Status Updates From Dubliners

I thoroughly appreciate Appendix III. This has 75 pages of exhaustive notes that explain some of the context of Joyce’s writings, especially when dealing with historical, biblical, political, and contemporary allusions. It breaks the book up a bit when reading it through for the first time but it’s a fantastic addendum.

“The Dead”

Quintessentially Dubliners, this story follows (mostly) Gabriel Conroy at his aunts’ holiday party and then beyond, to his wife’s soulful intimation of her teenage love, Michael, who she feels died rather than live without her. It’s an excellent story and touches on so many of the themes that Joyce highlights specifically in the preceding stories.

“Grace”

Mr Kernon has “fallen down the stairs” at a bar and has appeared to have lost his money, perhaps to a debt-collector. Much of this story is a dialogue where Kernon’s friends come to call at his house and have discussions that eventually become fumblingly theological in an attempt to bolster his faith as a converted Catholic, him having been born a Protestant.

“A Mother”

This is some Dance Moms style shit where Machiavellian Mrs. Kearney torpedos her daughter’s burgeoning musical career over the eight guineas she was sort of promised for four concerts, holding the final, big night hostage not once but twice, bluff called on the second. Not only is her daughter’s reputation ruined, but hers as a middle-class lady is shot through even more so.

“Ivy Day in the Committee Room”

This piece sketches out political realities in Dublin and Ireland through a group of men who have been canvassing for an election and have now gathered up in their meeting room. The notes add tons of invaluable context regarding Parnell and subtleties which are lost to myself, an American reader some 120 years after this was written.

“A Painful Case”

Mr. Duffy, an intellectual, begins a sort of affair with a married woman, a friendship with an erotic undertone that he is loathe to cross out of his high-mindedness. When things go sour, Duffy undergoes an amazing transformation, from reviling his would-be mistress to being saturated with empathy for her as he finally senses his own profound loneliness.