Sum Mer de le Wake is, if we’re honest, a bit of a dare.
Two Joyce fans who had only splashed around in Finnegans Wake decided that they should make a real attempt. A simple schedule: three summer months, while class loads are light; approximately seven pages a day. No plans to consult skeleton keys or go running to Anthony Burgess for guidance. Start reading — aloud — and see what we find on our own, what we sort out together and what we get ‘wrong’ and ‘right.’
We will no doubt keep updating posts, pages and graphics, developing as we go along, creating a dialogue — with each other and ourselves — as the weeks go on. (The previous statement is self-defining, as it is being written as the second version of the a bout page.) This is, after all — in keeping with Joyce’s working title for his opus — a Wake in progress.
Lest there be any accusations of consanguinity with regards to this particular lovechild, we’ll note that the two Kellys are not related, other than in the shared outlook on so many items that it shocks one to know they were thrown together by chance as advisors of a student publication. If there be any accusations of masochism, it can be noted that they also both Mets fans.
Seán Kelly(“the elder”) was born on the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, in the Year of Our Lord 1940. He teaches in the Humanities & Media Studies department of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. Once upon a time, he was a radio actor, newspaper reporter & advertising copywriter, but not all at the same time, in his native Montreal, Quebec, Canada. For more of his curriculum and co-curricular vitae, one might consult his Wikipedia page.
Michael Kelly (“the lesser”) is a designer, sometime author and Adjunct Professor at Pratt Institute. At the time of this writing he is also a part-time Assistant Chair in Pratt’s Undergraduate Communications Design Department. As part of his coursework, he also co-directs a class called Design Corps, wherein students provide pro-bono design work for socially, environmentally or culturally conscious organizations. He has fond memories of his high school English professor extolling the virtues (so to speak) of Ulysses, despite not quite getting Portrait when he first read it. He wrote a term paper on half of Ulysses in college and only finished Molly’s soliloquy for the first time while sitting in Trinity College courtyard during a post-Commencement tour of Ireland in 1996. His writing has mostly been for academic reports and promotional materials, but he has also written articles on insects and composting, as well as approximately twenty-four essays for the Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design — which admittedly should probably occur further up in this biography. He is decidedly — and contentedly — sans wiki.
sum mer de le wake 