Dubliners: Text and Criticism; Revised Edition (The Viking Critical Library)

In two ways it has taken me sixty-four years to get to Dublin. First, to the city itself, which I visited for the first time two weeks ago. Second, to read this classic collection of stories by James Joyce, which, coincidentally, I finished while in Dublin. It was a great treat to walk the city seeing buildings, streets, and parks that I had just encountered on the pages of DUBLINERS.My previous reading of Joyce had been limited to "Ulysses", from about forty years ago. I was struck by how different DUBLINERS is from what I remembered of "Ulysses". Here, Joyce is much more conventional; his prose, rather than being flamboyant or convoluted, is relatively straightforward and fastidious. Yet the stories are rich -- in their characters, their humanity, their symbolism, and their sense of place. There is not a clunker in the lot and two of the stories -- "Araby" and "The Dead" -- are as fine as any short stories I have ever read.I read the edition from the Viking Critical Library, which includes notes to the stories as well as eleven essays. The notes are printed at the end of the volume and therefore it is cumbersome to read them while one is reading the text itself. But that's okay; one should read these stories straight through, at least on an initial reading. I adopted the practice of turning to the notes and skimming through them after I had read a story; I found some of the notes unnecessary, others edifying, and a few nigh essential. I also read six of the essays of literary criticism; none was overly academic and each, in varying degrees, was helpful. Accordingly, the Viking edition gets a high recommendation from me for anyone interested in reading, or re-reading (as I hope to do), this classic of English literature.

What a great treasure I have found. It has helped me go through Joyce's ways in a better and clearer way...

good service, very helpful text

An amazing collection of stories!!

ex James Joyce left Dublin in 1912, never to return, but he continued to live in his city spiritually, psychically, artistically, and emotionally for the next twenty-nine years up until his death in 1941. Embedded in his consciousness were its streets and squares, its habits and tics, the talk, the music, and the daily life of its people. The city was shrouded under the Catholic Church which helped to make the city a confining, stultifying, parochial place--a small gossipy setting where everyone seemed to know too much about everyone else. In the fifteen stories of "Dubliners" Joyce uses naturalistic dialogue with an Irishness to it that comes across so vividly. "That takes the biscuit," echoes in my mind. Real people, believable with all their foibles and virtues, emerge along with the Irish love of drink and music, The sense of place in Joyce's Dublin is palpable, keenly felt. In his stories are schemers, freeloaders, blowhards, buffoons, and women living in an unliberated, repressive society, but Irish women always had an independence and a rebellious spirit that many females in other nationalities lacked.Some of his stories are slice of life vignettes rather than crafted surprise ending tales like O. Henry's so some just seem to stop abruptly with an inconclusive ending as events happen in real life."Eveline" is about a woman afraid to escape from her restrictive but safe home. "The Dead" is, of course, Joyce's masterpiece which combines all of his narrative and descriptive talents. "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" has small-time vote canvassers recalling the Irish patriot Parnell. Read "Two Gallants" to see how Joyce cleverly sketches character and moves his people about on the streets of Dublin. That city is the main character in this book, a place where the people and the city are inextricably entwined. The city of that era will never die as long as this book is absorbed into the readers' souls and psyches. A book to be imbibed and embedded in memory.

Dubliners is a collection of James Joyce's first writings that took the form of fifteen short stories. It is the perfect introductory exposure to the author. An added bonus is the valuable interpretation and criticism that follows the text. This is the case with Robert Scholes illuminating edition. The book sparks a fascination with Joyce's writing, as rightfully it should and is well worth the purchase price!

When he was a young man, James Joyce abandoned his hometown of Dublin, and yet, he never wrote about any other place. He had also rejected Catholicism, and yet all his characters are dominated by it. DUBLINERS, Joyce's collection of short stories which set the standard for the genre, is filled with characters who come to terrible revelations (which he called "epiphanies") about how their lives had been scarred by the provincialism of Dublin, the divisiveness of its politics, and the oppression of religion. By extension, this is how Joyce percieved humanity at the dawn of modernism.The stories range from the psychologically simple ("Counterparts" and "A Little Cloud") to the extraordinarily complex ("A Painful Case" and "The Dead"). But what is common throughout is the feel for Dublin just after the turn of the last century. The readers see the cobblestones, the chimneys, the trams and carts, the churches, and the street lamps. More importantly, the readers feel the tensions underlying the public smiles and infrequent bursts of confidence that the characters exhibit.The extra value of this Viking Critical edition is, of course, the criticism. The valuable notes help make the understanding of the reading much easier. And the critical essays, each single one, provides a deeper understanding of how to put these stories in a larger frame.

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