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James Joyce
Jane Lewty
Q.R.N, I.C.Q: JOYCE, RADIO ATHLONE AND THE 3-VALVE SET

In early radio, during the 1920s and ‘30s, static was often its defining factor. Long-range signals would bounce off the Heaviside layer (a covering of charged particles enveloping the earth which radio frequencies cannot penetrate and are therefore reflected back) and swamp the short-range frequency. If two signals were jammed in close proximity, within the radio spectrum, the distance between them was known as “audial differentiation,” a state of flux which resulted in a high-pitched screaming sound hovering above the continually hissing sibilance, known as “white noise.” The radio set itself needed constant additions and readjustments to counter the static: “blocks” inserted to hold the frequency steady; filters applied to keep the hissing noise at a minimum. Radio manuals of the time, such as Popular Wireless, ran advice column on how to identify mysterious problems, such as sulphation of batteries, distortion from overloading the valves on a radio set; also how to upgrade by affixing transformers and amplifying equipment. A recurrent theme was how to achieve “oscillation”; when the radio set vibrated backwards and forwards, accepting one current and simultaneously giving out another. Not to mention the advertisements for crystal-type variable condensers, ebonite strips, basket coils, and the weekly problem page entitled, “Troubled by Heterodyning?” Such obsessive detailing was to avoid what one irate subscriber to Popular Wireless called “a cacophonous miscellany of bestial and obscene noises” (1). In contrast to Marinetti’s concern that radio might dissolve speech patterns, the overriding impulse was to celebrate the field of wireless technology as a vastly informative and co-dependent community. One letter to the editor in 1927 pointed out that “broadcasting has added about five hundred words to the average man’s vocabulary, not including those he uses when the thing won’t work” (2). Here, then, is the attempt to legitimize and render humorous, the previously arcane and mysterious. With the rise of public networks, the voice of radio in the ether was no longer fleeting; the ordinary amateur listener could catch it. In keeping with the preference for contact rather than content, a practice known as “radio DX-ing,” or DX-fishing,” arose, where enthusiasts could drift across the radio spectrum. A magazine article in Colliers, 1922, called “It’s Great To Be A Radio Maniac” compares this so-called addiction to making a pact with the devil. DX was meant to imply “distant stations” on the edge of darkness and, by extension, the limits of sanity.

Thus, the “globalness” of radio space was beginning to be determined, within the framework of where the technology was rooted; the point at which the station was placed, and not merely on the waveband, but also politically and even historically. Ireland played a variable part in the development of radio communications, as shown by a piece in Radio News (March 1927), which joked about the “primitive” methods of the Wireless Society of Ireland: flying a wire attached to a kite and receiving transatlantic messages (3). This was something Marconi had effected twenty years earlier. In actuality, during the uprisings in 1916, the Republicans had carried a radio set from building to building in order to duck under the British news blackout; and in 1926, the first Irish commercial station was aired on January 1st from Little Denmark Street in Dublin. By 1933, the transmitter was moved to a location two miles east of Athlone, operating on an average of 60 kilowatts with a range stretching to middle Europe. All radio stations had what was known as a “call sign” (identification letters to be found on the waveband); the key-call of a solitary radio DX-er was “CQ,” which was an obvious pun. Switzerland, for example, was 2HB; Newfoundland was 2VO; the call-sign for Radio Eirann, or “Radio Athlone” as Joyce preferred to called it, was 2RN, chosen to mean “come back to Erin,” which suggested that all hearers were in exile, in one way or another. Additionally, it echoes “QRN” which was one of the less-frequent calls used in DX-ing.

Radio Athlone initially relied on relays from the BBC, although its first director, Seamus Clandillon, introduced Irish language programs. The usual evening program began with a Stock Exchange List, News Bulletin and Market Reports, and closed with a weather forecast. However, the service was operating from a building without sound insulation, which produced some improvisatory situations. One broadcaster recalled how a gramophone positioned in the corridor provided the incidental music for programs “by opening and closing the studio door” (4). For any listener in exile, once “home” was reached after wading through the airwaves, the outcome may have been little more than confused knocking and snatches of melody. It is likely that the third thunderword of Finnegans Wake is in some way replicating this frustration, with its special effects of smashing glass and music cues (44. 19-23). When in Paris, Joyce confessed to thinking of Ireland “each day and each hour of the day” (5), living and reliving memories, hearing voices from the past. The single utterance heard by the listener was a sound reproduced, altered, and probably mutated along the way.

Joyce’s fading eyesight would be a factor in his reliance upon radio as a viable source of news from Ireland. I have suggested that the voices “heard,” or coaxed, from his mind were directly drawn from exposure to radio, which blanketed access to home on the dial, crafting false words out of white noise. Of Joyce’s listening, I imagine an incessant, restless switching of frequencies; the DX-fisher calling “2RN, ICQ,” for a station which invariably sank beneath stronger forces. It is likely that Joyce had a 3-valve, possibly even a 5-valve, set with a radio-wave tuner (two coils and a variable condenser) as it would have been difficult to get long-range radio stations with a 1-coil set. These developments arrived around 1928 and would have been contained in Dunham portable sets, Pye portables, and Lotus portables. If Joyce didn’t have access to one of these more advanced models, he would have had to spend a certain amount of time adjusting a 1-valve set. Wearing headphones, he would have brought the “reaction coil” close to the “fixed coil”, where – if a clicking or breathing sound was heard – oscillation would take place, and weaker signals would be picked up. During the 1930s, local Paris stations included Radio-Paris, known as “Radiola” and Radio Vitus. A secret radio station was though to also broadcast from the suburbs from 9am to 6pm every day. No-one had the key to the elusive call-sign, but it would have been one of the central blocks to Radio Athlone, 2RN. Thirty stations operated at high power in central Europe, on wavelengths between 1000-4000 meters; those closest to 2RN’s wavelength were Radio-Rome, Langenburg, Karlsburg and Konigswusterhausen in Germany. There was supposed to be 10 kilocycles between broadcasting stations, but during the daytime, this was impossible. Radio waves reaching beyond 900 miles were reflected back to earth from the Heaviside layer; this being known as the “skip” distance. At night, the skip distance had been raised to over 1000 meters. Evidently, Joyce would have heard Radio Athlone far more clearly at night, just in time for the “artistes of the ether” such as the fine baritone Mr. Anderson Nicol who was a consistent feature in 2RN’s entertainment program. Leopold Bloom’s comment that “night is a good conductor” was certainly verified, and, as noted later in the Wake, anyone with a wireless could pick up distant regions such as “bostoons”/Boston.

The best months of the year to receive successful long-wave radio transmissions were March and April, as ionization of the atmosphere by the sun was likely to occur in summer. The apparent date of events in Finnegans Wake is March 21 and 22; the wind is from the northeast; there is fog and mixed precipitation. In Book II, iii, the “[w]elter focused” tracks a depression originating in Scandinavia which makes its way through St George’s Channel. John Gordon estimates the year as 1938, for the Wake is consistent with recent history of the time -- such as the Irish Free State, Prohibition bootleggers, Hitler’s autobahn -- and the personal history of the Joyce family.

Notoriously, the principal motif of II, iii, is a radio, whose continual presence ensures that that all dialogue is loud, rapid and fragmented. There are two primary broadcasts, a sermon and a weather forecast being relayed from downstairs into the sleeper’s bedroom, often overlapping. The chapter opens with the “tolvtubular high fidelity daildialler,” (309. 14) a device which may conceivably eavesdrop upon the Irish assembly, so advanced are its components. This is also a two-way device which can pass gossip about HCE backwards and forwards, oscillating wildly. The sermon begins innocuously; then the frequency amplification signal is turned up which implies that the station is ebbing away. It morphs into the entreaty of a hell-raiser, an agitator. Other transmissions seep into the fray: the “flash” of a racing report, “a bunch of palers” (323. 25) heard galloping intermittently. Here, the terminology of heat and fire becomes incorporated into an angry response to wireless interference. Voices combine to tell how the “whole blazy raze acurraghed from spark to phoenish” (322. 19-20) before a sound of excrutiating static, like oil being poured on flames, effectively douses the confusion. The radio dial appears to be twisted once more, alighting upon “Radiose wohalooing” (247. 3) which may approximate to “Radio Atha Luin,” misheard, misdirected and finally found.

In the final section of the Wake, “Recorso,” another “Gael warning” from Radio Eirann is sounded. It becomes the “thunner in the eire,” (565. 20) and heralds a new circuitous route as the storm returns, bounding from anodes to cathodes like many other messages in Finnegans Wake. From research into the affective life of radio frequencies in the 1930s, I would suggest that the night of the Wake is set prior to 1938, or at least refers to an event of two years earlier. In Popular Wireless (April 11, 1936), there is an article describing a thunderstorm with lightning and hail which moved across St George’s Channel in mid-March, “a night of considerable electro-magnetic disturbance in the ether, and atmospherics were so bad that there was no pleasure in long- or short-distance listening.” As shown, this was a freak occurrence for the summer months. Book II, ii, was actually drafted during 1936; it ominously conveys the current “fascion,” as a Czechoslovakian radio station cuts in: “Enterruption. Check or slowback. Dvershen”. This is the site at Prague-Kbely – call-sign OK --- transmitting at 1600 meters, and bringing news of German troops marching along the Danzig corridor.

Previously, I have described the sleeper of the Wake as an “improved everyman” who is ultra-receptive, but harried and disturbed throughout. Hostile voices offer to “sock him up,” electrify him and cook him like a “ham pig,” (359. 19-21) a radio ham who has mangled the seamless flow of voices; the “eeriewhigger” whose ears are overly ambitious with their “circumcentric megacycles” (310. 7). Not only does the turbulence of II, iii, reflect the difficulties of manually operating a 3-valve set, but the detailed description of radio technology points to an awareness of how such devices might be augmented for more efficient use. The “radiooscillating” sleeper has the “trademark ear of a broadcaster” (108. 21-24); however, he calls everywhere – indiscriminately – and rarely finds his intended destination: the “somewhave from its specific” (501. 18). Which announcer calls a halt in “Recorso,” saying “Sponsor programme and close down. That’s enough, genral, of finicking about Finnegan and fiddling with his faddles”? (531. 27). Clearly, the “faddles” (wireless improvements?) have been rendered ineffectual by environmental and technical obstructions – storm and static. It is thought that line 560 of Finnegans Wake is the voice of the sleeper-auditor, struggling to speak and clawing up from nightmare: “Shop! Please shop! Shop ado please!” But what if the sleeper is a radio DX-er, eavesdropping on the ether, and wondering “why in limbo where is he and what are the sound waves saying ceased ere they all wayed wrong?” (256. 23-24) This would point to a realization that radio is the epitome of unsatisfactory communication in the Wake; it reveals the disturbance caused by fragmented dialogue, and the frustration when a “priority call” fails (506. 7).

NOTES

1 “Radio Notes and News”. Popular Wireless 374, vol., XV (August 3 1929): 654.
2 “Radio Notes and News”. Popular Wireless 302, vol., XIII (March 17 1928): 80.
3 “Radio Notes and News”. Popular Wireless 276, vol., XII (September 17 1927): 81.
4 Gorham, Maurice. Forty Years of Irish Broadcasting. Dublin: Talbot Press Ltd, 1967. 101-102.
5 Joyce, James. Letters. London: Viking, 1966. 395.