I find it interesting how I become interested or disinterested in various writers. Over the years I have had periods of intense interest in Louis Zukofsky's writing. Now that I have committed to comment on it weekly, I don't find myself as fascinated, although I remain interested. For more than ten years I have worked on a book on the influence of James Joyce on Robert Anton Wilson. My interest in Joyce ebbs and flows. I decided to dive back into Joyce last Saturday. I read a bit of Campbell and Robinson's Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake and a bit of the Wake itself. Then I read some of the free sample pages on Amazon's from Shelly Brivic's Joyce through Lacan and Brivic and I felt my love of Joyce (and Brivic) burst forth anew. I ordered a copy of that book by Brivic, but I got email that the bookstore had sold its copy. Then I ordered another book by Brivic on Joyce and Lacan, and I started rereading Brivic's Joyce the Creator. I just read this line: "Meanwhile Shem becomes Shaun because he assumes the role of an instructor, an authority fatal to Shem's spiritual independence" (pg. 121). Hm. I have worked as a high school teacher for the last sixteen plus years. I had previously identified with Shem the Penman, the writer, the maverick, but perhaps I have become more like Shaun the Postman. (Back in the 1980's that name used to make me think of Karl Malone's nickname "The Mailman".) When I started teaching high school I still thought of myself as a poet, etc. Now, more and more, I think of myself as a teacher, etc.
Catullus 14 makes a reference to Saturnalia. On the Equinox on Monday I found myself thinking about pagan festivals and their presence in 2014 C.E.
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