Here We Go Again...

On Thursday I finished my first application for graduate school. I applied to the University of Miami. I delayed doing this longer than I had intended, and, as a result of that, I think one of my letters of recommendation will arrive late. C'est la vie.

This will not be the only application I do for Fall 2010: I have yet to complete Tulsa's application, and I'm supposed to look into the University of Washington at Seattle. I doubt I can afford applying to any more schools at this point, but if any of you have any suggestions for someone who wants to study James Joyce, please let me know, and I will be happy to look into it.

For this reason, I decided that it would be beneficial to post my personal statement (which I've already sent to the University of Miami) just to see if anyone would give me some feedback. As this is my second go-round for applying, I'm tinged with desperation and willing to go farther than I did last year to get into a school. Somehow, through no fault of my own, school has become my life. So, without further ado, my personal statement:

“Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes.”

This quote from Ovid’s Metamorphoses precedes the beginning of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It refers to Dædalus, the father of invention, so to speak, and it translates to “And he applies his mind to obscure arts.” The quote is pregnant with meaning, for not only does it apply to the young Stephen Dedalus, but it also says much about Joyce himself: one need only take a look at the esoteric allusions in Ulysses to be convinced that Joyce applied his mind to many obscure arts. On top of that, those that study Joyce are applying their minds to the obscure art of figuring out what Joyce meant by his works. I want to be one of those who applies his mind to the study of Joyce.

Why would anyone want to study Joyce? He is admittedly complicated and frustrating—intentionally so, it seems. The simple answer to that is Joyce begs to be studied. Unlike many other authors, Joyce, especially in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, breaks down the traditional form of the novel, inserting in his writing so many allusions that it sometimes can appear as madness. It is difficult to read some of Joyce’s work just for pleasure because the usual elements in fiction like plot and characters are subsumed by themes and motifs. Still, there is a story in Joyce’s epics—arguably, there are many stories in them. The possibility of discovering a different story, or an alternative view to a story already discussed, is exciting. I just the need the chance to study Joyce in an academic setting because I cannot possibly crack Joyce’s genius alone.

I am certainly capable of literary interpretation, as I have studied literature for most of my adult life. As an undergraduate, I attended the University of California at Irvine and majored in English. While I started as a decent student, I began to shine later in my college career in my upper division English courses. At the time, Shakespeare and Milton held my interest. I loved Shakespeare for his language play, role reversals, and juxtapositions of contrary elements; I loved Milton for writing the last epic poem in western literature. Thirsty for more, I attended Rutgers University (Newark Campus) to get a master’s degree in English. The experience there prepared me for the more probing questions required in graduate study, as well as opened my eyes to a wide range of literature to which I was never exposed. Practically everything from Chaucer to Toni Morrison was on the M.A. Exam. I received a High Pass on that exam, the highest grade available. Even so, I had somehow avoided reading and discussing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It was not until after I graduated from the program that I became interested in Joyce.

My love for Joyce came about through reading Anthony Burgess. Quite a few of Burgess’s novels refer in some way to Joyce, either directly (as in The Doctor is Sick) or indirectly. Burgess, like Joyce, toys with English in his work, and that language play is intriguing. In the summer of 2008, I read Burgess's book ReJoyce, a short exegesis of all Joyce's work, which I found incredibly fascinating. Thereafter, I picked up A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners and enjoyed them tremendously. There are moments in both Dubliners and A Portrait where I feel as if I know exactly what Joyce is doing—it is very rare for me to identify that well with many other authors. Really, that is what this comes down to: identification. In some ways I see myself as another Joyce. I love the language play, the allusions, the intensity, and the genius. As a writer myself, I discovered after reading both Burgess and Joyce that my writing bears some resemblance to theirs. I doubt I can write the next Ulysses or Finnegans Wake, but there was always within me a strong interest to make the mundane epic. I also hope, through studying Joyce at ________________, that I am able to incorporate my interest in Burgess with my research on Joyce. If I am unable to do that immediately, I hope that sometime in the future I can bring Burgess into academia because I believe he is worthy of being studied as well.

Another reason it would be beneficial for me to study Joyce in an academic setting is to learn more about the milieu in which Joyce was writing. I openly admit to having blinders on: I only see myself studying Joyce at this point. I hardly know others in the Irish Modernist Movement to effectively evaluate Joyce with his contemporaries. Were other Irish writers as ambivalent to Dublin and Ireland as Joyce was? I do not know, but I would love the opportunity to find out. As far as other Irish Modernists, I have only heard of Sean O’Casey in passing, and I would like to expand my knowledge in this area not only to enhance my understanding of Joyce himself, but also to see how these writers affected the world through their literature.

Ultimately I believe that the resources at ______________ will be invaluable for me to study Joyce. To be so near to James Joyce Quarterly/Joyce Literary Supplement will only prove to add to the experience: I need to see not only what has been said about Joyce during my research, but what is being said as well. The ideas that could arise from the exposure to this flux of interpretations would be stronger, more informed, and thus more beneficial to academia. Yet this would be even larger than academia, because to study Joyce is to study language and the way we communicate with each other. Language is certainly one of the most obscure arts to which anyone can apply his mind, and yet we all must use language, even if we are unaware of how we are using it. I would like to think that, by studying Joyce and his obscure works, I will be contributing to the study of language and writing in a larger sense as well, thereby helping—in some small way—all of us who use language.