A University student sat in a Dinkytown coffee shop Thursday afternoon reading James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake” and talking intellectually.
“It’s as if the author is reaching for some sort of hope in the nature of humans through his use of stream-of-consciousness writing,” explained a man who likes to be called Ichabod Fillmore, a sixth-year cultural studies and comparative literature and Sanskrit major.
He debated with another pseudo-intellectual who asked to be named Joe Flugel because he hasn’t come out of the pseudo-intellectual closet yet.
But The Minnesota Daily obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request secret documents which say that Fillmore just wants to go home and watch ESPN’s Sportscenter.
“I just want to go home and watch Sportscenter,’ Fillmore wrote in an e-mail to one of his professors.
Paraphrasing his language is difficult for anyone without a doctorate, but The Minnesota Daily believes the e-mail details his dismay with the para-class of the cognitariat’s problems overcoming the dichotomy of disciplinary devices based on Michele Foucault’s theories on the panopticon. According to several experts, this is why he wants to just watch Sportscenter.
As Fillmore talks about his favorite book, patrons of the Purple Onion who sit near him start moving away. Eventually, when they realize they can still hear him, they vacate the coffee shop. But Fillmore is undeterred.
“Being rich is only fear of the poor,” he says as loud as socially acceptable.
In a private moment when Fillmore is visiting what he calls the “water closet,” Flugel explains how pseudo-intellectuals work.
“When they see a blank expression on the other person’s face they think they have succeeded in confusing that person,” Flugel said. “But that person is just thinking, What the hell are you talking about?'”
It is 9:30 p.m., and Fillmore carefully, without letting anyone know he might be growing tired of the conversation, glances at his watch. There is only a half-hour until Sportscenter.
“I’m sorry my good fellow,” Fillmore said in a pathetic faux-British accent, “but I must retire to work on Of Time and Ink: Writing Without the Ingenious Torture of Actuality’ — it’s my senior thesis.”
As he walks home in haste, slight beads form on his brow. Sportscenter is neigh.’
His roommate, a devout Chicago Bears fan named Kevin Cooper, greets him with a Grainbelt Premium and a slap on the back. Cooper plans to become an elementary gym teacher. Fillmore leaps on the couch and the program commences.
“I suppose you were drinking coffee and talking about Finnegan’s Wake’,” Cooper said. Fillmore shushes him quickly; “Hockey highlights,” he says.
“You know that stuff doesn’t mean anything in the real world,” Cooper said. “You should be reading Playboy and masturbating.”
But Fillmore isn’t listening.
“Ooh, ooh. The goalie sticked him in the nuts. That’s hilarious!”
Cooper turns away from his roommate.
“Jeeeze, Ichabod. It doesn’t matter. Eventually, he will realize that Finnegan’s Wake’ only represents Joyce’s fear of Freud’s castration anxiety theory,” Cooper laments. “And he treats the book like the writing is about something. But, the writing is the thing itself.”