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“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.

“Clay”

A slice of life for a little Irish Catholic woman who works at a Protestant rescue mission. It’s a tidy existence that Maria seems comfortable with but you can see Joyce’s hints at the fraying of the edges. The climax is an Irish Halloween party (very different from what we think of) with a moment regarding the title that would glide on by if you weren’t familiar with the rules of the game.

“Counterparts”

Portrait of a drunk, a man who copes with his spiritual paralysis by drinking on the job (which he has been doing poorly at), binge drinking with his friends, and then beating his helpless children when he goes home in deference to his general impotence. You can almost feel for Farrington at first but as the day goes on you can see the depth of the rut that he’s in.

“A Little Cloud”

Little Chandler is a sensitive man who reconnects with his friend who had gone to London and made something big of himself. He compares their lives and in a moment of weakness while cradling his own child at home he finds himself resenting his wife and baby as part of his stagnation, part of what holds him back from leading the “romantic” life of his friend.

“The Boarding House”

A tiny drama where a fairly well to do man in his 30s is entrapped in a marriage with the daughter of the woman who runs the house he boards at. You get a sense of the calculating motives of everyone at play, even Bob suddenly realizing how Polly’s brother must be in on it as well given how inflamed he was at a different man making a pass at his sister.

“Two Gallants”

A story about two young men who are swaggering around Dublin. The story is about exploitation, but it’s not exactly sexual but financial as the servant Corley is making time with is being grifted for money, and what the notes describe as a considerable sum of money for either them or for that matter the servant woman: a single gold coin.

“After the Race”

Jimmy is a fortunate young man who basks in the afterglow of a successful car race but his desire to be part of the cosmopolitan happening of the after party is a Pyrrhic endeavor, revealing that he is out of his depth among the reveling elite, losing heavily at a card game whose main winner is—you guessed it—the token Englishman.

“Eveline”

Joyce’s portrait of Irish stagnation now paints a young woman who wants to escape the spiral by emigrating to Buenos Aires with her sailor beau but for a complicated morass of reasons finds herself unable to do so when pull comes to yank. The dichotomies of desire, duty, and despair are an echo of her own mother’s descent into delirium.

“Araby”

Joyce is masterful in crafting stories that are just as entrenched in Irish metaphor as they are relatable in and of themselves. In this case, a young boy desperately in love with his friend’s (older?) sister goes to a bazaar with the intent to buy something for her because she cannot go. The bazaar is almost wound down by the time he gets there, though, and he is consumed with impotent anger.

“An Encounter”

I remember this story! Two of three boys play truant from school, the third one flakes out, and they have an unfulfilling adventure that eventually puts them in the path of a creepy old man who does something that the narrator desperately does not look at. It seems like such an amusing little vignette at first, with Joyce talking about playing Indians and reading adventure pulps.

“The Sisters”

A man reflects on the time when Father Flynn, a major sympathetic in the life of his young self, died. There are a lot of jabs at the Catholicism that Joyce resented, from the excellently timed “God have mercy on his soul” to the notion that Flynn’s faith precipitated a nervous breakdown that permanently affected his health, leading to his decline and death,

When I was in high school, we went to a musical that was based on the last story in this collection, “The Dead”. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t have the faintest clue who Joyce was. I recognized it when we were assigned Dubliners as part of a college class on The Short Story, but I know that back then I read barely more than I needed to to get by. I’m not happy about then, but I’m reading it now.

“Mistress of Death”

This is the last Dark Agnes story. We get one of Howard’s conclusions where the first draft accelerates into a synopsis and this story is headed full bore into the weird, with a resurrected necromancer and a dark tomb with a hole leading to a subterranean nightmare and, uh, a nude woman on a stone slab, because of course she is.

“The Sign of the Sickle”

This is basically a first draft of the “Timur-Lang” poem and, really, the brevity of the final version feels way more polished than this longer, I think “original” version.

“Untitled Fragment”

The previous recap undoubtedly is presented in order to put this fragment in a better context. This the story of Galdan Khan’s last stand against the Muslim onslaught… so maybe I misread what was going on in that recap o.O This would be one of the collection’s most recently based stories, pegged in 1697.

“Recap of Harold Lamb’s “The Wolf Chaser””

Lamb is one of the authors who Howard took his cues from, both in his prose and in his subject matter. This is a recap of something within one of Lamb’s novellas and has the sort of curious language of a folk tale or oral history, describing a man named Hu-Go’s last stand against the Mongolian hordes.

“Untitled Fragment”

This is a sketch of any cosmopolitan city in the Middle East that is slouching purposefully toward a slave auction. There isn’t any real indication of where it might go from here, but history tells us that Howard’s heroes generally do not begin the story as slaves unless they immediately break free from bondage.

“Untitled Fragment”

Idk, this extract has a Scotsman making his case to join a band of what appear to be Spaniards in Outremer—Palestine specifically. It both starts and ends in nowhere.

“Untitled Fragment (The Slave-Princess)”

This is a longform treatment of the prior synopsis. Zuleika is a pitiful character, a princess who has been brought low through three years of slavery. Howard has great ideas and a compelling narrative, but he doesn’t let the interpersonal conflicts breathe to give the not-quite-romance between Amory and Zuleika some weight.

“Untitled Synopsis (The Slave-Princess)”

This would have been a Cormac Fitzgeoffrey story that makes him out to be even more contemptible, rescuing a dancing girl and then plotting with his buddy Amory to pass her off as the daughter of the Sheikh, Anastasia-style. But, wait! It turns out she really IS the daughter of the sheikh, Anastasia-style!! Fitzgeoffrey is gloomy, Fitzgeoffrey is bleak…

“Untitled Fragment (The Track of Bohemund)”

Like “Blades for France”, this story has someone kill a villain and then discover a secret plot in a case of mistaken identity. Unlike most of Howard’s fragments that I’ve seen, we can actually guess how this story pans out as it adds political intrigue to the Battle of Dorylareum in 1097, during the First Crusade.

“The Road of the Eagles”

More middle-east intrigue, this time the heroic force composed of Cossacks attempting to avenge the death of their leader against a Corsair. Kurds, Armenians, Turks, uh, and a Persian dancing girl with ARYAN ANCESTRAL BLOOD :flex:

This story’s philosophical focus is an ethnic essentialism that ascribes Muslims a certain fatality that hinders them from nigh-impossible aspirations.

“The Shadow of the Vulture”

This story is mostly about the Ottoman siege of Vienna in the early 1500s. BUT, we have two main characters: a himbo lush named Gottfried who fought the Sultan a year before and who had his eternal enmity, and the discovered RED SONJA who is a madcap woman warrior who, like Agnes, has no time for anyone’s bullshit but watches out for Gottfried.

“Blades For France”

The second and last complete Dark Agnes story has her caught up in some political intrigue surrounding the Duke of Bourbon, I think Charles III, foiling a kidnapping plot that she just happens to stumble upon after slaying one of the principal members in an indignant rage and taking his sweet-ass cloak. She’s still pretty awesome but I wish she had gotten to kill de Valence!

“Sword Woman”

Agnes du Chastillon is going to be forced to marry a rich pig to ease her father’s waning years. Her sister gives her a dagger, implying that she kill herself rather than marry and let marriage beat her down. In a moment of wild impulse, she murders her groom at the altar and then runs off, getting herself into quite a few scrapes and shootouts. Agnes is BAD. ASS.