"Don't shit where you eat" [revisited]

James Harbeck jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA
Sun Aug 5 03:22:45 UTC 2007


>Although the concept itself will be familiar to
>readers of (even the first page of) _Portrait of
>the Artist as a Young Man_  (something like "When
>you wet the bed first it is warm and then it is
>cold", one of Stephen Dedalus's first aperÁus).

"When you wet the bed, first it is warm then it
gets cold. His mother put on the oilsheet. That
had the queer smell."

Mind you, peeing your pants is, in the aphorism,
presented as something one might do with the aim
of warming up, which isn't presented as an
intended end in _Portrait_. (Nor has _National
Geographic_ quoted Joyce in my recent
recollection.)

Almost all of my Joyce quotations (hmm... that
might be two out of three) come from _Finnegans
Wake_. Well, at least I got _something_ from it!

James Harbeck.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list