Dubliners (Signet Classics)
by James Joyce
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Book Summary Information
Author: James JoyceIntroduction: Edna O'Brien
Afterword: Malachy McCourt
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-02-06
ISBN: 0451530411
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Signet Classics
Book Reviews of Dubliners (Signet Classics)
Book Review: Overrated but good
Summary: 3 Stars
I've long proclaimed that Dubliners is Joyce's greatest literary achievement. I'd read the book first in the mid-80s, then the early 90s, and just a while back. While I stand by my initial assessment that it's Joyce's best work, with age, and my own forays into fiction, I see that it is not as good as I once thought, although it still has moments of greatness.
The book is fifteen short stories that were mostly written in the years 1904-1905, and were dubbed by Joyce as being `epiphanies'- moments of sudden insight. The key to that term, however, is that the epiphanies are meant to occur within the reader, not to Joyce's characters....It is legend that Dubliners originally consisted of twelve tales, and that Joyce later added Two Gallants, A Little Cloud, and The Dead, after the original dozen were done by 1905. I don't think that sort of knowledge really matters since the three tales are rather uneven in relationship to each other, so give no idea of Joyce's growth nor stagnation, and certainly not a hint of his later fracturing of narrative, which was already being hailed as Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man was already being serialized in The Egoist magazine when the book finally hint print, almost a decade later in 1914. Thus, his greatest work was unfairly overlooked by the critics of the day.
They were generally dismissed as trifles, save for The Dead, although, when the critical tide turned, it turned far too much in the other direction, with virtually every one of the stories being hailed as a masterpiece. They're not, although by contemporary standards the tales are indeed innovative and excellent. The stories vary greatly in approach, but their tone is too similar, that is- consistently dour, which augured the summation of Joyce as the favorite writer that nobody reads.
Also, there is a tendency, in the lesser stories, for Joyce to get stuck in minutiae of the day that means little now, as well as superfluous dialogue designed to add color, yet only adds fat. Another problem is that in order to show the inertia and decline of Irish culture into paralysis, around the turn of the Twentieth Century, Joyce's stories are essentially without much real conflict- thus their lean into `epiphany'. It also makes tales like Ivy Day in the Committee Room, laden with political references as arcane as a John Dryden poem, and little real character development, simply not good. In attempting a slice of Dublin life of the day Joyce sometimes falls prey to the fallacy that to be `real' he has to show characters doing dull things, or simply describe things too matter-of-factly, rather than letting the epiphanies speak for themselves, by brushing away the `ordinary' excess. Dramatically, the stories are rather predictable- what separates them from lesser writers' tales is how the expected is unleashed and described.
In short, while the argument that Joyce was a great writer, but not great novelist, sticks, the idea that he was without anything to say is demonstrably false. It's just that he did not have a whole lot to say, nor did he have anything particularly new to say. But, he said it, at his best, better than most. It is the fact that Joyce attempts more than contemporary short fictionists, and that this collection is not a mere collection, but a narrative movement, or symphony, with a purpose, that makes the book glow all the more brightly in contrast to the dreck that populates today's fiction. What most astonishes me, though, as I grow and age, is how little it takes for a person's reputation as an artist, to be founded on. James Joyce was a great writer, but tales like After The Race, Clay, Ivy Day in the Committee Room, A Mother, and Grace- fully a third of the book, are simply not good stories, for reasons mentioned earlier. Not acknowledging that does no good, and only casts the reader and critic in the role of the sciolist professor I encountered.
It is only by acknowledging failures that the structures that go under a great work of art- its scaffolding- can be considered and applied by others. To not do so is to keep up the curtain that denies that greatness is achievable now, the same sort of lie that Gabriel Conroy's world finally lost in the snow.
Summary of Dubliners (Signet Classics)
This short story collection draws a vivid portrait of Joyce's Dublin at the turn of the twentieth century, with rich imagery and characterization.General Books
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