I am an English major. I read and write a lot, probably about three times than the average college student in a major like business or geology or really any of the non-humanities related subjects. I love reading and I love writing. Those are the two main facts that led me to declaring English as my major on my college application. In my time at college I have always been an English major and I will continue to be one until I graduate this June.
Although, as I have said before, I love being and English major, there are at times, texts that simply seem to overload my mind until it feels on the verge of exploding from too much rhetoric. To what type of texts am I referring?...Well, most recently, James Joyce's Ulysses.
James Joyce is a fantastic writer. No one can argue with that fact--although if they should want to, I would definitely like to put them up against my professor who teaches solely James Joyce texts. In my opinion, Joyce perfected the of stream of consciousness writing style and outdid all those writers who had attempted it before him; and in all honesty, I don't think anyone has done it as well even after him. But Joyce didn't only write in the stream of consciousness style, he pretty much combined every style known in the English language and made them flow together in the most poetical, complicated and beautiful manner ever. In short, he was way too good at what he did. Scholars will often spend their entire careers and lives attempting to study every detail of just one of Joyce's texts and still never be fully satisfied. According to my professor (who has read Ulysses at least 20 times), it is impossible to ever come to a full Joyce-like understanding of the text because that is just how complicated it is. Ulysses is commonly considered the best and most important text of the twentieth century in any language.
I just wish I had known all of that when I signed up for the class. Maybe then I would have been a little better prepared for what I was getting myself into.
I registered for a class entitled 'Author Seminar: James Joyce's Ulysses.' What was I thinking? Apparently I was thinking that it would be fun to make my life ridiculously complicated for the first quarter of my senior year.
Do I sound like I am complaining? Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. I can't yet be sure. Probably both.
Although I have three other classes to focus on this quarter as well as independent language study credits, most of my studying time ends up dedicated to reading and analyzing Ulysses as well as all of the supportive essay texts we are assigned in order to help our understanding and dissection of the text. I feel like my life has come to revolve around this one book. This one 643 page masterpiece that details the life of essentially two men in one single 24 hour period on June 16, 1904 in the city of Dublin as they experience happening that are designed to be parallel to the story of the Odyssey. It is utterly overwhelming and immensely satisfying and amazing at the same time.
Every chapter I complete and understand gives me confidence going into the next. It still take me about three days to really discern each chapter, and the chapters are only getting longer and more complicated, but I am confident that, eventually, my mind will quit fighting against the information overload and just start absorbing the grandeur within the text.
Until then, this picture pretty much sums up my life.
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