Erudition
And the prankquean pulled a rosy one and made her wit foreninst the dour. And she lit up and fireland was ablaze. And spoke she to the dour in her petty perusienne: Mark the Wans, why do I am alook alike a poss of porterpease?
I once knew a man named Jim who’d been working on his Ph.D. in 20th century Irish literature for eight years. Every summer since he was an undergraduate he’d vowed to read Finnegans Wake, and every summer got stuck on page 50. He said it was like swimming in barbed wire soup, then fell into annual despair.
The summer I knew him, he was staying with his parents. He came home one day, and went into the living room. Sitting in a ratty old easy chair, beer in hand, was his Dublin-born father who’d left school when he was twelve. His father who’d berated him for years for being such a sorry wanker and wasting his time on namby-pamby books instead of doing something manly.
He was sitting in his ratty old chair, halfway through Finnegans Wake, laughing himself silly.
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