TMFTML has obtained first serial rights for My Life, which has a curious Faulkner ring to it.

Miguel Cohen, brother of Randy “Ethicist” Cohen, has expressed a desire to come back to Return of the Reluctant. After several rounds of therapy, he confessed considerable guilt to me in an email about the Unethicist column. He was ashamed that his offerings weren’t literary. He was bothered by the fact that he had to compete with his brother. More importantly, he offered me five bucks.

Inspired by the recent Ulysses blog and the Bloomsbury anniversary, Miguel has decided to offer his interpretation of what it all means. So long as Mr. Cohen’s funds remain liquid, we here at Return of the Reluctant will reprint Mr. Cohen’s annotations in installments.

CHAPTER ONE: TELEMACHUS

TEXT: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

— Introibo ad altare Dei.

MIGUEL: The thing that confuses me here is that this guy Buck is stately and plump. If Buck Mulligan echoes an elder statesman, I ask you, outside of Kucinich, have you ever seen a thin politician? Isn’t this a redundancy? And if he came from the stairhead, did he pop some chick’s maidenhead? How the fuck does one come from a stairhead? I know there’s a lot of dirty jokes in this book, but apparently this Joyce guy couldn’t keep his cock in his pants. He’s coming down with a bowl of lather, dig? He let loose in a bowl. So this Joyce cat has to get down and dirty from the very first sentence! My kind of guy. And what kind of asshole wears a yellow dressinggown? What’s restricting this Buck guy? The fact that he’s stately and plump? When’s he going to put on his girdle? And is Joyce implying that Buck’s cock-a-doodle-doo is exposed? Naughty pederast, I think.

And Latin? Frickin’ Latin? How can anyone say something in Latin before their cup of coffee? Of course, if he’s choked the chicken, then, fuckin’ hell, he’s probably wouldn’t need it anyway.

Anyway, this “Introibo ad altare Dei” nonsense means “I will go into the altar of God.” It’s the beginning of a Latin mass. Presumably, this bowl of lather is his offering for God. Half a life force. Dead sticky sperm. Or something. All I know is that this man always has Kleenex in hand.

TEXT: Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:

— Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.

MIGUEL: So is “halted” an emotion or did this Buck guy halt? What the hell’s stopping him? And why would you peer down and call up? That’s bad for acoustics! Unless, of course, he’s about to hock a loogey on this poor Kinch mofo. So that’s two references to bodily fluids and we’re only three paragraphs in!

And then we have more “coming” forward. Yeah, right, Joyce. That and mounting the round gunrest. Well, we all know what that means. He’s being an asshole again with that jesuit thing.

Now we have more cross stuff. As if the mirror and the razor weren’t enough, he’s establishing the holy venue. Gurgling when Mr. “Kinch” Dedalus is coming in? Bad form. Does this guy have a hangover? I’ve never known a guy to do this when he wanks himself silly. And this guy has a horse face too? And isn’t hair by its very definition “untonsured”? What the fuck, Joyce? So Buck has a tonsure and Dedalus does not?

TEXT: Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.

— Back to barracks! he said sternly.

He added in a preacher’s tone:

— For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.

MIGUEL: Peep marshmallows? Yeah, pretty instant, I think. Best to cover the bowl there, Buck, before ol’ Kinchie discovers the tight mess you’ve made. Been there before with brother Randy back in the day. Back to barracks? So that’s where it happens. So this is what Catholicism does to folks. I’ve seen it happen too many times. This Catholic girl I was seeing back in Boston wanted me to feed her a communion wafer every time, just after she screamed. You know how expensive those wafers are? $15.99 for a box of those motherfuckers! And I was already spending a lot of bread on the condoms.

So if Buck’s speaking in a preacher’s tone, he’s not a preacher, right? The genuine Christine instead of Christ? White corupscles? Okay, cat’s out of the bag. You’re a sick cat, James. I’m blowing this joint. And not the way you’re thinking.

Dan Green has weighed in with a thoughtful post about the Underground Literary Alliance, that ragtag bunch of frustrated writers-cum-Yippie wannabes that I have, until now, remained silent and nonpartisan upon. I have not exactly sanctioned this “organization,” but, because I am sympathetic to alternative and underground voices, I have at least tried to acknowledge them to some degree. However, after watching the ULA antics for several years, I must now conclude that, unless they change their tune, these folks are no longer worthy of my attention or yours.

The recent Birkets-Peck whinefest, which essentially had King Wenclas complaining that the new wave of literary hatchet men had appropriated the ULA review style, left me with a queasy feeling of sour grapes, almost as if I was reading a puling adolescent’s diary. I felt momentarily obliged to offer Mr. Wenclas a cookie, if not a hug and a comp ticket for the clue train. Because the professional writer and the responsible thinker knows that, given the rampant generation of ideas in the universe, inevitably another person will draw from the same associations and respond to the universe around them in a similar fashion. It happened to me once when a writer for a major news outlet used Ferdinand de Lesseps as a comparison for the dot com bust, about a few months after I had written a similar piece. The insecure writer will kvetch about it. The secure writer will realize that there are plenty of other pitch ideas floating within her head to lay down for a query or a piece.

Whatever the case, as Dan quite rightly points out, “‘saying something’ almost always turns out to be itself a matter of saying something that’s been said many times before, or something everybody already knows, or something of great interest to the writer but of no conceivable interest to any readers, or something with which those readers already agree, or something that seems of burning urgency today but tomorrow will seem as prosaic as the newspaper article it was taken from, or something as tedious and doctrinaire as almost all ‘revolutionary’ statements ultimately are.” The ULA’s myopic intolerance to the revolution of, say, finding the edge within midlife crisis as John Banville does in Eclipse or attacking John Barth without offering a single example why the summation of his works are completely invalid (particularly, since, as I noted back in April, he was one of the few writers to expose 9/11 transitionary life in fiction) is comparable with that of a frustrated undergraduate. Certainly, all readers go through a stage where they see easy dichotomies and evil in every grey corner. But it’s hard to take an “organization” seriously when they are prepared to damn a writer without offering a constructive argument.

If anything, the ULA comes across worse than the Dale Pecks of the world. For one thing, they aren’t nearly as witty. And, if it can be believed, the ULA is even more Manichean in declaring certain authors as evil. Take Michael Jackman’s slam of Middlesex, where he writes, “One might ask Mr. Eugenides why he is able to get away with making such idiotic comments as, ‘Why is a hermaphrodite not the narrator of every novel? It’s the most flexible and omniscient voice. Every novelist has to have a hermaphroditic imagination to get into the minds of men and women.’ Note the emphasis on imagination, as opposed to experience. Note the emphasis on getting inside the mind, as opposed to out into the world. In such comments we see his limitations, coming from a rarefied culture addicted to gender studies and obsessed with the self and sensitivity. Like a college streaker, he is willing to look ridiculous if he thinks it shows off how he has no hang-ups.” The complete inflexibility here to imagination makes one ponder whether King Wenclas could ever enjoy something as joyously harmless as the Oz books, which is nothing but the purest invention. And what’s with the college streaker comparison? To offer a metaphor in return, that’s like a jock circa 1987 being transplanted to contemporary Queer Eye-loving America, trying to apply his harsh homophobic language where it no longer cuts the mustard.

It is the skilled individual who will try and find something redeeming within an author they despise. (Speaking personally, as far as I’m concerned, Dave Eggers may be the most overrated author of the past decade. But the first third of Heartbreaking and Eggers’ story in the mostly disappointing McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales are enough for me not to completely dismiss him.) Likewise, it is the skilled organization that will recognize that promoting literature is about gathering the best ideas of the whole group, using an invitational approach rather than a harsh procedure that destroys alliances. Granted, the ULA is one of the few literary-related groups around that takes a confrontational stance, and, given the safe and staid atmosphere, they deserve some credence on that score. But confrontation as an approach should be as well-timed and justified as silence or diplomacy. And when you’re confrontational all the time, well, frankly, you’re just not that interesting.

I’ve been in the middle of packing (books — too many books), so I have no idea if the photocopies of Norman Mailer’s Xeroxed butt, which have caused at least three heart attacks and one epileptic seizure, have finally been released to the Internet. But Lizzie reports that there’s a new column in this month’s Poets & Writers in which Laila, Maud and myself were referenced. I haven’t read the column, but I appreciate that Poets & Writers has started to not only pick up on the stories and developments of my peers (Laila was the first to note the scandal), but also gone to the trouble to source them. With literary blogs beginning to develop beyond news filtering and ancillary zingers into full-blown profiles and reviews, I think this might be the beginning of a mutually majestic relationship. But more on this later.

I now return you back to your regularly scheduled hiatus, which means intermittent literary news in the next four days and a vague glow of activity until July 4th. After that, the hope is to up the ante and get this site pepping with some more meaty offerings (along with a design upgrade) within the time allotted.

Also, Rake has unveiled the perfect antidote to the Book Babes.

The roommate who doesn’t get along with his fellow living mate will either address his grievances to his living mate or amicably part, working out the nature of his departure through courtesy and discussion, and ideally without resorting to pistols at dawn. Assuming that the two roommates are rational people, there will often be a discussion, if not a common ground where these two roommates agree to live out the remainder of their lease with the same easy adult skills that one puts to task when balancing one’s checkbook. In other words, the two roommates take the appropriate responsibilities and make the most of an unpleasant situation. That generally means giving the other roommate enough time to divvy up common area possessions or plan accordingly for the other’s rental-related demise.

Of course, such a smooth hitchless transition assumes that both roommates are rational, reasonable and courteous. But as I learned when returning to the apartment late this afternoon, my now ex-roommate, despite replying “Great” (and possibly “Swell’) when I asked him how things were going (bimonthly, I might add), even the kindest visages hide screwball dispositions, whereby logic operates on truly skewered methodologies and even the tiniest of trinkets becomes territorial (of which more anon).

Or to offer another possible explanation: My roommate is a registered Republican in San Francisco.

Now that I’ve signed a new lease for a kickass apartment, some of the reasons for my hiatus can now be publicly addressed and the fascinating story of what I found left in my apartment this afternoon can, at long last, be unraveled.

The deal was this: At the end of this month, a one-year lease expired. My roommate, as one of the two tenants on the lease, planned to leave, not citing any specific reason other than that he was maybe moving in with his girlfriend in the not-too-distant future. In light of the play and the other secret projects going down, this was inconvenient but fine. I had plenty of notice from the guy. And, of course, in my efforts to be a good guy, I congratulated him and communicated to him the exact date and details of my migration — this, with the suggestion that we could, if desired, split costs and keep the communicative beacon flaring so as to benefit the twain.

Apparently, giving him the moving skinny was my first mistake.

There had been some talk that he was planning on moving the weekend of the 26th/27th. And I had not seen or heard from my roommate for a week until this morning, where I was in the process of cooking breakfast for my sweet and fantastic girlfriend. With approximately five seconds’ notice, my roommate informed me that he was moving out. this instance, rather than the 26th/27th weekend we had talked about. Sorry. Oh, and the plates were all his and he wanted to pack them now.

Never mind that I had just deposited some freshly cooked eggs, sausage and other stuff onto these very plates and was planning to take the goodies into my bedroom. I told him I’d get back to him in an hour. Fortunately, my girlfriend was beneficial in pointing out that stuff was just stuff, that it didn’t really matter, and that I could always get some more. So, rather than figure out just which of the common area kitchen shit was mine (I knew I had purchased at least a few of the plates, but whatever), I told my roommate to take what he deemed his, silently concluding that if he took my coffee machine, he would be drawing blood. My girlfriend and I left, letting my roommate do his thing.

Telling him to take whatever he wanted was my second mistake.

Late this afternoon, we returned home to find various dusty trails on the ground. We opened bare cupboards and witnessed an ironic message hidden in these airy deposits. There wasn’t a single plate, glass or bowl left for me to use (save one coffee mug and three shot glasses from a four shot set I had purchased a year ago — what happened to the fourth shot glass?), not even a friendly note saying, “Goodbye, you gullible bastard! Have fun trying to serve your girlfriend some eggs now!”

Okay, whatever. I’d start from scratch. And maybe my roommate was right about buying most of the kitchen ware. It didn’t matter. The new place kicked serious ass. It had an icebox, man. Tuxedos and martinis weren’t too far away.

But as my girlfriend and I walked up the hall, we noticed that the shower curtain had been removed. Never mind that this shower curtain’s days were numbered. It was a mildewed, ratty, and ugly old thing that was on its way out — in other words, the perfect shower curtain for a remaining week in this place. Frankly, we were shocked that my roommate had laid claim to this.

But that wasn’t all. My girlfriend and I recalled that there was half a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom when we left in the morning. When we returned, we noticed that the toilet paper had been reduced to a cardboard roller with a few spare strands of paper that, collectively, couldn’t fit a pygmy marmoset’s bottom.

And if this wasn’t enough, I noticed this morning that my roommate had seen fit to apply his last name via Sharpie to a three-to-two prong electrical adapter (a whopping 49 cent item at Orchard Supply Hardware). This too was gone, no doubt mounted to an Elks Lodge den next to the shower curtain and a few moose heads.

Was this a joke? A testament? Some kind of canard?

It’s worth noting again that my roommate never once raised his voice, nor did he address any problems, even when I asked him how things were going. Were these passive-aggressive acts the end result? Me? I’m just relieved that it’s all over.

But if there’s any lesson to this story, whatever you do, always have extra toilet paper and a spare shower curtain — ideally with a printed tag bearing your name. You’ll never know what kind of crazed living mate will get all proprietary on your ass.