I read ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ voluntarily…well, most of it.
Funny how life works isn’t it?
Just this evening, I was contemplating switching my major from Biology to English.
I can now say with very little doubt that it will be a cold, cold day in hell before that happens. 
Actually I’m glad. It was only a matter of time before I came to my senses, you guys just help to speed it along, is all.
It’s not that I dislike literature (I’m currently reading Troilus and Criseyde), it’s just that I’m way too thick to pick up on any subtleties or hidden meanings. It’s a pain really.
(The fact that my spelling and grammar skills are sub-par may have something to do with it also. ;))
In that vein;
Please tell me you’re kidding.
Why do I have a horrible feeling you’re not?
[sub]Sigh. 9 to 5 never looked so good…[/sub]
Um, no, I wasn’t kidding. But I wouldn’t be in a position to return the ms. unmarked: I’m not a literature professor. If I were, however, I’d imagine that when a student of English literature has reached the doctoral-dissertation level, such standards would not seem unreasonable.
(That’s right: despite rackensack’s bizarre [if flattering] assumption, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a professional literato. I never finished highschool, and I have never been “taught” Joyce: any reading of Joyce I have ever done has been purely for pleasure. And I’ll agree with Dr.P that taking on Finnegans Wake as a linear slog is just asking for trouble. Sample it; absorb it; accumulate it. It took Joyce seventeen years to write it: what makes you think it should take you any less time to understand it?)
I apologize for the unwarranted assumption on my part; I plead the lateness of the hour and reading and replying in haste. Something I thought I read convinced me that one or more of the participants in the conversation was a lit prof, but I’m damned if I can figure out, in the clear light of day, what it was.
I don’t think it should necessarily take me less time to understand it than it took Joyce to write it (though I don’t necessarily think it ought to take as long or longer, either). I have felt insufficiently repaid for the effort invested in FW so far, unlike Ulysses; the parts I have understood have seemed a lot less fun than Ulysses. That was what I meant to convey in my post last night.
Corvus, my friend, you hang in there w/ Bio. I myself was planning on Bio/Chem, until Walt Whitman came along and ruined my life.
Science: makes sense, pays money. Lit: well, you fill in the blanks.
Like I said, I haven’t found this line particularly remunerative. But hey – the babes dig it, and with modern technology, I could be phoning in from The Lorelei in Islamorada for all anybody knows.
::looks out the windows at not the Keys…::
rackensack, I’ll list some of the good bits when I get home.
For a couple of days running we’d read it outloud for laughs.
Does that count as pleasure reading?
Oh, you’re talking doctoral level. I can agree with that. I’m only a lowly undergrad who somehow wasn’t taught any grammar at all, despite 12 years of high school. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Any doctoral stuff is years away. Hopefully I’ll be better prepared by then.
I think when I get back to school I’ll have to pick up some Joyce.
Once I saw a video of the Clancy Brothers onstage actually haing fun with Finnegans Wake. They were doing the old song that inspired the title, and opened with a little skit. They spill whiskey on him and he sits up in his coffin and exclaims, “Beforre, I was Finn . . . and now I’ll be Finn again!!!”
Any of you eggheads ever read Laurence Sterne’s “Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy”? Apparently it was one of Joyce’s primary influences.
On top of that, it was a much more interesting read. Great book.
Just this evening, I went to Second Story Books at Dupont Circle, Washington DC, and after looking there for years, finally found it: Finnegans Wake. When I came out of the shop I had a parking ticket. So whatever I saved by buying it secondhand had a $20 markup… anyway…
I opened FW and began reading out loud. On page 3, I read:
When I read that, I just burst out laughing out loud. It was so true. Mister Funn is fined again!
You gotta give credit to Joyce for writing a very fun book that is just laugh-out-loud hilarious. When I got home I read it to my kids and they caught on right away and laughed (at the same time they wondered: What’s got into him???). I said to myselse this stuff is just nuts! It’s a riot! Sorry if you just don’t get it.
Whares yar shems of yewmermann?
So no one’s having a go at this, is it? Why then ile fit you.
Whares–“wares”, obviously, since the book is a commercial commodity, after all. But also, whare is Maori for ‘house’, which goes to answer the question: it’s in the house that Finnegan built!
yar–Persian for ‘friend’: I’m teasing you in a friendly way.
shems–means ‘sun’; also Shems was the spiritual guide of the mystical poet Jalal al-Din Rumi.
yewmermann–recalls the whispering yews from the “Circe” chapter of Ulysses. Merman, but also mer ‘sea’ + mann (suggesting Joyce’s contemporary Thomas Mann), also implies the Irish sea-god Manannan mac Lír, who was metempsychosed in Ulysses by the poet George Russell, alias AE. Stephen Dedalus borrowed 5 pounds from him, and said:
A.E.I.O.U.