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DAY ONE<\/h3>\nDAY ONE<\/h3>\n6:46 A.M.<\/strong> Sit on the couch with Toby, our dog, to read Ulysses<\/a><\/em>. I\u2019ve been doing this in hour-long sessions, a few mornings each week, since spring. Today I begin chapter 9, otherwise known as \u201cScylla and Charybdis.\u201d This is the one where Stephen Dedalus gives a disquisition on Shakespeare in the reading room of Dublin\u2019s National Library. (Meanwhile, Leopold Bloom, the novel\u2019s main character, is in the National Museum nearby, checking out the bottoms of the classical statues to see if they have anuses.) I am, as a friend calls it, \u201cgeeking out\u201d on Ulysses<\/em>. My method is: read each chapter once through with Ulysses Annotated<\/a><\/em>, Don Gifford\u2019s exhaustive book<\/span> of explanatory notes, at my elbow; read the corresponding sections in a couple of critical texts<\/span> that discuss the book chapter by chapter; go back and read the chapter a second time, neat. But that\u2019s not the end of the geekery! Before I begin each new section, I take a look at Ian Gunn and Clive Hart\u2019s incredibly fun James Joyce\u2019s Dublin<\/a><\/em>, which maps the routes Bloom and Dedalus walk over the course of their shared June 16th and reprints archival photos<\/span> of the Irish capital in the early twentieth century. For \u201cScylla and Charybdis,\u201d there\u2019s a great picture<\/a> of the interior of the National Library, with men wearing many-layered, tightly buttoned suits, sitting at long wooden tables similar to the ones in the New York Public Library\u2019s Rose Reading Room. No one\u2019s playing Minesweeper on his laptop, though; these Dubliners are reading books\u2014books, imagine!\u2014propped on very civilized-looking reading stands. <\/p>\n 7:51 A.M.<\/strong> Toby and I hear Caleb<\/a> waking up in the bedroom; Toby slides off the couch, corantoes off.<\/p>\n 7:54 A.M.<\/strong> Joyce\u2019s allusion to the phrase \u201cstrangers in the house,\u201d an Irish epithet for British invaders, causes the Elvis Costello song<\/span> \u201cThere\u2019s a Stranger in the House<\/a>\u201d to briefly play in my head. <\/p>\n 8:25 A.M.<\/strong> Caleb reads Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnet 73, then I read it. It\u2019s beautiful. The message is, Caleb says, \u201cYou love me more because I\u2019m olden<\/span>.\u201d We figure out that Shakespeare probably wrote it when he was in his late thirties\u2014dismaying that he thought himself in his twilight then. I\u2019ve read a lot of the plays but very few of the sonnets. I know this one, though, because Kate Jacobs<\/a>, a Hoboken singer-songwriter I like, has adapted it and set it to music. Her version, \u201cThat Time of Year<\/a>,\u201d is enchanting\u2014it\u2019s done klezmer-style, with a horn, fiddle, and banjo.<\/p>\n 9:02 A.M.<\/strong> Iron my clothes<\/span> for work. I figure out that I can memorize Sonnet 73 in a week if I learn just two lines a day. <\/p>\n That time of yeeare thou maist in me behold, I\u2019ve been obsessed with the idea of memorization since reading Patrick Leigh Fermor\u2019s A Time of Gifts<\/em>, an account of the British travel writer\u2019s walk across Europe in the 1930s. Leigh Fermor passed the time by reciting<\/span> the anthology\u2019s worth of English poetry he had committed to memory as a schoolboy. Rote learning was not a priority of suburban public schools in the 1980s\u2014we memorized the first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities<\/em> in ninth grade, and that was it\u2014and since reading Leigh Fermor\u2019s book I\u2019ve fantasized about making up for it in middle age, though without much<\/span> success.<\/p>\n 10:44 A.M.<\/strong> Sean e-mails a link to a review of the Pavement concert with the set list appended to the bottom. Maybe I was wrong\u2014looking at this list, I think I would have been happy to hear these songs again. <\/p>\n 6:18 P.M.<\/strong> On subway platform, begin new Alan Bennett story \u201cThe Greening of Mrs. Donaldson,\u201d in the London Review of Books<\/em>.<\/p>\n 6:50 P.M.<\/strong> Train pulls into the station near my house. It\u2019s touch-and-go with this story; not sure I\u2019ll end up finishing it. <\/p>\n 7:45 P.M.<\/strong> Leaf through new issue of New York<\/em> magazine while waiting for frittata to set on stovetop; wish that there were more photos of Andrew Garfield in Facebook movie article<\/a>. I have a haircut scheduled for later in the week\u2014could I pull off<\/span> his flawlessly styled quiff? <\/p>\n 7:28 A.M.<\/strong> Give Toby his breakfast and epilepsy medication\u2014otherwise known in our house as \u201cthe Food and Drug Administration.\u201d This morning he\u2019s not having any of it. He coughs out the potassium bromide liquid and will only take his phenobarbital tablets smeared in peanut butter. And not from my indelicate fingers\u2014on a plate, bien s\u00fbr<\/em>.<\/p>\n 7:50 A.M.<\/strong> Run with Toby around Prospect Park. \u201cThat time of year \u2026 that time of year \u2026 where \u2026 something something few do hang.\u201d<\/p>\n In the chapter I\u2019m reading today, Claire writes about how yoga made the transition from East to West. She references Queen Lucia, a comic novel from 1920 by E. F. Benson, in which a swami arrives at a rural English village and teaches yoga to Lucia\u2019s circle of cultural strivers. I momentarily think I might like to read one of the Lucia books, and then foresee failure: I recently began Nancy Mitford\u2019s The Pursuit of Love<\/em> and gave it up midway, feeling drollery-resistant. I subsequently looked back on past attempts to read English comic novels\u2014Decline and Fall<\/em>, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day<\/em>, Jeeves Does Something or Other<\/em>\u2014and sadly reflected that I must have some deficiency in the wit department. <\/p>\n 10:08 P.M.<\/strong> Watch a few short films by Jonas Mekas on my laptop. An editor at a magazine I write for has asked if I might be interested in doing a profile of the experimental filmmaker. I\u2019m embarrassed by my unfamiliarity with his work. I dig around on Mekas\u2019s extensive Web site<\/a> and play a video<\/a> of Susan Sontag talking with Bela Tarr<\/span> about e-mail<\/span>; a three-minute snippet<\/a> of the Velvet Underground\u2019s first public appearance with a frantic, dancing Edie Sedgwick; a clip<\/a> of the Scottish artist Douglas Gordon singing \u201cLoch Lomond,\u201d accompanied by some Himalayan musicians; and a video<\/a> of Mekas eating cheese and bread during a blackout while an Elton John song plays on the radio. The videos are sweet and charming, but I think I\u2019m going to turn the assignment down. Mekas\u2019s career seems long and varied, and I\u2019m not sure I can do it justice without some past experience with his work. <\/p>\n 10:33 P.M.<\/strong> Remember that I forgot to memorize today\u2019s two lines of Sonnet 73. Try to cram them in.<\/p>\n Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, \u201cBare ruin\u2019d quiers\u201d is, of course, \u201cbare ruined choirs,\u201d one of those famous Shakespearean phrases you know even if you\u2019ve never read the poem it comes from. <\/p>\n 6:41 A.M.<\/strong> Read a Facebook post by my friend Bill Pearis about the awesomeness of last night\u2019s Pavement show. Wish that I had gone. <\/p>\n 6:44 A.M.<\/strong> Watch a clip of Pavement playing \u201cGold Soundz\u201d on last night\u2019s Colbert Report<\/em><\/a>. On the other hand, I\u2019ve heard this song about a thousand times. <\/p>\n 7:04 A.M.<\/strong> Walk Toby in Prospect Park. \u201cUpon those boughs \u2026 so drunk in the August sun \u2026 bare ruined choirs \u2026 because you\u2019re empty, and I\u2019m empty \u2026\u201d <\/p>\n 8:00 P.M.<\/strong> Attend a reading by my friend Giles Harvey at the Montauk Club<\/a>, one of the most beautiful buildings in my Park Slope neighborhood. The reading is held in a long nut-brown paneled room lit by chandeliers and flickering candles, with tall partial stained-glass windows along one wall. Halfway through, a thunderstorm passes over; there are a few loud rumbles and flashes of lightning, but the rain is quick and light. Giles, one of three readers, steals the show with an excerpt from a terrifically funny and inspired story<\/a>, his first to be published, written in the form of a vindictive book review. It\u2019s his debut reading, but he reads like a seasoned performer. <\/p>\n 11:30 P.M.<\/strong> In bed, realize I forgot to memorize two more lines of Shakespeare sonnet. Tomorrow I\u2019ll have to do four. <\/p>\n Check back tomorrow for the second installment of Terzian’s culture diary.<\/p>\n Peter Terzian is the editor of <\/em>Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives<\/a> and the writer of a blog called Earworms<\/a>. He is an editor at <\/em>Elle Decor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DAY ONE 6:46 A.M. Sit on the couch with Toby, our dog, to read Ulysses. I\u2019ve been doing this in hour-long sessions, a few mornings each week, since spring. Today I begin chapter 9, otherwise known as \u201cScylla and Charybdis.\u201d This is the one where Stephen Dedalus gives a disquisition on Shakespeare in the reading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[958,953,956,735,951,947,952,950,949,945,165,955,948,946,957],"class_list":["post-5396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-culture-diaries","tag-brooklyn","tag-caleb-crain","tag-claire-dederer","tag-elvis-costello","tag-facebook","tag-james-joyce","tag-moby-dick","tag-patrick-leigh-fermor","tag-pavement","tag-peter-terzian","tag-poetry","tag-prospect-park","tag-shakespeare","tag-ulysses","tag-yoga"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/ulyssesjamesjoyce.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>This chapter is pretty note-heavy. Over the next hour, I get through only sixty lines of text, but according to the annotations, these lines contain allusions to Hamlet, Goethe<\/span>, Milton, Blake, Yeats, Matthew Arnold, Marie Corelli, A.E., an obscure play by Synge, and Irish political history<\/span>. I also learn two new Shakespearean words: coranto<\/em>, \u201ca running dance,\u201d and sinkapace<\/em>, \u201ca dance with five steps.\u201d I should say that I\u2019m technically rereading Ulysses<\/em>, but my memory of the book from the first time around, in college, twenty-three years ago, is almost nil. I\u2019m sure I stumbled over every other sentence then. Not this time!<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/englishverse.jpeg\" "\\"\\"")
8:03 A.M.<\/strong> Breakfast. Caleb and I are slowly reading through The Oxford Book of English Verse<\/a><\/em>, aloud, poem by poem. The idea is to start the day with beauty and art, while bad news waits on the doorstep, temporarily contained in a blue plastic bag. But sometimes, against our better judgment, we find the temptation to read the newspaper overwhelming. Today we decide to do both\u2014the paper while we eat cereal, a poem after. I read \u201cPolitical Cauldron Stirred by Old Video of Candidate<\/a>,\u201d about Christine O\u2019Donnell\u2019s dabbling in witchcraft, and immediately regret our decision. <\/p>\n
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When yellow leaves, or none, or few doe hang<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/roosterpavement.jpeg\" "\\"\\"")
10:10 A.M.<\/strong> At work, read my Facebook news feed<\/span>. My friend Sean Howe has changed his profile picture to the rooster on the cover of Pavement\u2019s<\/a> Watery, Domestic<\/em> EP. Sean texted me Saturday evening to say he had an extra ticket for Pavement at the Williamsburg Waterfront, the first of five New York dates on its reunion tour\u2014did I want to go? I immediately said yes, and then realized I didn\u2019t want to after all, and sheepishly called him back Sunday morning to say I had changed my mind. A reason for my ambivalence occurred to me later: that seeing Pavement, a band I loved in the 1990s, might make me feel temporally displaced\u2014as though, for one night only, I would revisit a musically exciting time in my life, and then the window would close up again, for good. The prospect of such a heady rush of nostalgia made me uneasy<\/span>. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/momakitchen.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
12:32 P.M.<\/strong> Take advantage of my new M<\/small>oMA<\/small> membership by meeting my friend Kate Bolick for lunch at the trattoria-ish cafeteria on the second floor. Afterward we quickly walk through a small show about modern kitchen design<\/a>. Some great poster art, including British wartime propaganda with a rat that \u201cwill eat your rations,\u201d and TV monitors with kitchen-related vintage films. It\u2019s too much to take in over a few minutes\u2014I\u2019ll have to come back.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/382px-Moby_Dick_p510_illustration-150x150.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>9:31 P.M.<\/strong> Read draft of \u201cMelville\u2019s Secrets,\u201d a lecture Caleb will deliver later in the week at Geneseo State College. He\u2019s been asked to give the annual Harding Lecture, named after the late Walter Harding, a preeminent Thoreau scholar who taught at the school. The lecture is about \u201csecret meaning\u201d in Melville, specifically in Moby-Dick<\/em> and Clarel<\/em>, Melville\u2019s little-read epic poem. Why do certain books, Caleb asks, make us feel that the author possesses esoteric knowledge he or she has encoded within the text? What might that hidden knowledge mean in Melville\u2019s case? I haven\u2019t read Moby-Dick<\/em> in a long time, but I\u2019m fully absorbed by Caleb\u2019s paper; for one, there\u2019s a lot of sperm<\/span> in it. <\/p>\nDAY TWO<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>Sometime before 6:52 A.M.<\/strong> Dream that I bought some stamps at the drugstore from a lady author who looked kind of like Lillian Hellman<\/a> but whose name started with an M<\/em><\/span>. She was tipsy and a little cranky, and the pharmacist was trying to ignore her drunken antics. The stamps had Lloyd Cole\u2019s portrait<\/a> on them.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/yogaposes.jpg\" "\\"yogaposes\\"")
<\/a>9:45 A.M.<\/strong> On the subway, read a galley of Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses<\/a><\/em>, my friend Claire Dederer<\/span>\u2019s first book. Claire wrote reviews for the Newsday<\/em> books section when I was an editor there a few years back, and we became fast friends. She lives on an island near Seattle, so we\u2019ve only met in person once, when she was on a visit to New York, but we still e-mail every so often about books and bands. I\u2019ve always loved Claire\u2019s reviews and essays; her writing voice, which is a lot like her conversational voice, is warm, confiding, and unflappable. But Poser<\/em>, which tells the story of Claire\u2019s attempt to become absolutely perfect at yoga\u2014and, by extension, life\u2014is knocking me out. It\u2019s very funny about yoga culture and disarmingly honest about how complicated marriage and family life can be. I haven\u2019t done yoga<\/span> in years; Poser<\/span><\/em> is making me want to try it again. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/lydiadavismadamebovary.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>1:08 P.M.<\/strong> Lunch at the Breslin with my friend John Siciliano, an editor at Penguin Books. John gives me a copy of Lydia Davis\u2019s new translation of Madame Bovary<\/a><\/em>. I\u2019m eager to read it, but I think I\u2019ll have to wait until I\u2019m through with Ulysses<\/em>. Reading two benchmarks of world literature simultaneously seems like having a dinner of two entrees\u2014tuna steak and grilled sea bass side by side on your plate. I\u2019m going on vacation at the end of this week, and John asks me what I\u2019ll take to read. I haven\u2019t decided yet, but I think it will be shorter books. We agree that if you read three or four short books on vacation, you feel like you\u2019ve accomplished more.<\/p>\n
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Bare ruin\u2019d quiers, where late the sweet birds sang.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nDAY THREE<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>5:07 A.M.<\/strong> Can\u2019t sleep; couch, dog, Ulysses<\/em>. Get tripped up by a few knotty paragraphs that apparently have something to do with esoteric Christianity and theosophy\u2014Stephen Dedalus\u2019s philosophical cogitations. The chapters that take place inside Leopold Bloom\u2019s head are a breeze compared to the ones that take place inside Stephen\u2019s, like this one. Bloom is a kindly newspaper ad man in early middle age; Stephen is a difficult, depressive young intellectual. When I read Ulysses<\/em> in college, I was nearly Stephen\u2019s age; today I\u2019m a few years older than Bloom. I have a vague memory of thinking that Bloom was a bit buffoonish. His troubled, sexless marriage; the loss of his son in infancy; the suicide of his elderly father\u2014these are experiences a callow college student like the one I was can\u2019t easily identify with. Bloom has all the qualities I\u2019ve come to value: curiosity, optimism, good manners, empathy, even-handedness, an unwillingness to let grief and despair pull him under. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/WhoopieCookie__Cookie_v1_61_-_Version_2.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
5:54 P.M.<\/strong> About to leave work, receive a call from Caleb, sick the day before his lecture, feeling woozy and in need of comfort. Would I bring home \u201ca cookie from that place \u2026 you know \u2026 a Sex and the City<\/em> cookie\u201d? That is, a \u201cwhoopie cookie<\/span>\u201d from the chokingly sweet but inevitable Magnolia Bakery near my office. Whenever I buy anything here, I invert the plastic bag so the logo is on the inside, so I don\u2019t look all girly. <\/p>\n