'The Rue Reaumur, to the left of the church, leads us back to the Rue de Turbigo, about 500 yds. from the Place de la Republique.'
Baedeker's Paris and its Environs, 1900
'riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.'
The opening sentence of Finnegans Wake introduces us to a guidebook narrator, who uses first person plural pronouns and the formal word 'environs'. I think I've only seen this word used in guidebooks. It was familiar to readers of Baedeker's - the most popular guidebooks in Joyce's day.
Danis Rose discovered that Joyce also had a copy of Dillon Cosgrave's North Dublin: City and Environs (1909), which he used for information about Chapelizod.
Joyce told Cyril Connolly that the book's opening was 'an air photograph of Irish history, a celebration of the dim past of Dublin.' This opening chapter is written like a guidebook, in which we are taken on a tour of this dim past.
Our guide points out the picturesque sights to look at, and gives us useful practical information about 
sightseeing.
'a proudseye view is enjoyable of our mounding's mass, now Wallinstone's national museum, with, in some greenish distance, the charmful waterloose country... Penetrators are permitted into the museomound free...For her passkey supply to the janitrix Kathe.' 7.36
The guide is also responding to the sights we see, alongside us. Coming out of the stuffy Museyroom, the narrator breathes a sigh of relief:
'Phew!
What a warm time we were in there but how keling is here the airabouts!' 10.24
Later the guide exclaims:
Hush! Caution! Echoland!
How charmingly exquisite!' 13.04
I feel like this guide is standing beside me, like Vergil beside Dante in The Inferno.
I'm also reminded of my favourite of all guidebooks, J.G.Links' Venice for Pleasure, 1984.
'Now we really can take our coffee, and after it we can start our walk. I promise to write as little as possible while we are walking; nothing is worse than having to read a guide book while walking and looking round, all at the same time'
'We may well be asked on our return what we thought of these Tintorettos and it would be unthinkable to visit Venice without seeing them. Never let it be said that I suggested such a thing. I only point out that the stairs are steep, the pictures, though wonderful, profuse and that they will still be there tomorrow, and, indeed, on our next visit to Venice.'
J.G.Links, Venice for Pleasure
Joyce uses this 'we' narrative form throughout the first five chapters of Finnegans Wake. He came up with it first while writing chapter 2.
'...concerning the genesis of Harold or Humphrey Chimpden’s occupational agnomen (we are back in the presurnames prodromarith period, of course just when enos chalked halltraps) and discarding once for all those theories from older sources which would link him back with such pivotal ancestors as the Glues, the Gravys, the Northeasts, the Ankers and the Earwickers of Sidles- ham in the Hundred of Manhood...' 30.02
Note that 'we are back'.
Peter Timmerman discovered that this passage was itself inspired by Joyce reading the Ward Lock Guide to Bognor Regis, while on holiday there in 1923. It was here that he first came across the name 'Earwicker'.
'Sidlesham Church is an Early English structure worthy of notice, and an examination of the surrounding tombstones should not be omitted if any interest is felt in deciphering curious names, striking examples being Earwicker, Glue, Gravy, Boniface, Anker, and Northeast.'
The narrator in chapters 2 to 5 is less of a guidebook writer than an historian, investigating and presenting contradictory accounts of the distant past.
'Thus the unfacts, did we possess them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude...' 57.16
In the fifth chapter, the narrator becomes various kinds of literary critic and then an art historian, using a voice modelled on Sir Edward Sullivan's description of the Book of Kells.
In the five early chapters, Joyce is more concerned with helping and encouraging the reader than in any other part of the book.
'Now, patience; and remember patience is the great thing, and above all things else we must avoid anything like being or becoming out of patience.' 108.08
'You is feeling like you was lost in the bush, boy? You says: It is a puling sample jungle of woods. You most shouts out: Bethicket me for a stump of a beech if I have the poultriest notions what the farest he all means. Gee up, girly! 112.03
When Joyce wrote the early Earwicker chapters, he did not yet have a stable cast of characters. This 'we' narrator gave him and the reader a point of stability. Once he had created a family for HCE, he could hand over the narrative voice to Shem and Shaun and other characters. They take over the narration in chapters 6-8.
When we move forward to Book Two, we switch to third person narration and there is no longer an easily defined narrator. We also move from descriptions of past events to the present.
'The youngly delightsome frilles-in-pleyurs are now showen...drawens up consociately at the hinder sight of their commoner guardian.' 224.22
Book Three introduces a new 'I' voice, like a medieval dream poem narrator:
'And as I was jogging along in a dream as dozing I was dawdling, arrah, methought broadtone was heard and the creepers and the gliders and flivvers of the earth breath and the dancetongues of the woodfires and the hummers in their ground all vociferated echoating: Shaun! Shaun! Post the post!' 404.04
Joyce only brought the 'we' narrator back in the final book, written in 1938 as a companion to the opening guidebook chapter, written 11 years earlier. This 'we' is now much bigger than a guidebook narrator - it's the collective voice of sleeping humanity moving towards dawn.
'Passing. One. We are passing. Two. From sleep we are passing. Three. Into the wikeawades warld from sleep we are passing. Four. Come, hours, be ours!' 608.34
This 'we' also includes the reader looking back on the experience of getting through this mighty odd book.
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