*Dubliners was actually written way before those other two books, so maybe the more accurate scenario would be that the literary genius KILLED the zombie and stole HIS identity, then wrote the smart and interesting things.
The book is a collection of short stories about middle class Irish life in the early 20th century. Super Smart Guys Who Have Careers Invested in Saying Nice Things About James Joyce say the stories concern the "stagnation and paralysis" of aforementioned life BUT THIS IS CODE for: these stories? THEY ARE THE BORINGEST.
A boy skips school with a friend and meets a creepy old man and then decides he doesn't really like his friend. A guy doesn't have an affair with a nice lady he meets and then she dies years later and he's like, huh. Etc, etc, etc. Oh, but with alcohol. I'm probably spoiled by Raymond Carver, who writes short stories that are all "here is this snippet of everyday life ISN'T IT HEARTBREAKING/ FASCINATING" whereas Joyce's collection here is all "here is a snippet of everyday life, fancy some toast?"
On the plus side, this has lit a fire under my hiney to finally go read Ulysses, which I hear is a work of operatic genius THIS BIG. I would like to see the difference.
Anywoot, one star out of your mom for all the yawns.
Oh my god, subscribed. This entry was hilarious -- and the Wonka macro is pitch-perfect.
ReplyDeleteRIGHT? I love condescending wonka.
DeleteI had no desire to read this book before reading this review but now I will definitely avoid it!
ReplyDeleteUlysses scares me ....
Is it totally awful of me that I've never read any Raymond Carver (and, in my head, I was confuse/conflate with Raymond Chandler?!)?!
ReplyDeleteI liked Dubliners but Ulysses was nothing like these stories. Nothing at all. Do yourself a favor and if you try reading it, don't quit until the last chapter- best payoff in dead white guy literature ever.
ReplyDeleteIs The Dead in Dubliners? That was pretty okay. And the wanky part of me enjoyed A Portrait of a Young Artist.
ReplyDeleteUlysses. I wrote a bunch of essays for that in uni, but I only read the sections that I needed, and it seemed to work. But one day, one day this will happen. I think.
This is the only Joyce I've read and didn't mind some of the stories. I keep telling myself I'll read Ulysses but doubt it will actually ever happen. I'll be interested to see your review. This one was too funny!
ReplyDeleteOkay then, this will probably not be my first Joyce. Hilarious review.
ReplyDeleteUgh...memories flooding back of enforced reading list at university which included the torturous Dubliners. I attempted to "lose/destroy" this book on multiple occasions e.g. leaving it at uni, dropping it in the river when I went skiing but it still managed to find its way back into my hands. Could not believe a book could be so monotonous!
ReplyDeleteI found your blog through your store's website (I want to visit but I'm an hour away in Nobookstoreland aka Hampton Roads) and although I have no opinion on Joyce, having never read him, I want to encourage you to track down a few Jeeves books and read them. The Code of the Woosters is a good one. It would be a damn shame if your only exposure to Wodehouse was Psmith.
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ReplyDeleteSo, y'know, it was only after I made the comment and turned my computer off that I realised that I even got the freakin title wrong. Good one, me.
ReplyDeleteDubliners was my own first experience with Joyce. I have to admit that I liked the stories very much, thoughtful and period-specific as they were, but I wasn't blown away. Now, Ulysses BLEW ME AWAY. Double for Finnegans Wake, which I'm still making my way through (it's that dense). But beware. You'll be disappointed if you go into Ulysses thinking that you're about to read a great story - the genius is in the language and technique used to present the heroic in the everyday. Can't wait to read what you think ...
ReplyDeleteBut...
ReplyDeleteit's perfect.
it's perfect start to finish. few things in this world have ever been so perfect. especially the dead, the most wonderful and perfect short story ever written.
and it's the most logical precursor to his later work.
and i find that, like all of his work, it's deeply rewarding to those who will take the time to enter into it and figure out what he's trying to look at and what kind of story he's interested in telling, and it is deeply unrewarding to those who expect him to tell the same story lines that have been told before by countless others.
thank god for dubliners.
i'll try not to do this too often. when i can't sleep i get opinionated. i hope i do this late enough in the thread that it's not so irksome. i do like the blog very much, it just hurts sometimes.
But I do note that Raymond Carver's stories did much better in mass media Magazines than Joyce's did, so maybe you have a point...
James! Nono, stay up and get opinionated and come comment ALL THE TIMES. I love it.
DeleteI know you have a deep-seated love for the Joyce and I FEEL YOU, for I also have love for authors that other people are like "meh, he's the boringest." BUT HERE'S BEITH THE THINGETH- I haven't studied Joyce at the collegiate level and I never will, so whatever it is that you're seeing that I'm missing, I'll probably never see.
I'm not unwilling to put work into what I read (obviously, since I write about it), but it's not the work of say, an NYU undergrad. I approached Dubliners with the same method I do everything else, which is a sloppy and amateurish method, but is the method of most readers who aren't literal students of the trade. It's mostly this: What is X saying/doing here? What is X doing with language that's new and interesting. The answer to Dubliners was I DON'T KNOW BECAUSE IT'S SO BLOODY BORING.
But I AM going to read Ulysses, which I have a sneaking suspicion that I will love.
*and for the record, I don't actually much like Raymond Carver
For the record, I read Dubliners and Portrait of an Artist and Ulysses all before I had ever taken a college literature course. I then signed up for a Joyce class because I so loved them and knew that being forced to re-read them would be good for me.
ReplyDeleteSorry, but I have to say that the scene in " The Dead," where Stephen watches his wife at the top of the stairs, is one of the most romantic literary scenes ever written. Really beautiful - who knew Joyce could do that
ReplyDeleteHi, I'm new to your blog but I love your reviewing style. I've read The Dubliners and Ulysses in an academic-type setting. The funny thing is, I liked Dubliners more than I liked Ulysses, probably because I read it AFTER Ulysses and it consisted of short stories, but I didn't LOVE either of them. Ulysses is a total mindscrew and the only reason I actually got through it was because the whole course was based on the one book. This was the book that made me form the opinion that post modernism can just be so uber pretentious and alienating. I'm thoroughly convinced that most of the time people just pretend to understand it.
ReplyDeleteGive Ulysses a chance. I think it's a good fit for your anti-reverence stance. If you take it too seriously, it's a slog. But if you approach it with a sense of humor (which I'm pretty sure Joyce did in the writing of it), it's pretty fun.
ReplyDeleteSure, it's still slow going, and sometimes hard to follow. But apart from lots of obscure references, it's pretty down to earth in content. Seriously, the book's two claims to fame (apart from unreadableness) are an outhouse scene and a masturbation on the beach scene. And even the obscure references are often lowbrow: as likely to be about soap brands or country folk songs as they are about latin poets or whatever.
The reputation of the book as a Very Serious Work of Genius is not true to its roots. Joyce was a bit of a snob who loved classical erudition, but he was also a smartass who loved a good joke, had a dirty mind, and enjoyed the cultural detritus of the popular culture of his day, and Ulysses reflects that.
The high reverence for Ulysses was the invention of late 20th century literary theorists and English professors who made a living out of interpreting texts. The complexity of Ulysses guaranteed them lifetime job security in the interpretation business, so they crowned it the new holy book, a virtual Talmud, to justify their careers. In the process, they sucked the fun out of a very fun book.