Customer Reviews

Dubliners

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Joyce's book depicts episodes of middle-class Catholic life in Dublin at the beginning of last century; "Dubliners" was first published in 1914. The topics related in the opening stories range from the disappointments of childhood, the frustrations of adolescence and the importance of sexual awakening. Joyce was 25 when he wrote this miscellaneous collection of short stories, among which "The Dead" is probably the most famous. Considered at the time as a literary experiment, they are refreshingly original and astonishing ant the beginning of this century as they were at the beginning of last century!

James Joyce sketches in a few deft words, the lives of characters who inhabit the homes in Dublin a hundred years ago. There are young people who are trapped by tradition, religion, their own limitations. Adults don't fare much better. But it's all in the telling: the marvellous word choice, the weaving of image, the interplay of characters who are unable to set each other free. Joyce can breathe life into players with a few strokes, letting Polly Mooney seduce as a "perverse Madonna", having Mangan's sister play the strings of a young man's heart as she would a harp. Hope for a brighter future flickers in the final story of the collection, where friends and family gather at the feast, their spirits rise and Ireland reaches out to embrace her wounded.

James Joyce's short stories render turn of the century Dublin and Dubliners for readers who want to ease into the work of the guy who wrote Ulysses. The Dubliners is highly recommended. A couple of these tales even brought a tear to my eye; wonderfully evocative.

The title of my review comes from the last paragraph of "The Dead," already mentioned by previous critics as one of the great short stories of English literature. In a way, this line reflects Joyce's collection as a whole: much in the way a newspaper collects concise, level-headed, yet crisp glimpses into the times of a people, his book has tried to achieve a similar feat. 'Dubliners' aims for objectivity that differs slightly from journalism. Quite similar to Hemingway's scientific approach to writing, Joyce has tried to establish an objective approach to fiction that provides minimal judgment of the content, while maximizing the efficacy of its characters, images, and stories.

With the Modernists, literature begins to shift away from the hoity-toity implied authors so popular in the Victorian Era. (Dickens is most famous for this, though I think the words "hoity-toity" are ironic according to his intentions, but right-on in terms of his prose style.) T.S. Eliot was infamous for saying that a writer must banish himself from what he writes. One question I always have is this: can that actually happen? Surely, the very act of writing, where details are selected, ordered, and described has to accord with someone's vision. Perhaps the implied author that readers can picture so clearly from the Victorian Era instead becomes a "ghost author"--or, as Joyce so eloquently puts it in 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man": "The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent paring his fingernails." This makes the act of composition one of inevitable consumption, both by the editing process and the reading process.

So the odd type of objectivity Joyce and Eliot herald is actually an objective-subjectivity, if that makes any sense. Richard Ellman wrote a biography on Joyce, and referred to this as sympathetic detachment, making it much more in line with Buddhism.

Back to 'Dubliners'. Why is this kind of authorial approach so important? You could say that Joyce is trying to illustrate Dublin as a city caught in paralysis, and that his "objective" style complements his subject matter. Before Joyce finished writing "The Dead," he felt that his work was perhaps unfair to the city where he used to live. "The Dead" is therefore an attempt by Joyce to elevate his city away from its moments of mistaken love, poetic abandon, romantic tragedy and maternal agony to find whether he can galvanize sympathy for it.

This is the second James Joyce book I have read and it goes to reinforce the feeling I had after reading the first that that writer is a great storyteller. In fact, I consider
James Joyce's Dubliners as one of the best collection of short stories ever put together. The settings are amazing and the rich and lively characters all combine with the incredible plots to add credence to the stories. Not only are they true to life in fitting with the atmosphere that one finds in Dublin, the stories are also hilarious, subtle, and inspirational and gripping. The pace of the stories is fast and the voices are rich. This is a highly recommended read along with UNION MOUJIK, FINNEGANS WAKE, THE USURPER AND OTHER STORIES,ICE ROAD, DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE

James Joyce's Dubliners is one of the best collection of short stories ever penned. The characters are memorable, the plots are subtle, gripping and frequently ironic, the atmosphere of "dear dirty Dublin" rings true, and the writing is eloquent and disciplined. While his novels (e.g. Ulysses) get more attention, Dubliners may be his best work. Highly recommended.

When I first started it, honestly, I couldn't stand it. Only until I was able to discuss it with some very learned people was i able to understand in a way that made sense. This, though frustrating initially, is an amazing thing. When one realized that almost every sentence that James Joyce writes is a work of art on its own, they are forced to acknowledge both Joyce's amazing talent and the beauty of the language when used to its full potential. I could say what the stories are about, but it is just something that you should experience for yourself. I will however say that the last story, "The Dead," is just amazing. It has to be one of the best novellas ever written in English.

One word of warning, however: Don't read this book expecting a happy ending. Most all of the stories are somewhat depressing and shows the life that so many lived in Dublin.

Exile is Joyce's major theme in both Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners. In the former, it was self-induced exile, an imperative coming of age story. In Dubliners, the exile is moral and psychological. Each character in these stories linger on the crest of transcendence-- all of them wanting more, but too tired, scared, and resigned to do anything about it. While this may seem cynical and drab, Joyce's love for the human spirit resonates deeply with each described gesture, however sad they may be.

'An Encounter' follows a boy on the beach, having cut a day of school with his brutish friend, who meets an old man and is in turn humiliated by what he witnesses, only to retreat back to his friend, who he secretly despises. In 'Araby' a young boy begs to go to a fair in order to buy a trinket for a girl he is smitten for, and having arrived minutes too late, cannot bring himself to it when he is met by an apathetic saleslady. 'A Painful Case' is about a lonely man who, self-deluded that he is content, rejects his lover after an ephemeral tryst. He continues to bear the isolation, though the outcome for the distraught woman is much more tragic. The last story, 'The Dead', is of a husband who, after a funeral procession, is awakened to his own mortality and the transience of life, and rekindles in his heart a flame for his wife, only to discover she is distracted by her own thoughts of another man.

Joyce is not merely interested in sad stories. When the story ends, the love each character had continues onward after the page is turned. These stories mirror common failures of our own lives and give meaning to them, as if our own stories, however menial and benign, are worth being told.

I am not a fan of James Joyce but how can you not read this collection of short stories about ordinary everyday people living in Dublin circa 1904. Each story is unique and seperate from the others but each draws you into the lives of Dublins' People.

You can feel the despair of a lover, the doubts of children, and the renewel of life in death. You will no doubt love some of the stories, hate some of the stories, and be moved emotionally by the collection of short stories in the DUBLINERS.

If you have never read Joyce this is an excellent introduction to his work. I do beleive if he had never written another word after the DUBLINERS he still would have left his mark with this collection of short stories.

As a young man, James Joyce abandoned his hometown of Dublin, and yet, he never wrote about any other place. He had also rejected Catholicism, and yet all his characters are dominated by it. DUBLINERS, Joyce's collection of short stories which set the standard for the genre, is filled with characters who come to terrible revelations (which he called "epiphanies") about how their lives had been scarred by the provincialism of Dublin, the divisiveness of its politics, and the oppression of religion. By extension, this is how Joyce percieved humanity at the dawn of modernism.

The stories range from the psychologially simple ("Counterparts" and "A Little Cloud") to the extraordinarily complex ("A Painful Case" and "The Dead"). But what is common throughout is the feel for Dublin just after the turn of the last century. The readers see the cobblestones, the chimneys, the trams and carts, the churches, and the street lamps. More importantly, the readers feel the tensions underlying the public smiles and infrequent bursts of confidence that the characters exhibit.

The pinnacle of this collection is "The Dead". A novella, actually, "The Dead" encompasses everything: politics, religion, art, journalism, history, love, and the inevitability of death rendering all worldly things meaningless. This doesn't mean the story is a downer: this death is necessary to making a fresh start. The ending of "The Dead" has been interpreted in hundreds of ways. However, there is no denying that as Joyce "pulls back the camera" from the Conroy's hotel room to the universe above, the writing swells to its most beautiful. To me, this is a movement toward the future, toward change, leaving the living dead behind to a more spiritual life on Earth.

Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points.