Third Census: 
 
Note and Acknowledgements 
 
 
THE LEAST primitive comment on Finnegans Wake is Samuel Beckett's twelfth
part contribution to Exagmination Round, which—like the books of Frank
Budgen and Stuart Gilbert, contains information provided by Joyce himself—in
what spirit provided? 
 The books I used most often for Census III were: Mr Ellmann's thoroughgoing
index to Letters, II, III (Letters, I needs such an index; the excised parts
of Letters, I should be restored); Mr Hayman's FirstDraft Version; Mr 0 Hehir's
Gaelic Lexicon; and Mr Hart's Concordance, which I reached for like a pair
of reading glasses. 
 Published too late for use in Second Census, the Concordance supplied Third
Census with many repetitive instances of characters in the "drame." But to
use the Concordance was to be swamped by, snowed under with repetitions and
variations of personal names, to find not twenty new namings of Daedalus
or Lewis Carroll, but hundreds, an infinity, more than a census can handily
contain. Census structure is too plain, too frail to support the elaborate,
heavy edifice that is Finnegans Wake. Let us say, a census can express the
First Congregational Church of Farmington, Connecticut; but Finnegans Wake
is massy and designed as Notre Dame, or any gothic cathedral. 
 Third Census is indebted to Mr Louis Mink's unpublished Gazeteer of Finnegans
Wake; while III was being made, Mr Mink and his assistant, Steve WeiSsman,
sent me hundreds of corrections and lent me books and pamphlets. I also made
use of an unpublished article about Father Conmee by the late John Lahey,
S.J.; Mrs von Phul's unpublished Joyce manuscript was twice read by me and
gave light; after Second Census was published, the late Thornton Wilder sent
me long lists of additions-corrections. Messrs Hayman, Senn, Staples also
sent lists. 
 I have corresponded or spoken with Mr Atherton (he flipped through the index
cards of Third Census in 1969), with Mr Dalton, Mr Graham, Mr Hart, Mr Knuth,
Mr MacHugh, Mr Senn, Mrs Walzl, Miss Worthington, Mrs Yoder. In 1967 the
late Austin Clarke and his wife, Nora, read Second Census and made comments
valuable to III. I also received valuable comment from Miss Jane Lidderdale,
O.B.E., and from Mrs John Rodker.