About this title: In these masterful stories, steeped in realism, Joyce creates an exacting portrait of his native city, showing how it reflects the general decline of Irish culture and civilization. Joyce compels attention by the power of its unique vision of the world, its controlling sense of the truths of human experience.
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Edition: Rep Sub
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Date Published: 1996-08-01
ISBN-13:9780140247749ISBN:0140247742
Description: Very good. Very minimal damage to the cover (no holes or tears, only minimal scuff marks), in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, minimal to no highlighting/under. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Date Published: 1996-08-01
ISBN-13:9780140247749ISBN:0140247742
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780140247749. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780140247749ISBN:0140247742
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780140247749ISBN:0140247742
Description: Acceptable. -Acceptable: A readable copy. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (the dust cover may be missing). Pages can include considerable notes--in pen or highlighter--but the notes cannot obscure the text. About Austin eBooks Austin eBooks is committed to providing each customer with the highest standard of customer service! We add inventory to our store daily, and guarantee order processing and shipment within 2 business days. read more
"I preferred the earlier stories, possibly just because reading about young people is a pleasant thing to connect to. But all of them were fully realized and had moments of joy, of Irish-ness. I don't see any overarching theme being addressed. The characters are all in their own worlds, but it didn't strike me that Joyce was criticizing them for it or approving of them. Their pain and the ways they hinder their own happiness are weaved so elegantly through each story. That's what the reader connects to. "Ivy Day in the Committe Room" was the only story I didn't much like. I didn't connect to anything in it really and I always get annoyed when a short story has so many characters. So it was just fine. But "The Sisters," "Araby," "A Painful Case," "Clay," "Counterparts" and "The Dead" were all perfect. One feels wonder, longing, regret and most of all mischievousness in them. That sense of mischief is the most recognizable Irish quality, and it's present in every single story. I've read critics saying how some fiction is "keenly observed" and the like. These tales truly are observed and recorded, but never at the expense of the characters' integrity or dignity, nor at a distance emotion can't reach. I think it's very Irish to coexist peaceably other people's foibles and not hold a dysfunctional level of resentment. I'm flipping through the book and realizing every story was worth reading. The depiction of an alcoholic father in "Counterparts" is heartbreaking, as are the other stories. It's all just beautiful."
"The only Joyce I've read is Ulysses and I've found I went about it wrong, seeing now that I should go Portrait, Dubliners, Finnegan's, and then the big U. Nevertheless I found these stories absolutely captivating, and not only because I'm head over heels for a Joycean afficiado slash professor either. Though that did enlighten things a bit.
I was especially taken with Araby: from a young boy's point-of-view but captures exactly what it is to crush out on someone, saying that "her image accompanied me even in places most hostile to romance."
I enjoyed the banter in Two Gallants, as one of the gallants describes his ladyfriend (or I guess that's what you'd call her) saying he was "afraid man, she'd get in the family way. But she's up to the dodge." I guess that references the pull-out method? He was definitely a cad but I liked him anyway.
Near the end of the collection, you kind of get put through the wringer as the stories get more and more depressing (and the subjects age as well: it begins with a child, ends with spinstery aunts and ghosts). Little Chandler (A Little Cloud) pretty much broke my heart and made me think of why his annoying friend "made it" in London, the squeaky wheel gets the grease" as they say."
"This book just wasn't doing it for me. I was about half-way through when I decided to put it down, so am giving it 2.5 stars for what I read. Maybe one day I will come back to it. But, it just isn't representative of the Joyce that I love. You know, the crazy one that writes about dirty things."
"The worst of it is that I know I've read this before. Some of the stories I would have read more than once before too. So, why is it that so few of them have stayed with me?
There are other stories I've read in my life that I could nearly recite to you and bits of poetry I quite literally could recite - in fact, one of my less amusing party tricks is to do just that with endless tracts of The Waste Land. One of the less attractive costs of over-indulging in alcohol...
I think my main problem with these stories is that many of the characters seem like they have been hired from central casting. The violent father who beats his son after being bettered in an arm wrestle, the not-very-attractive woman in love with someone else's husband, or the dirty old man first masturbating over young boys and then looking for an excuse to spank one of them.
(I'm assuming the old man masturbating isn't just my dirty mind -
"I say! Look what he's doing!"
As I neither answered nor raised my eyes Mahony exclaimed again:
"I say... He's a queer old josser!")
This time around the two stories I liked the most were A Painful Case and The Dead.
In many of the stories in this collection it is possible to say that it is impossible to really know what is going on in the mind of someone else. In A Painful Case one of the things that becomes apparent is how difficult it is to even know what is really going on in our own mind. Repression, self-justification and guilt merge to leave the central character of this story a mess. The central character's denial is both evident in this story and laden with bitter irony. I found this story to be precisely what its title claimed it would be - painful.
The Dead is likewise painful and likewise a story that requires the reader to bring their understanding of human emotions and repressions to the tale. If I'm likely to have missed the point of any of the stories here, I think it might well be this one. There is a strange and almost sexual play going on with the central character, Gabriel, and Miss Ivors. At least, that is what I took her role to be in this story. Much of the start of the story is taken up with Gabriel and Miss Ivors sparring with each other. Gabriel generally comes out of these matches having been bested. He seems genuinely unaware of how he is being played by Miss Ivors.
But then she is gone and she goes before what, until this point in the story, we have been lead to believe is proceeding towards the climax of the story. Except this isn't the climax we had anticipated. The sexual jealousy that simply has to be at the core of this story is not between the parties we start off believing it would be.
If there is no god, if there is only human psychology, then omniscient narration (where the author can see all and understand all in the minds of all the characters) is also anathema. The problem is that viewing a story out of the eyes on a single character inevitably (in the best of fiction) gives only a partial view and sometimes not the truest view of what is happening in the story. At the end of this story I wasn't sure if I should feel sorrier for Gabriel, or for Gretta or for the young man who dies out of love of her or for Ireland. And perhaps that's the point of life - that we are left uncertain who to feel sorry for and our sorrow depends only on where we choose to lay stress on the narrative. And would this have been a different story if told through Gretta's eyes? Just how safe should Gabriel feel knowing Gretta's young love is dead? Poor bastard, I say, that he doesn't seem to realise he'll never be able to compete in what is an infinitely unfair game. A game he had lost before he started to play.
And that is as good a definition of love as I can think of.
Apparently, this story was made into a film. God knows how this story could have been made into a film and I'm glad I'll never see it. I guess that at least there would have been plenty of singing - and that can't have been a bad thing."
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