Back to School:

Pleased to Meet Me

by Chris M. Slawecki

Writer on Writing
When you’re a writer and you work with other writers, the subject of writing often comes up. Recently, as an empty nester—when you begin to think about these things—I noticed the recurrence of one specific topic: Why do I write? More specifically, who or what inspired me to become a writer? Every writer must have some sort of innate predisposition to write. But what happens to transform one’s predisposition into one’s calling?

Some folks either never grow up or never figure out what they want to do when they grow up. Since I was a teenager, I have been blessed to know that I love to write. I am luckily able to do what I love, both for my employment (as a copywriter for a not-for-profit association) and for my enjoyment (as a freelancer for a jazz eMagazine and jazz/blues record company).

Joyce and Murphy
So I began to wonder what encouraged my love of writing. I soon realized that one college course not only changed how I read and wrote but also changed my entire life because it revolutionized the way I think: Dr. James Murphy’s James Joyce course at Villanova University. In the first half of the semester, we studied Joyce’s Dubliners, a collection of short stories, and the foundational Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. We spent the entire second half on his masterwork, Ulysses.

It was my senior year. By this time, I had grown very comfortable with the rhythms of college life. I had spent several years as an English major, working on the college newspaper and at the radio station, and had finally figured out how I study best. Even better, Dr. Murphy was an outstanding teacher who demonstrated respect not only for Joyce’s work but for our work, too. He assigned each of us a chapter of Ulysses, and we all prepared and delivered presentations to introduce our chapter when we reached it in class (followed, thank goodness, by Dr. Murphy’s discussion of the chapter). Dr. Murphy seemed to ask us just as many questions about Joyce as we asked him. He made the course easy to like. I enjoyed his instruction so much that I later asked him to oversee my senior-year independent study.

Most remarkably, I caught Ulysses like a disease. I began to catch on to what Joyce was trying to do, or at least to feel as though I did. Ulysses tells the “day in the life” tale of Irish–Jewish everyman Leopold Bloom through seemingly mundane episodes—a funeral, a walk on the beach, an argument in a bar—that mirror Ulysses’ adventures in Homer’s The Odyssey. Every chapter is written in a different style, with a “stream of consciousness” that places the reader inside the characters’ thoughts and fantasies—its famous overall characteristic. Joyce perfected in Ulysses a technique that gave more exact voice to what really goes on inside people’s heads and hearts.

Now I look back and see how profoundly this work influenced the way I think and write. Ulysses taught me that everything is connected to everything else, so what I write about is limited only by my imagination: The sound of that bark up the street or that apparently insignificant conversation may figure into something that I may write years from today. Ulysses taught me that the creative process is much more than just working at a keyboard or computer. Keep your eyes and ears open—your creative process is your entire life.

Glory Days
I enjoyed thinking about Dr. Murphy and his Joyce class so much that I wondered if he was still around. I visited the Villanova Web site and, from there, Villanova’s English Department directory; 27 years after my graduation, his was one of two names I still recognized. Two quick mouse clicks and I was on his Web page. One more click and I was emailing Dr. Murphy! Living in the Cyber Age can be quite convenient.

Then I realized that I had no idea of what to write. Would he remember me? If he did, would he have good memories or bad? How do you tell someone that he or she influenced your life more than just about anyone else? So that’s essentially what I wrote. I introduced myself as a former student from a long time ago, and explained that I was grateful because his class helped me find my place in the world as a writer. I told him how glad I was to see his name, picture, and email address online because that must mean he was still teaching, and I closed with best wishes.

Everything is connected. Dr. Murphy responded that he was on sabbatical after some surgery and he welcomed the encouraging words of this former student. Even better, he did remember me. Best of all, he was returning to teach the following (spring) semester, and the Joyce class was on his schedule! Would I be interested in sitting in on one of his Ulysses classes?

Would I be interested in sitting in on one of his Ulysses classes? Well, why not?

My mind quickly raced through the many “why nots.” I’m not as young or as mentally sharp as I once was. What would his students think: What’s the story with this middle-aged guy? Who comes back 30 years later because he couldn’t get enough of English class? I reminded myself that I was not likely to grow any younger or mentally sharper any time soon…so I responded that I would be honored to attend, and I jumped back into Ulysses for the first time in a long while so that I could speak the language.

The Big Day
We arranged to meet in Dr. Murphy’s office about an hour before class. We looked just like ourselves except for the accumulated additional weathering. As we talked about Joyce and his work, it seemed to take just a few minutes to reposition ourselves on familiar ground, teacher and student. But then we did something that we had never really done before. We talked about our lives, our children, his grandchildren, about reading and writing. I finally had the opportunity to share how the things I had learned about reading and writing made me a better professional and a better person. We talked about the book that brought us together that day, and when we left for class, Jim carried a copy of Ulysses so full of written sidebars and Post-It notes that it might have been the same copy from which he taught me.

Walking to class felt familiar, yet different. I was expecting the student body moving around us to look a lot younger, but they appeared more mature, organized, and responsible than I remember being at their age. His waiting class, maybe 18 students in all, looked up in curiosity from their seats in rows of tables when Jim and I entered the classroom. The first table was conspicuously unoccupied, and as I slid into the empty row, I smiled at the thought of how some things never change.

I was flattered and surprised when Jim asked me to speak to the group before that day’s lecture. I knew that this was an advanced-level class of juniors and seniors, so I tried to encourage them in their studies, saying that their English or liberal arts classes really would prepare them for the real world. Handing in a well-written project on time, for example, demonstrates organization, clarity in thought and word, and responsibility—disciplines that serve every profession well. I asked for questions when I finished, and one young lady’s hand shot up immediately and she asked, “Yeah, but did you find a job?” We all laughed, some more nervously than others. I explained that I did, but in my experience almost everyone takes a few steps in different directions professionally when he or she is young. With time, people figure out what they want to make their life’s work, and how and where they want to do it. We all admitted that we know some folks who never figure it out in the least. I wondered what my own face would have looked like, had it gazed up at me, and was very grateful to sit down.

When we moved into the classroom presentations, it grew clear these students were sharp! Two students introduced the infamous Gerty McDowell (Nausicca) chapter with their presentation on how its events advanced the story line, plus the techniques and allusions that Joyce incorporated throughout. (The Little Review published Ulysses in serial form in the United States. This particular chapter got the Review’s publishers busted for obscenity in 1920, and no American publisher dared bring Ulysses back until 1932.) I was familiar with the material, and Jim and the students made me comfortable enough to contribute to the discussion. The 90 minutes flew by much too quickly. A few students even stopped to chat politely before moving on to their next class. For some reason, it felt very rewarding to wish each other, “Good luck!”

I found some lunch while Jim taught his second and final class that day. Then we retired to a familiar watering hole, where he taught me one more new thing: Armed with enough determination and conversation, even a novice American can drink three Guinness pints in about 45 minutes. By this time we felt more like peers and chatted comfortably. We talked about Jim’s children and his grandchildren, about his family from and still in Ireland, about the school where we met and how times had changed since then, and how, like everywhere, things seemed different yet the same. Sometime during this conversation, I realized that we had never discussed what he liked to read and that I had never read one paper or article he had written. He was proud to share with me that he had penned an article about a family visit to Ireland that was published in Irish America magazine. (I also learned from this magazine that Jim had been named one of the Top 100 Irish America's Finest in Education, which he never mentioned.)

Until We Meet Again
We shook hands and then went our separate ways. We made plans to reconnect during the fall semester and for me to sit in on Ulysses again next spring. Next year will be his final year of teaching, which means that spring 2010 is the last chance anyone will ever have to learn about Ulysses—and, like me, potentially much more—from Dr. Jim Murphy.

I am really glad to have been part of it, and then part of it once more. The ride home that day felt weird. I had not been “that Chris”—the Chris who strolled the Villanova campus and contemplated the layers of meaning in one of modern literature’s greatest works—in quite some time. It was strange to feel him back in my mind, so to speak. It was rather like meeting an old friend I hadn’t seen for more than 20 years and finding out he had never really left. Indeed, it was nice to know he was still there.

Chris Slawecki last appeared in