{"id":13210,"date":"2014-06-19T14:32:48","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T18:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=13210"},"modified":"2014-06-25T13:14:41","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T17:14:41","slug":"james-joyce-dubliners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2014\/06\/19\/james-joyce-dubliners\/","title":{"rendered":"James Joyce: Dubliners<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

No one has ever remarked on it, but I personally find it strange that a site called The Mookse and the Gripes has not one James Joyce title under review. Well, truth be told, the first title I wrote about here\u00a0was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man<\/em>. That post was up for only a couple of hours because it didn’t quite fit in with what I was trying to do with The Mookse and the Gripes. My intent back\u00a0in 2008\u00a0was to revisit the book again and write on it anew. I didn’t think it would take long because I used to reread Portrait <\/em>once a year, but I haven’t\u00a0read it since!<\/em>\u00a0I also used to read Dubliners<\/em> yearly, but it’s now been eight years of neglect.<\/p>\n

Well, I’ve been spurred into action: Dubliners<\/em>\u00a0turned 100 years old on June 15, and to celebrate Penguin issued this gorgeous centennial edition in their Penguin Deluxe Series with the cover illustration by Roman Muradov.<\/p>\n

\"Review

Review copy courtesy of Penguin Classics.<\/p><\/div>\n

Dubliners<\/em> is supreme. I feel Penguin hedges a bit when they say, “Perhaps the greatest short story collection in the English language.” Is there doubt that it’s the greatest? Of course, there are many other tremendous collections I’d put on the same tier (look at William Trevor and Alice Munro), and I’m grateful for them all. Truly, the work of each of these authors has fundamentally changed my life. Still, I have a soft spot for Dubliners<\/em> because\u00a0it was the first. I still remember my first experience reading it. I could actually recognize that fundamental change in myself as it occurred.<\/p>\n

Though it was published on June 15, 1914,\u00a0Joyce first submitted it (without “The Dead”) in 1905, when he was only 23 years old. In 1907, only 25 years old, he finished “The Dead”\u00a0and still no\u00a0publisher wanted to take it on.\u00a0This edition’s introduction, by Terence Brown, who also edited the volume and wrote the nearly 70 pages of notes, briefly goes through the laborious quest for publication. The bottom line was that publishers were frightened of what they were reading and frightened of what would happen if they had their names attached to the published edition. The stories were too familiar (in some cases so familiar the publishers feared they might instigate a law suit for libel). Fortunately, it was eventually published, and we can revel in Joyce’s presentation of the inhabitants of this “defeated city.”<\/p>\n

This edition also\u00a0includes an interesting, poetic foreword by Colum McCann: “[. . .] it sold just a few hundred copies. All that craftsmanship for so much silence. One can imagine Joyce, walking along a canal in Trieste, turning a corner into a shadow, a shade.” I was surprised to learn\u00a0that Dubliners<\/em> was not a staple in McCann’s childhood in 1970s Dublin. He finally read the collection in college, in his mid-twenties, in Texas. Despite that, McCann’s introduction also shows just how Dubliners<\/em> has enmeshed itself in our literary heritage. Now you can’t walk across Dublin without some reminder of James Joyce.<\/p>\n

But as much as I enjoyed McCann’s foreword, the real supplementary meat of this volume is Brown’s 35-page introduction, only a bit of which is used to go over Joyce’s publication troubles. Part biography, part literary analysis, this is the best introduction to Dubliners<\/em> I’ve read. It’s not new (the copyright is 1992), but it’s easy to see why Penguin didn’t discard it and go with something else for 2014. This volume is lovely, inside and out.<\/p>\n

I don’t know how long it will take (those following my trek through Sherwood Anderson and Alice Munro know that I stall . . . sometimes for long periods), but I’m taking this centenary as a needed push to get back to my old habits. I’m going to be posting on each story, and I’d love for you to join me. The first post on “The Sisters” is due to go up on June 25.<\/p>\n

As the\u00a0posts\u00a0pop up, links will be added to this table of contents:<\/p>\n