homerigh, castle and earthhouse
- Humme the Cheapner, Esc
- humile, commune and ensectuous
- Habituels conspicuously emergent
- High Church of England
- high chief evervirens
- history comes eventually
and so forth. Like
grade school word-puzzles everywhere, the letters also appear backwards and *within* words.
Why mention it? Because it's a
clue, a good one, in a book full of clues,
puns,
puzzles,
rumours, and
conundrums.
Shades of Joyce:
a nice cool glass of Joyce
Anna Livia Plurabelle
Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell
Finnegans Wake
Finn MacCool
Garry Owen
HCE
Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker
Issy the Teenage Rainbow
Lucia Joyce
Mina Purefoy
Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress
riverrun
Shaun
Shem the Penman
Ulysses is not pornography
Volta Cinema