James Joyce Reading Group discussion

Hey Molly,

I'd have to re-read The Sisters, so I'll read it and comment shortly. Any particular aspect of the story are you curious to discuss?

I think it plays an important introduction, because right off the bat there's a death. And Joyce wanted to represent the decay of Dublin, for he saw the city as a dead end. That's why he left for Europe. He was concerned with reflecting the "spiritual decay" and "moral paralysis" (this phrased is used in the oppening sequence of the story) of that city, and he spent the rest of his life doing just that. So, you could say that the Sisters is an excellent introduction to the entire oevure....

The other thing that strikes me about The Sisters is how much compassion these ladies feel for the dead. In a way, you could say that the book, like Finnegans Wake, is circular in design. The collection ends with the theme of the dying or the deceased. But back to the element of compassion...does anyone else in the collection receive this kind of empathy? I think that Joyce is commenting on the element of matyrdom in Catholic Ireland. How only the dead are somehow "sacred" in this society, and that whille people are alive, they are likely to receive more contempt than kindness.

What do you like about The Sisters? Is it your favorite?

My favorite stories are Araby, The Boarding House and The Dead.

Dubliners in general:

No, Joyce has not yet acheived the stylistic and linguistic brilliance that he reached in the mature novels. But his concern for structure, style and language is all in place. The fact that the stories sort of evolve in terms of concerns - moving from the concerns of childhood, through adolescence into adult and public life shows that he was already thinking about larger forms.

And the concern to relfect the universal through the specific (by choosing Dublin as his location) to represent universal concerns was kept in tact throughout all of his work.

Hemingway said these were the greatest short stories ever to make it into print. That's a pretty high compliment, when you read Hemingway's short stories you can feel the influence. And Hemingway's short stories are my favorite works...I'm not such a fan of his novels.

The Dead, is one of the all time great short stories....there are so many characters, and each one gets his or her epiphany, something that only happens to the main character(s) in the earlier stories in the collection. Although Gabriel's epiphany is the great crowning achievement of the entire story. The final meditation in that story is pure poetry...again, the concern with language is really on display in that closing sequence.

I think you're absolutely right about this. If I had taken my time (which is hard to find these days), I would have said more about the nature of this sympathy, and it's level of sincerity.

I especially agree with you about the issue of language and the empty ends it brings to just about any means. It is indeed part of the paralysis Joyce was portraying.

Funny you should mention Beckett...I always see those two in an interesting relation to one another. The first came along and expanded the forms of the novel to the breaking point (like the atom bomb, which closely followed Finnegans Wake), and then Beckett comes along and seems content to examine those microscopic fragments (of prose, of form, of theme and ideas) without any desire to put them all back together again.

Beckett perhaps mocked his master in his removal of all the "dazzling artifice" you find in Joyce (but what glorious and artful artifice it is!). On the other hand, the direction SB went in was perhaps (one of) the only logical next stage of development for the novel, which may offer his mentor a nod by acknowledging that he had exhausted all the previous forms.

It would seem that Beckett and the other existentialists had to reclaim their faith in the word again after all they saw during the days of Europe during WW2. The position of Beckett and Sartre is one of hope as it looks out from despair. The position of "I can't go on.....I'll go on" is, IMO, a positive statement; one that chooses to live in the face of oppression and madness and counter those torments by searching for the self (which Malloy does in the first book of Beckett's splendid trilogy).

Molly, on the lack of quote marks in "An Encounter": perhaps because, in most literature up until that point in time, the non-quoted narrator was omniscient and reliable. Here he could be starting to turn that tradition on its ear.

An Encounter....

"It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us."

What a clever opening for this story!

Yes, a weird story, a great telling of this particular tale. The things that struck me as I read it again was the whole opening section that displays this exotica for the wild life of Indians (BTW: I am half Apache and half Irish on my father's side, half Chickasaw and half Irish on my mother's side).

It seems like a really interesting choice. There are elements of racism...all sorts of cultural misunderstandings, which I believe is all thematically linked to the encounter with the old man. In particular, the way that Father Butler criticizes the "literature" the boys are reading (the history of Rome is far more important than the history of "heathens"). The narrator mentions Mahony's use of slang...(a cultural construct) and makes a point to, in some way, identify all of the passer bys in terms of their cultural identities (the jew, the tramload of business people, the workers, etc.). There is also the "cultural misconception" achieved by, at first, the "ragged girls" the boys chase (while masquerading as Indians) and then "the ragged boys" that come to their aid "....thinking that we were Protestants because Mahony, who was dark complexioned, wore the silver badge of the cricket club in his cap".

And the "encounter"! The rhythms and repetitions while he describes first the old man's inquiry into the boy's relationships with girls and then the whipping monologue. Amazing writing....you can feel the bile rising as Dostoevsky would say.

Back to the theme of trust (that we touched on in other posts), it was interesting to see this second story of the collection end with the two friends coming to a resolve where their friendship is somehow strengthened by the event (at least for the narrator). Does this "double edged" ending predict the end of The Dead?

The final sentence, "And I was penitent; for in my heart I had always despised him a little" (referring to Mahony) seals the epiphany.

So, what is the story about? Is it a story about misunderstandings? Is "the encounter" merely there to serve as a vehicle for the narrator to develop a truer friendship than one based on cultural misunderstandings (playing cowboys and indians)? Is this about the righting of a perspective on how friendships should be built?

If so, "the encounter" is a brilliant device to acheive that end. And it reads almost gleefully inappropriate, especially when you consider Joyce's "intended" audience (Ireland).

It's been a while since I read Two Gallants. I'll read it again and comment shortly.

The circle...yeah, they appear a lot in Joyce. Finnegans Wake is based on a circular theory of time (as posited by Vico). I think that might be the key - that Joyce sees the circle as representing life's journey - and that we are always orbiting each other.

Although Pynchon would have said a 'V'. :*