introduction to my irish literature

my sophomore year of college i decided to branch out. i needed a break between all the intensive science classes i was taking (organic chemistry, electronics and magnetism with calculus, calculus 4...) and so i enrolled in "introduction to irish literature." i don't think i ever had considered irish literature as a genre before this class, but i remember reading yeats in high school. and then of course there was portrait.

there are always those books you have to read in high school, like a tale of two cities and 1984. like most american high schoolers, i read the obligatory hemingway and homer's the odyssey plus a few choice poems and short stories along the way. but my senior year of high school, we expanded into more international territories and read kafka and dostoevsky and camus. and then there was jimmy. and by that of course i mean james joyce. my first exposure to joyce was his strange but marvelously symbolic "the sisters." as someone who doesn't generally enjoy short stories, i was lukewarm about my joyce experience. but then we were given the assignment to read the first section of joyce's a portrait of the artist as a young man.

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.

He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt.

i remember reading this passage and being struck by two things: 1. the style of this work was unlike anything i'd ever read. 2. moocow is a brilliant word. joyce had me hooked from the beginning. the stream of consciousness writing draws you into his unique and visionary world. the incredible opening for this work encompasses the curiosity and wonder of the young boy about whom he writes. the sensation of feeling, the simplicity of language, the use of words like "tuckoo" and "nicens" all accentuate the raw childhood of the central character (or artist, if you will). i voraciously finished this novel and loved (almost - there is that section with the very long church mass) every minute of it. i recall being one of two people in my high school class who proudly declared she loved joyce. i was so inspired by portrait that i composed my senior thesis on the telemachai, or first three chapters, of joyce's ulysses.

although my love of joyce was mostly closeted, i jumped at a chance to enroll in a class on irish literature in college, with the hopes of being reunited with my literary inspiration once again. my introduction to irish literature class didn't really accomplish this. but it did give me fuel for my intellectual fire... and introduced me to other great irish novelists and poets. but that is for another time and place. for now, i just want to tell you artists and creators out there - if you haven't already read joyce's portrait, please do yourself a favor and get a copy of this work. it will inspire you. and if nothing else, then you can at least read all about the moocows.

what do you do with a ba in english?

my epic quest to see avenue q started in 2004. i'd heard of it before then but was so wrapped up in my freshman year of college that i never thought i'd make it to new york to see it. but then i switched majors (biochemistry to english) and became much more involved in theatre (2 shows a year to 6). and it just seemed right. i was supposed to go with a friend and it fell through a few times. my junior year of college i bought a ticket through my college house to go on a group trip but that fell through as well. whenever i went to new york there was always something else that seemed more pressing to see or i was just too busy (or too poor) to see a show. so last weekend when i was in new york and had nothing else to do besides relax and the option to see avenue q arose, i jumped at the opportunity.

we jumped on the subway (going into manhattan from brooklyn just seemed too perfect), threw our names in the lottery, made a few friends in line, and magically won front row seats. as i sat there enjoying a show that had been on my mind for 5 years, i began to wonder what one actually does with a ba in english. i know lots of people who, like me, have this "useless degree" and they are doing all kinds of things - working in publishing, teaching 7th grade literature, actress, journalist, salesperson - the list goes on and on. what draws us to english in the first place? why is it one of the most popular majors at liberal arts universities?

my guess (and this is speaking mostly from experience) is that english as a discipline feeds a part of ones' intellectual curiosity in a way that few other fields can do. english majors are asked to read and think, interpret and re-examine, question and explain. we can approach something like joyce's ulysses and discuss its relationship to homer's original work or we can find the social ramifications of cross-dressing in a shakespearean comedy. english programs (or at least good english programs) do not want specific answers, they want many answers to the same question and they draw creative people whose quest for understanding far exceeds their own desire to be "right." english majors make new contributions to the intellectual world every day, whether it is translating a little-discussed medieval work, giving us insight into a long gone culture, or proofreading some major celebrity's memoir, which will encourage thousands to read. we english majors take the skills we've gained from reading countless works of fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction and apply it to all sorts of random professions.

so i guess this whole post is an attempt to answer the question that is posed at the beginning of avenue q, what does one do with a ba in english? the answer is elusive, like almost anything within the discipline of english. or maybe it is just this simple: whatever you make of it. i for one hope to give back to the world of academia. but we need people who think critically in all arenas of life and contribute positively and that, princeton from avenue q, is what we do.