We read Ulysses along with Anthony Burgess’s companion study volume, which made the grasshoppers more palatable. It was, however, a single work for the whole term, and we mostly got A’s just because we stuck it out. I actually enjoyed it, having read other Joyce works earlier. However, we also took a stab at Finnegan’s Wake, which was totally incomprehensible under any circumstances, and none of us made it more than a nominal number of pages. Just curious, how did you know how we read it, though?

Does “close reading” mean spending half an hour trying to figure out what a particular word in a particular verse could mean and how that influences the interpretation of the verse as a whole? Because if so, apparently my ward’s Gospel Doctrine teacher does that nearly every week.

Oh, and having taken a (Classics Dept.) class that required us to read Ulysses… bragging about finishing it seems a little like bragging about successfully living on a toilet seat for two years or deliberately eating nothing but grasshoppers for a month. I will never take another class that makes me read something by Joyce again, in any case.

Of course, I’m usually not reading religious texts with the intention of sniffing out deception. I actually find that my (rudimentary) knowledge of rhetoric makes my scripture reading more enjoyable. Especially with the Book of Mormon, where so much of the writing is very personal, I like to see how the individual writers make use of different emotional and logical appeals. It reminds me that they were individuals who were so intent on sharing their message that they use every rhetorical techniqe in the book, and occasionally slip into logical fallacies or get carried away with their analogies (AHEM, allegory of the olive tree). I’m not sure that it adds that much to my doctrinal understanding, but it definitely keeps me awake when I’m reading 1st Nephi for the millionth time (or Ether for maybe the 3rd or 4th time). :-)

Unlike, say, the Catholic Church, we have no organized clergy – no endowed, professional readers of our text. Perhaps that is to some extent a loss. There is, I believe, value in having professional readers who can comb archives and learn to read in the context of other objects, producing readings that are decidedly undemocratic, because based on materials that few have access to, but that can also be revealing and provide more “accurate” judgments.

Can you expand on this? I’d say we most definitely have endowed, professional readers, albeit still unlike the Catholic Church. They’re the ones responsible for glossing the text in the manuals. And they’re also the police, who root out people who are too public about their personal readings of the Book of Mormon. David Wright, who gave perhaps the closest published reading of parts of the BoM to date, was fired and excommunicated for close reading.

Anyway, regarding the Book of Mormon, I think it, like any book of its length and complexity, invites a number of different kinds of readings. “Close reading” is perhaps what we mean when we say we should study the scriptures rather than merely reading them. The book can, however, be read simply but quite profitably as a narrative or as a history (even as a Marxist dialectic, if you’re into that sort of thing).

Ultimately, the book goes to great lengths to challenge the reader to make his or her reading both personal and global (“Here’s what’s going to happen to the world and society, and here’s what it means for you”). I also find the authors’ references to the weakness of their writing in comparison to their preaching quite fascinating (phonocentric vs. graphocentric cultures).

I must add that, of course, that any reading of the Book of Mormon is incomplete and, shall we say, of lesser utility and weight without the Spirit.

I’m employed by a newspaper and while I probably didn’t need a degree to get the job, I’m grateful for the insights into reading and theories about reading afforded to me by my schooling and how they pertain to my current position.

And the bragging rights about having finished Ulysses, as someone pointed out here. Actually, outside of the college course I took, I can’t ever image wading as deep (equipped with proper metaphorical gear) into Joycean waters as I have.

So I don’t think that an English degree is a waste, I don’t think departments are scrambling for an identity (I used to work in the grad department of one) and I don’t think any college degree can be defined as useless.

As for close readings of the Book of Mormon, I definitely feel that the knowledge helps. Also with regard to the world of consumerism — I feel like I can see the mechanics of every ad I see. No one is selling a product; they are selling a way of life that aligns itself with a particular product. At the very least I am conditioned to not accept a lot of things mindlessly, and I can tell you my wife tires of my continual opining.