Two summer projects.

1. I'm trying to read Ulysses again. I made it 70 pages last time I tried, back in 2005; this time I think I can do it. Joyce and I have some history: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has the place in my history of reading that Catcher in the Rye has for many others. Portrait was the book that both alerted me to the possibilities of the written word and fixed in my mind certain ideas about artistry and authenticity. Of course, this is mainly because I misread it. When I re-read Portrait last year, I caught much more of Joyce's humor. I was somewhat disconcerted to realize that Stephen Dedalus is not quite the artist that he thinks he is. I'm glad to say that Ulysses is actually pretty funny. For example, the verbs in the library scene: “Monsieur de la Palisse, Stephen sneered…”, “Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured…”, “All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled.” And a page later: “John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth: —Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare Aristotle with Plato.” This stuff makes me chuckle.
2. I'm also trying to learn to follow sports. It's not that I don't like sports. I get a big kick out of going to see games live. It's just that I have trouble keeping track of games I don't watch. This is a little bit weird, since I can spout out esoterica about actors in movies I don't even plan to see, but I can't keep track who plays for the teams that I claim to like. So, warming up with Wimbledon and the World Cup, I'm going to try to figure out how to follow sports so that when NFL season starts up, I'm not the odd man out at the office.

If I can follow through on both of these projects, I'll probably be able to keep my level of pretension exactly where it is right now.