On reading Joyce (or not)

Well, as I mention in my last post, I joined this reading club yesterday, with the intention of opening my dormant love with James Joyce, which was so obviously my father's favourite - although I never really made him tell why so. After reading the blogging here and there and threads spun from conversation over the past two weeks of this book reading month, I think I'm getting a little closer to a point. There might be some humbleness into father's shyness of really talking about this passion; he was not really a literate, more like a reader, even a professional proof reader making sure that no typos, grammar errors or incorrectness leading to misinterpretations, would pass in print. Every date or biographical detail should be precise. So, according to this codex, his primary approach to sharing Joyce would be to point at passages that were problematic, and to keep a careful vocabulary record of different translation issues. Father would probably never consider himself an expert, even when he had some really deep insight in the matter (which was often the case as his research habits were extraordinary), much rather he would take a humble position in life. Or so at least it appears to me right now. Perhaps tomorrow I will find more aspects to this matter...

This reflection came to me while reading what Alan Levine wrote about what he does NOT know - his in-expertise, and how Chris Lott, the initiator of this Motley reading group, was answering in the comments here cogdogblog.com/2010/02/06/what-i-dont-know/

And, next posting WILL be about reading Dubliners, I promise :-)