English painter and writer, a close friend of Joyce and author of James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses (1934). Cameron and Bob surface him in Dialogue 38 as the source, misremembered mid-conversation, of the "everyday roundabout" characterization of the Wake that McLuhan quotes in his 1954 optophone essay — and as the type of reader McLuhan prized: an artist who "knew what he was doing," reading Joyce from inside the practice rather than from criticism.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the artist-witness behind McLuhan's optophone essay — the painter whose account of Joyce's method McLuhan lifts, and the reason McLuhan trusts an artist's reading of Joyce over a critic's
Cameron finally names Budgen as the writer behind McLuhan's cited line — that Joyce "substituted an everyday roundabout with intrusions from above and below" for "the lineal procedure of individual awareness."
"the guy that wrote the part about Finnegans Wake being a roundabout way is Frank Budgen."
Bob makes Budgen a case for McLuhan's method-preference — the artist-witness is trusted over the academic critic because he shares Joyce's own working ground.
"he was McLuhan's favorite interpreter of Joyce because he was an artist and he knew what he was doing"