I was clearing out my AOL Filing Cabinet today (long story), and came across an email I sent to a dear friend this summer. I read it, uneasy, with an odd feeling of nostalgia. It was only two months ago. Why this yearning sensation? I had forgotten, almost, the Joycean obsession which fired up my June and July. So much has happened in the intervening months, so much personal and world-events darkness, that the innocent burbly ramblings in this email seem as though they were written by another woman.
Here it is:
James Joyce has ruined other writers for me. I am reading Ulysses for the first time aided by my dad and 2 literary guidebooks — without which the damn thing would be impenetrable But once I cracked Joyce’s code just a little bit, the book would suddenly, oddly, open up to me. Showing me only glimpses of the genius, but glimpses nonetheless.
It’s like those moments I used to have in math class, where I would be completely confused, all the numbers blending together on the board, having no idea what was going on, what I was supposed to be doing, how to do it…and then, in a flash, out of nowhere, the concepts made sudden breathtaking sense, and I could “see” exactly how I was supposed to get the right answer. That’s what reading Ulysses has been like for me: slogging through seemingly meaningless stream-of-consciousness prose, when suddenly…light breaks in and I realize that NOTHING is random in the book. There are connections and inter-connections EVERYWHERE.
It is, hands down, the most exciting reading experience I have ever had.
And it is KICKING MY ASS. It is hard hard stuff. (James Joyce said to a friend who complained to him about how difficult the book was: “Well, it took me 7 years to write it. It should take you 7 years to read it.”)
Reading it has brought me and my dad even closer together. I call him up and read him one sentence, asking for clarification. One sentence out of a 900 page book and he will automatically say, “Ah yes. That’s from the Cyclops episode. Joyce is referring to the editor of the Irish Times at the time.” My dad is a lunatic, and I couldn’t get thru Ulysses without him.
I’m becoming a lunatic myself. I am living more and more completely in my mind.
A stranger on the street saw Ulysses under my arm and stopped me to have a conversation about it. “So are you reading it unaided, or are you following the guidebooks?” So funny. It was like we were 2 members of some weird cult. Huddled away in a thatched hut, drinking Guinness, reading Joyce. Thinking to ourselves, “Jesus, what the hell is Joyce going on and on about?”
And on the flip side, in the physical side of my life which I pretty much willfully ignore: I went out with Jen last night to a club in the village, to hear an absolutely phenomenal cover band of all things, and danced like a complete and utter maniac until 4 in the morning. 4 in the morning??
They did a cover of “Lithium”, my favorite Nirvana song, and I basically felt as though Kurt Cobain were ACTUALLY there. We all did. Everyone was screaming and thrashing like complete banshees, losing their friggin minds. I haven’t slamdanced in 10 years. There was an exhilaratingly cosmic element to the group-dance-fest. For one bright moment, we felt that Cobain had not died. He LIVED in that song. I lost myself in it. Everybody did.
Today I am exhausted. Hence this long bizarre monologue.
James Joyce and Kurt Cobain. The two poles of my life.
