Stephen Dedalus famously says in Ulysses, ” A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”
This post looks at a mistake I made in an online talk, and it considers what it means exactly for an error to be a “portal of discovery.”
Continue readingThe years keep rolling right along — WordPress reminded me this morning that I’ve posted something on every Bloomsday for the past three years, so I now feel like I have to keep the streak going.
On this Bloomsday, I find myself thinking about Joyce’s description of William Blake making breakfast, one that I think was the seed of Ulysses.
Continue readingI’ve recently returned to my re-reading of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and I’m finding the final chapter more interesting than ever before — and funnier! I’ve laughed out loud several times reading it, including one scene that I’ll discuss here in this post, a scene in which a strange character repeats himself. I compare it below to a recurring gag on my favorite television show, The Sopranos, and I reflect on the significance of Joyce repeating a moment from his own life, enshrining it in art in a way reminiscent of what William Wordsworth called a “Spot of Time.”
Close readings of Joyce, reflections on life, and fragments of pop culture — all this and more on today’s post!
Continue readingMy dad died last week.
I’ve been thinking of life and death in terms of Finnegans Wake and its exploration of fatherhood. Read on for a few brief thoughts on this subject, intermixed with a memorial for my own father.
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The Suspended Sentence 