7

So this barista at Starbucks asks me what I’m reading, possibly out of interest or in order to work me for a tip.  I show him the book, Never Any End to Paris by Enrique Vila-Matas. 

“What’s it about?” he asks. 

After a bit of pondering, I simply say: “Everything.”

Now, the book is not about everything, though it is a wonderful, plotless book full of literary references and digressions along the lines of the other Vila-Matas books I’ve read and enjoyed.  (If I were to write a novel, it would be in this vein, loitering and loose and fun, a true response to other literature.)  But I couldn’t possibly describe the entirety of the book to a barista in Starbucks what with all the people waiting to order.  So I left it at that, dropped some coins in the tip cup, and took myself, Vila-Matas, and my tea the hell out of there. 

This is my long way of stating that I don’t care if I can’t explain a book to someone.  I had a teacher in high school who said that no book should take you more than two weeks to get through and that if you couldn’t summarize the plot when you were finished, you weren’t paying attention.  Now that I am older I know that this— along with so much of what one is told in high school— is bullshit.  (Now that I think of it, my junior year English teacher was overly fond of mystery novels.)  While I see the importance of plot, and while I love a compelling narrative, I also know that there are different types of books just as there are different types of people.  This is a good thing. 

The type of books that Vila-Matas writes are not exactly what Joyce was up to, but I made a connection between the two writers this morning after the encounter at Starbucks.  Stands to reason: I have been thinking about how to tackle Finnegans Wake in the year 2015 and killing time with smaller books, like Never Any End to Paris.  Having put out the call for fellow travelers on Facebook, which I assumed would be ignored, and which, amazingly, netted me one other sucker crazy enough to give this a go, Mr. Chad Post, I concocted a plan of attack.  52 pages a month (or 13 pages a week however you slice it).  This will allow for a slow yet steady read of The Wake in one calendar year.  So, after some emails and a few thoughts and a little pre-reading reading of critical texts and intros, I decided that the best way to read The Wake is to just read the damn thing.  Sure, some overview of the “plot” and characters and themes will help ground me as I wade through the puns and neologisms, but I’m not so much looking for a way into the book as MY way into the book.  And fuck it if I can’t describe the thing to anyone else.

I’m a big fan of the reader response critics and the phenomenologists, so the idea of an individual reading of any one book appeals to me greatly.  If we are all in different, sometimes overlapping interpretive communities, we can see how a work of art that challenges, and Finnegans Wake certainly does, is less a dirty modernist trick and more an invitation for self-discovery, as new agey as that sounds.  I have no idea if I will actually discover anything by reading The Wake, but it may happen.  As I try to explain to my ENG 101 students, reading is about self-discovery in the sense that you get to react to things you read.  These reactions tell you something about yourself.  The important thing is not to love or hate a piece of writing but to address why you love or hate it.  What does your reaction mean?  How can you articulate that and what might be uncovered during the articulation?  

Self-discovery was not my intention when starting this blog but, now that I’m reconciled to a lifelong misunderstanding of The Wake, I shall try to use this space as a means of exploring whatever comes up during this reading. 

And I really don't give a damn if I don’t understand anything so long as I never stop trying to understand everything.  

6

Postcard found in my (used) copy of Ulysses. 

5: The Balance

I finished Ulysses.  To those not aware of the magnitude of that undertaking, this is my literary equivalent of finishing a triathlon.  I state this knowing that the two are quite different, but still… the fucking thing took a lot of training, effort, dedication, patience, resolve, tears, frustration, fear, and did I say effort?  I know, I know… this is a more straightforward book than The Wake, which is the book I said I wanted to read (and the reason this blog was created).  But I also said that I wanted to warm up with the saga of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus and their odyssey around Dublin on that famous June day.  I was anxious to get through it all and to Molly’s famous chapter at the end, which I did the other day while sitting on a Rogers Park beach, which is where I read a good chunk of Joyce’s masterpiece.  Hurray for beach reads.

And it is a masterpiece, a convoluted clusterfucked masterpiece.  There can be no doubt about that.  Well… maybe there can be some doubt. 

I spoke with a friend about the task that is Ulysses and, while doing so, realized that a laborious chore might not make for fun reading.  So why the hell was I doing this to myself?  My friend assured me the endeavor was worth undertaking, that he enjoyed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners considerably more, but that the satisfaction of finishing Ulysses was well worth the time and mental energy.  (He had not, of course, been so crazy as to ever try to read The Wake.)  And it is a satisfying experience and I am happier to have read the book in its completion (not a line skipped), even though I fully admit to not getting everything happening in the tome, for the effect of Ulysses is part of its, er, charm.  I had guides and annotations to help me along the way, but in the end I opted to get though the book largely on my own and try my damnedest to see what Joyce was up to in each episode.  I did consult a few websites to follow the format and see how it all mirrored The Odyssey, which I haven’t read in well over two decades, but my ultimate enjoyment was in figuring out the tricks and intentions to the best of my ability. 

So obviously I ought to tackle The Wake next, right?  Nope.  I need a bit of a break.  And yes, it took me so long to read Ulysses because I was cheating on it constantly with other books, mostly poetry.  And I started reading Boss by Mike Royko last night and am looking forward to a conventionally narrated book of some 200 pages.  I need that variety.  We all do.  With all the data, media, and gadgets vying for our attention, it may be a good idea to mix up the literary diet, get some lean protein with the carbs, maybe a little fiber.  Okay, let’s move on before this analogy gets any more strained.

***

Some thoughts I had while reading Ulysses:

·      How the fuck does Joyce get away with this shit? 

·      Did the guy even have an editor?

·      Nora must’ve been a little pissed over the Penelope episode.

·      Thank god this was done in 1922 and that no one need try something like it again.

·      I am in awe of this episode that recreates the history of English, even if it is a frustrating bunch of pages.

·      The opening (Telemachiad) and the closing (Nostos) sections are amazing pleasures to read.  The middle (the Odyssey) is an amazing feat that comprises most of the book and is impressive but more than once made me want to dig up Joyce and smack his corpse, what’s left of it.

·      It must’ve been fun to have a polyglot over for parties.

·      This is a book to be admired and enjoyed, though I am not sure if I enjoyed it as much as I admire it or if that really matters.

·      This is surely the antidote to Twitter.

·      Anything is possible in literature.  Joyce proved as much.  But just because something is possible does that mean it is worth doing?

·      There’s no way this book should be placed above The Sound and the Fury on anyone’s list of greatest English language novels.

·      Why aren't we reading this is school?  Or did I go to bad schools?

And so on. 

***

So I wrote earlier that reading Ulysses was the equivalent of completing a triathlon, but that is a false analogy.  They are very different experiences, I safely assume.  But I used such a lazy comparison because, 1. It is effective, 2. It makes the point to those who have no real idea what the hell Ulysses is or why reading it is a big deal (to me).  But that’s the society we live in, one that automatically recognizes, quite correctly, the amazing physical effort that goes into training for and completing a big, crazy athletic event but…

I was going to write about the modern world and its lack of appreciation for big, difficult novels, but what the fuck—was everyone reading Ulysses in 1922?  1932?  1948?  1966?  1971?  Nope.  Even with computers and iPhones aplenty, nothing has really changed.  So maybe I ought to back off. 

***

I finished Boss last night.  Essential reading.  I might argue that Ulysses is as well, but I would be less prone to recommend it over Royko’s unauthorized bio of Richard J. Daley.  So why mention them in the same blog post?  Because, again, the balanced diet is important and because they represent two very different books that I think everyone should familiarize themselves with.  Just as I think people should read Bulgakov, Calvino, Ciaran Carson, Neil Postman, Reinaldo Arenas, G. Cabrera Infante, W. B. Yeats… I think everyone ought to read a lot and a lot of different things.  It’s all essential. 

I have a friend who read fifteen romance novels in a week.  Her husband said that she reads too much.  I admit, my first reaction was, “Romance novels?”  But hell—at least the woman is actively literate.  How many people have I met who employ the loathsome term “post-literate” to describe their lack of interest in books, as if using such a term exonerates them.  It doesn't.  You need to read, all the time, everyday, as much as you can, even if what you read is what some might consider fluff.  Then again, as I argued via Facebook of all goddamn places, reading anything is good but one ought to try a challenge once in a while. 

Why?  Why is this important?  I should have a better answer.  My canned response would be something along the lines of the brain is a muscle and one must exercise or lose muscles, again using a fucking athletic analogy to make this simple goddamn point.  But is this the case?  I’ve seen studies that imply that the reading most done in 21^st century America— Facebook, Twitter, scrolling marquees at the bottom of Fox News broadcasts—is still reading, still communication via the inorganic means of symbols representing words, words representing ideas and events.  Just as I no longer lament that the internet is making us lazy and stupid (a lazy and stupid conclusion), I can also accept that literacy is literacy is literacy however it is practiced.

But fuck that.

This is the same as saying that eating is important to live, so it makes little difference what one eats so long as they are eating.  Which is stupid.  Obviously eating nothing but McDonald’s may have serious health consequences (We don't need Morgan Spurlock to tell us that).  Obviously one ought to balance their diet a bit and eat some green leafy vegetables as well as pizza. (Last night I did this—stopped at the corner store and purchased some tomatoes and spinach to make a nice, simple salad to go along with the frozen pizza I planned to devour because I fucking love pizza and was very hungry and had spent the entire train ride home thinking about pizza in ways that are perhaps not natural or sane.  But I assuaged the wee bit of guilt over eating an entire goddamn pizza by first making that simple salad and getting some iron in my diet along with the dairy and starch.  See how that works?)

So read romance novels or Twilight or any other books that some tweed-wearing douche would dismiss as sub-literate.  But maybe try to balance that from time to time with a more challenging book.  It feels good.  It’s good for you.  It may force you to consider lives, ideas, and occurrences outside your comfort zone, but that is also good for you.  It creates empathy, understanding, a more thoughtful mind. 

And to those who solely read big, difficult books translated from Hungarian containing more commas than periods per paragraph: maybe lighten up once in a while and remember those early days when you first read for pleasure and how much fun a well crafted, nicely plotted book can be. 

The balance.  The goddamn balance. 

Okay, more soon, like next year, as that is how long it may take me to read ten pages of The Wake.   

4

So far, I've finished the intro to Bishop's book on The Wake, which was very interesting and provided a revelation or two, though I'd sooner discuss all that after I've dug deeper into the thing.

I'd hoped to have more read, but, ya know, there's papers to grade and all that, so, it being a very busy week, I'm behind on my self-imposed schedule. 

But I want to post with something like regularity, so here's a Wake related item:

I admit much of my interest in the tome comes from my love of the band Sleepytime Gorilla Museum who took a piece of Fiinegans Wake and wrote a metal song around it.  'Tis rockin'.  Watch it here.

See if you can keep your head from banging.

3

Congrats to Alice Munro who I have not been able to read much of.  A good friend described her prose as "pedestrian."  Sums it up, but what do I know? 

2

Today in the mail: Joyce's Book of the Dark by John Bishop, the first book on Finnegans Wake I will tackle.  Bishop's book looks like a good place to start.

Some reviewers claim this book is good but ignores important aspects of The Wake.  Others say it is quite accessible and indeed a good door into the famously inscrutable tome.  I'll be posting thoughts soon.

For the record, I am indeed reading about The Wake before actually reading The Wake.  Baby steps...

1

Begin at the start, right?  No… Joyce didn’t always do so.  The Wake itself has no real beginning or end, despite most readers beginning on page one.

I first read Joyce in college.  A teacher assigned A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  I had heard tell of its importance.   I wasn't very impressed, but I was a young man with stubborn ideas about literature and in no mood for this particular book. 

It didn't help that the teacher was new to the school and not aware of the quarter system.  She, being used to semesters, assigned more books than one could logically get through in ten weeks, unless of course, one were to tear through them with little discussion or digestion of their ideas.  Which is what we did.  So, lacking the discourse one assumes will accompany a higher ed lit course, I didn't connect with the book or its author.

Then I read Dubliners.  I preferred it, though I didn't see what all the fuss was about.  Some good tales, to be sure, but I wasn't awed.  Chalk it up to another case of being too young to understand.

My uneasy relationship with Ulysses has been discussed at various points here.  Suffice it to say: I am ambivalent about this book, though I have not finished it and am, in fact, still making my way from "Stately" to "yes" having just purchased a pocket edition to carry with me at all times.  And when I am not engaged with the events of June 16, 1904, I will investigate this long assumed unassailable literary clusterfuck called Finnegans Wake. 

Thus this blog. 

All my attempts shall be documented here, as will any other somewhat relevant thoughts.  I started this page as a form of motivation.  If I have a blog, I have responsibilities, or at least imagined ones.  It is possible (probable) that no one will read it, but it will exist, and if it exists it has to be fed.  So I'll fed it what I can when I can. 

My first post (aside from this intro) will come this week.  It will be less meandering.