[Laurence Foshee]

I first discovered Ulysses shortly after graduating high school in 2009; that Christmas Eve I read it right after chasing the family dog Blackjack around the neighborhood in the Oklahoma snow–and I became hooked on that novel and reading episodes here or there, especially on Christmas Eves… My early interest in Joyce led me to read many other modernists over the years where I wasn’t pursuing my readerly interests in a formal academic setting (I was a biochemistry Major and Japanese Minor in my youth, but not as good at STEM as I should have been to be on track as a med student type young man)…in later readings of world modernists or early postmodernists, I dug a bit of Beckett, Borges, Faulkner, Woolf, Proust, Rulfo, Musil, Mann, Dazai, Gaddis, I enjoyed the humor of Ettore Schmitz / Italo Svevo…now at 31, I’m finishing a Bachelor’s in General Studies with a healthy dose of English coursework, so as to apply to graduate programs in English…thanks to books like Ulysses, I’m happy to discover (even if a little late) that my passion for reading and creative writing is what I should pursue in my life!