The Classics Book Club of Tacoma selected Dubliners by James Joyce for the discussion at King's Books on Wednesday, January 8, 2014. Dubliners is a fairly short book of 100-200 pages consisting of fifteen short stories. All the stories take place in Dublin, Ireland that I believe was Joyce's origin city. The book was published sometime in the 1910's early in Joyce's literary career. He has also written the novels Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnigan's Wake. I've gathered that those books are difficult and pretentious. My wife read Portrait of an Artist when she was in high school and did not like it. Surprisingly, I found Dubliners to be fairly accessible. The stories all seem to be slightly negative but that seems to be the nature of short stories. Joyce includes some insightful and even humorous writing. My favorite story was "Ivy Day at the Committee Room" about canvassers for politicians griping aimlessly about Irish politics.
Though the stories were fairly readable, there were a couple of words I didn't know. The first story, "The Sisters," had the sentence "I crammed my mouth with stirabout for fear I might give utterance to my anger." (p. 4) Stirabout sounds like some kind of stew. I couldn't find it in my Random House dictionary. Other new words that had to do with food appeared in the last story, "The Dead" that's more of a novella. At the party for Epiphany, "The top of the closed square piano served also as a sideboard for viands and sweets." (p. 142) Viands are articles of food, especially choice foods. They also serve "two minsters of jelly, red and yellow." (p. 154) According to my dictionary, minster is either 1) a church connected to a monastery or 2) any large or important church, as a cathedral. It must have another meaning in Irish English. The story "A Mother" includes the sentence "His magniloquent western name was the moral umbrella upon which he balanced the fine problem of his finances." (p. 108) Magniloquent means marked by a lofty or grandiose style.
There were several relatable references of varying degrees. In the story "The Boarding House," Mr. Doran's instincts tell him "Once you are married, you are done for." (p. 52) That sounds like Mr. Verdant Green. In "A Painful Case," in Mr. Duffy's home, "A complete Wordsworth stood at one end of the lowest shelf …" (p. 87) That means some Irish are Laker fans, even though they're Celtic. In "Ivy Day in the Committee Room," a minor character is described as such "It was impossible to say whether he wore a clergyman's collar or a layman's, because the collar of his shabby frock-coat, the uncovered buttons of which reflected the candlelight, was turned up about the neck." (p. 104) We learned about frock-coats from fellow SOB (Sound of the Baskervilles) member James Romnes. Also in "Ivy Day …," they put bottle of stout on the hob until their corks fly out with a "pok" sound. This reminded me of the restaurant Pok Pok in Portland, OR.
Joyce is an excellent writer whose prose ranges from detailed descriptions to profound insight to humor. About the main character of "A Little Cloud" Joyce writes "He was called Little Chandler because, though he was but slightly under the average stature, he gave one the idea of being a little man." (p. 55) I liked a couple of quotes from "A Painful Case." The main character, Mr. Duffy, has "an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense." (p. 77) Another character, Captain Sirico, "had dismissed his wife so sincerely from his gallery of pleasures that he did not suspect that anyone would take an interest in her." (p. 78) That minor character in "Ivy Day …" is also described "He opened his very long mouth suddenly to express disappointment and at the same time opened wide his very bright blue eyes to express pleasure and surprise." (p. 91) In "The Dead," Freddy Malins is described as "a young man of about forty." (p. 144)
The stories contain many references to the Roman Catholic religion that was dominant in Dublin in the early 20th Century. The first story, "The Sisters," is about the death of a priest. In "Grace" a character remarks "It's a curious thing about the Jesuit order. Every other order of the church had to be reformed but the Jesuit order was never once reformed. It never once fell away." (p. 125) The last story, "The Dead" takes place on the feast of the Epiphany during Christmastime. The character Gabriel mentions the Christy Minstrels. One of the singing groups played on the Sounds of the Season Music Choice channel was The New Christy Minstrels. A final sentence of the story is "Better to pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion than fade and wither dismally with age." (p. 178)
We had a great discussion on January 8 at King's Books. There were eleven of us including at least three new people. We started about going around, saying our names and which of the stories was our favorite. We discussed "The Sisters," "An Encounter," "Araby," "Eveline," "The Boarding House," "A Little Cloud," "Counterparts," "Clay," "A Painful Case," "Ivy Day at the Committee Room," and "The Dead." We focused on the theme of "paralysis" or the inability to act. The priest in "The Sisters" suffers paralysis after a stroke. Little Chandler in "The Little Cloud" laments how he could have achieved more if he had applied himself. We also discussed religion, Catholicism, Irish politics, lack of father figures, treatment of women, fooling yourself with infatuation, epiphanies, and more. We talked about "The Dead" longer than the others. It was made into a movie, the last film directed by John Huston. One participant talked about his time in Dublin. Another was from England and insisted that Ireland was part of the UK. For February, we planned to discuss Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley, a book about a bookseller.
On Thursday, January 15, I went to the Museum of Glass. It was free after 5:00 pm because it was the third Thursday of the month. They had an exhibit of glass cylinders made by Dale Chihuly inspired by Ireland. One set of them was inspired by Ulysses by James Joyce. One had a scene of a street in Dublin and another had a rendering of James Joyce. A third showed one of the characters and another was even a tribute to the original publisher. I mentioned the exhibit to the Classics Book Club.
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