Richard Beckman argues that readers ofFinnegans Wake must develop a new method of reading that flows from the text itself. Focusing on the mode of perception in the Wake--seeing the world obliquely because that is often the only way to get at the nature of things--Beckman maintains that Joyce s satire depends on looking at the public scene from behind, a view at the same time vaudevillian and philosophic. Indirect perception is at once the basis for Joyce s peculiar locutions, conveying incompatible double and triple meanings, and also an account of how the mind works....