Portrait of a Guilty Conscience

Sorry about the lack of a post yesterday. I had planned to write one, but got a little sidetracked.

When I was in high school, one of the books that we read was Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, by James Joyce. Truly one of the great books by arguably the best writer in English.

I must confess that I didn't ever read it.

All this time, I haven't been pretending that I've read it, but when it would be mentioned (my friends are super cool, you know) I would just kinda of slink back and wait for another topic.

An English program at any university expects that you have read some James Joyce. I had read Dubliners, so I squeaked through my Modernist Literature course. At the same time, I felt a lot of guilt by faking it through high school. I recall, during the summers of university signing it out of the library as a book that I really should read. I also recall it sitting unopened on my bedstand racking up a summer's worth of overdue fines.

The guilt continues to this day, but I have begun to make amends. I'm 87 pages in and so far so good. It isn't as though I don't know what it's about or was the meanings are; I've studied it after all.

If I accomplish nothing during my transitional period, I want to at least take this burden of guilt off of my shoulders. Enough lies, enough hiding, enough being afraid. Next on the list is Ulysses.