Scream-of-Consciousness

James Joyce is a flagitious, feculent bastard…
…or, the crazy things we do to impress the ones we love, especially after a couple glasses of wine…
Christmas Eve. A light snow on the ground, melting already. Barely covering the dead leaves. Waiting for dinner to begin. They sat at one end of the fingersmudged black ultramodern dining table with their glasses of Red Tractor. Old Tractor. Somebody’s Tractor. Was it Syrah or Merlot? she tried to remember. You could taste the blackberry. But then, with red wine, when *don’t* you hear someone say, “O! You can really taste the blackberry in this one! It’s sort of, I don’t know, brambly.” Brambly brambly brambly.
—You’ll laugh at this, David was saying, but I’ve never read Ulysses and I think this year I’m actually gonna do it.
—Really? You’ve never read it? she said.
She wondered why he had called it Ulysses and not The Odyssey… hadn’t he been a Classics major or something? And he’d never read it? Strange. And why should he refer to it as Ulysses? She hadn’t thought he was the type to go for Tennyson.
—Well, you really must read the Fagles translation, she said. It’s my favorite.
—Translation? But I thought it was written in English…well, sort of in English, he said getting up from the table and going into the next room. She followed him, glass in hand. He took a book down from the shelf. Joyce. She hated Joyce but couldn’t make herself say so now.
—I’ve never read the damned thing but I’ve always meant to, he said.
—I always get bored and quit halfway through, she said.
In the next room they could hear Julie calling them back for dinner.
—I’ll tell you what, she said conspiratorially. If you’re actually going to read this monster, then I will too.
—Really? Aw, that’d be great, he said. That’d be fun.
—Then it’s a deal.
—Deal. Now let’s get back in there before we get yelled at.
Two weeks later she sat at her kitchentable wondering why. She had decided to ease herself back into the world of Joyce with Dubliners and then Portrait of the Artist, but she couldn’t resist picking up her yellowed and spotted copy of Ulysses and thumbing through the blasted thing. Reading her old notes to herself in the margins. “St. John’s account of Lazarus” or “Shaw’s St. Joan” or “must find decent Latin dictionary”. She had forgotten about the Latin.
She sighed and coughed and then frowned and rubbed her throat. She was sick but must go to work anyway so she had been taking hot toddies for the sore throat. A mug of tea, the juice of a whole lemon, a tablespoon of honey, a splash of rum. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of life.

posted by lisamarlene @ 7:32 AM