Dubliners

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Summary: Joyce's Classic Early Collection of Stories
Review: The first of James Joyce's books, "Dubliners" is a collection of fifteen stories written between 1904 and 1907. Joyce wrote the first of the fifteen stories in this collection, "Sisters," in Ireland in 1904. The story was published in August of that year under the pseudonym "Stephen Daedalus." Joyce wrote the last, longest and most famous of the stories, "The Dead," in Rome in 1907. The stories were published in the book known as "Dubliners" in 1914. While there are many editions of "Dubliners" in print, the definitive edition of the work is generally considered to be the corrected text prepared by Robert Scholes in consultation with Richard Ellman, Joyce's biographer. Random House publishes the Scholes edition under its Modern Library imprint and I recommend this edition.

"Dubliners" stands as one of the Ur-texts of modernism, a startlingly original collection of stories set in turn-of-the-century Dublin that began the Joycean literary project. That project subsequently moved through the increasingly difficult, and characteristically modernist, iterations of "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake." Like those succeeding texts, the interested reader can find thousands of pages of commentary on "Dubliners," the study of Joyce's works being akin to a Talmudic undertaking, an undertaking that can, if one chooses, occupy an entire life.

Joyce once commented that the stories of "Dubliners" constitute a "chapter of moral history" that represents the "first step towards the spiritual liberation of [Ireland]." He also said, "I call the series 'Dubliners' to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city." The stories are, in other words, inherently critical (although also, at times, appreciative) of the Dublin life that Joyce abandoned, living and writing as an expatriate in Paris, Trieste, Rome, and Zurich for nearly the entirety of his adult life.

The stories operate on two levels. On one level, the stories are realistic narratives of every day life in Dublin. On another level, however, the stories are suffused with symbolism, with recurring, allusive images of spiritual, sexual and political meanings that mark a departure from nineteenth century literary realism and make "Dubliners" an enduring, and deservedly canonical, modernist narrative.

The first story, "Sisters," begins with a striking example of the tone of the stories in "Dubliners." A young boy stands, in the evening, looking up at the shadows flickering through the window of an upstairs room where a priest is dying:

"Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word 'paralysis'. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word 'gnomon' in the Euclid and the word 'simony' in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work."

Thus, a vivid, realistic image appears in the reader's mind, but so does a collection of words that suggest meanings and themes that go far beyond the real, that capture physical and intellectual and religious undercurrents, the inner life of a young boy living in Dublin.

"Sisters" is a brilliant story, as is "The Dead" and nearly every other story in "Dubliners" (excluding, perhaps, one or two, the worst being "After the Race," a story that Joyce reluctantly included in the collection). Realistic in its narratives, richly allusive in its language and symbolism, "Dubliners" is one of a handful of story collections that truly deserves the label "classic" and should be read and studied by every serious reader.

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Summary: The Archetype of Short Story Fiction
Review: Perfection is the best way to describe this classic story collection by the legendary James Joyce. Dubliners follows the lives of ordinary folks in early twentieth century Ireland. Instead of using dramatic events such as many conventional short stories do, Joyce centered his tales on what seemed to be inconsequential. This groundbreaking literary formula succeeded and Dubliners went on to become one of the most greatly praised and athologized works of all time. By focusing on the magnitude of simple things, Joyce provided writing that truly connects the reader with the character through empathy. Examples of such include Araby in which an adolescent boy seeks romance and idealizes a beautiful girl who pays him no mind, and A Painful Case that portrays a lonely man who is haunted by a relationship he had with a married woman after he hears of her untimely death.

Each story in Dubliners contains gorgeously descriptive passages and words that dance across the pages. Though the themes may be dismal and the people Joyce writes of often come up empty-handed, the reader will likely find an underlying optimism that hardship builds strength and hope will prevail.

Interestingly, Dubliners barely came to print. Years of controversy hindered the 1914 release of the book, as many publishers regarded the stories as immoral and risque. Fortunately the public embraced it, and today we should all be required to read this enduring work by one of Ireland's finest, Mr. James Joyce.

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Summary: Dublin as the center of the world
Review: Despite being written almost a hundred years ago, James Joyce's 'Dubliners' is still as fresh as when it was released. The characters are Dubliners, but above all they are human beings and act as such, and this makes this collection of fifteen stories so universal. Moreover this book is a good start for readers who want to read Joyce and are afraid of his most famous and notoriously difficult works such as "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake".

The tales are supposed to be read in the order they are published because they follow the natural course of the human life. The first ones deal with childhood, then with adolescence, later adulthood --and in this segment some of them deal with public life-- and the last one is called "The Dead", making it clear that the stories follow the sequence of life events that happen to everyone.

Joyce's brother Stanislaus Joyce once wrote that the book pairs up stories on common themes: adolescent life, sporting life, artistic life, amorous life, political life, religious life, and celibate life (male and female), plus four 'petty employees' (two married and two unmarried), plus the final story on 'holiday life'. But this kind of classification is only a plus when one reads the book, because what really matters is Joyce's ability to create real people and situation.

Not only does the writer makes a wonderful job when developing his characters in such a small form of telling a story, but he also has a sophisticated command of the language. And some academics claim that "The Dead" is one of the best --if not THE best-- piece of short fiction written in the 20 century.

The view of the human nature in this book is quite dark most of the time, dealing mostly with the failure or the impossibility of acquisition something desired, Joyce is able to sneak in the human soul and its incapability of coping with loss, fear and another difficult feelings.

Most of the stories in "Dubliners" are not easy to be read, but all of them are a real pleasure to be discovered. An important book that with some concentration is accessible to everyone.

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Summary: Dubliners
Review: 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!

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Summary: Great
Review: 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.

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Summary: No one should read Dubliners
Review: This book is so full of crap. It's awful. If you really wanna read it, set aside 15 hours of your time for each story! Criticism is non existant and high school seniors should NOT be made to read this book. Yes, I know all of the stories have some sort of "greater meaning" behind them, but it is so full of detail, every single word has an impact on the meaning of each story as a whole. I recommend that you find another book to read that you will actually enjoy, like Mercedes Lackey. Actually, Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes is a very well-written book and very enjoyable. Much more so than Dubliners.

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Summary: Exile in Loveville
Review: 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.

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Summary: Insight into Dublin circa 1904
Review: 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.

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Summary: dear dirty Dublin
Review: 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.

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Summary: under my expectations
Review: I was expecting a little more from this work. A few stories I just did not understand the point, they just never reached any climax. On the other hand, even the weakest items still put me in the scene and captured an atmoshphere which most short fiction collections cant.