Dubliners audiobook

Life is full of missed opportunities and hard decisions. Sometimes it’s difficult to know what to actually do. Dubliners creates an image of an ever movie city, of an ever moving exchange of people who experience the reality of life. And that’s the whole point: realism. Not everything goes well, not everything is perfectly constructed. Life is random and unpredictable. If we’re not careful it may escape from us entirely. There are two types of stories in Dubliners. The first, and by far the most effective, are those associated with despair, nihilism and death. The second type deals with more ordinary aspects of modern life, the representation of the city and social exchanges. As a collection they provide an image of dark, murky city struggling to cope with the problems associated with rapid urbanisation. The stories do not intertwine, but you are left with the impression that they are not that far from each other: their proximity feels close as you read further into each one. The true mastery of Joyce’s writing reveals itself in what he doesn’t say, the subtle suggestions, the lingering questions, as each story closes without any sense of full resolution. And, again, is this not true of real life? In narrative tradition there is a structured beginning, middle and end, but in the reality of existence it doesn’t quite work this way. Life carries on. It doesn’t have a form of narrative closure, a convenient wrapping up of plot, after each wound we take in life. It carries on. We carry on. And for the Dubliners isolation carries on. “He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor hear her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.”

Dubliners, James Joyce In his stories, Joyce combines heterogeneous elements. Poetic mysticism is expressed in a naturalistic way. They pay attention to sound and melody for illustration. In their works, they always use humor and irony and references to myths and holy books. If the reader can grasp all these mysteries, he will be glad that he may not be able to read any other work. Joyce is a language engineer before he became a writer. Joyce's particular view of language, and the word, as the cells that make up the body of the story, is so profound and original that critics are still struggling to uncover the vague layers of his stories. The sections are hidden side by side in new words, invented by Joyce himself. There are two completely different opinions about Joyce. Some consider him a complex lunatic. That his conflict with language has led him astray, and others who say he has unparalleled talent, which is beyond human comprehension today. Joyce's innovation in language is unbelievable. Not only do they bring to life the ancient words of their language; They also make words in their works. Sometimes, words with more than a hundred letters, or a combination of several words, that make up a word, show a multiple sense. Multi-layered words that tell and convey several secrets. According to Joyce, the world is in bad shape. In which lowly joys and poverty and depravity threaten human life. The book embraces and embraces a collection of fifteen short stories, including issues such as Irish history; Human beings; Death; Love; Life; Fear and ...; Have written.Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.The stories:The Sisters – After the priest Father Flynn dies, a young boy who was close to him and his family deals with his death superficially.An Encounter – Two schoolboys playing truant encounter a middle-aged man.Araby – A boy falls in love with the sister of his friend, but fails in his quest to buy her a worthy gift from the Araby bazaar.Eveline – A young woman weighs her decision to flee Ireland with a sailor.After the Race – College student Jimmy Doyle tries to fit in with his wealthy friends.Two Gallants – Two con men, Lenehan and Corley, find a maid who is willing to steal from her employer.The Boarding House – Mrs Mooney successfully manoeuvres her daughter Polly into an upwardly mobile marriage with her lodger Mr Doran.A Little Cloud – Little Chandler's dinner with his old friend Ignatius Gallaher casts fresh light on his own failed literary dreams. The story also reflects on Chandler's mood upon realising that his baby son has replaced him as the centre of his wife's affections.Counterparts – Farrington, a lumbering alcoholic scrivener, takes out his frustration in pubs and on his son Tom.Clay – The old maid Maria, a laundress, celebrates Halloween with her former foster child Joe Donnelly and his family.A Painful Case – Mr Duffy rebuffs Mrs Sinico, then, four years later, realises that he has condemned her to loneliness and death.Ivy Day in the Committee Room – Minor politicians fail to live up to the memory of Charles Stewart Parnell.A Mother – Mrs Kearney tries to win a place of pride for her daughter, Kathleen, in the Irish cultural movement, by starring her in a series of concerts, but ultimately fails.Grace – After Mr Kernan injures himself falling down the stairs in a bar, his friends try to reform him through Catholicism.The Dead – Gabriel Conroy attends a party, and later, as he speaks with his wife, has an epiphany about the nature of life and death. At 15–16,000 words this story has also been classified as a novella. The Dead was adapted into a film by John Huston, written for the screen by his son Tony and starring his daughter Anjelica as Mrs. Conroy.عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «دوبلینیها»؛ «مردگان»؛ «دوبلینی ها و نقد دوبلینی ها»؛ نویسنده: جیمز جویس؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز پانزدهم اکتبر سال 1984میلادیعنوان: دوبلینی ها؛ نویسنده: جیمز جویس؛ مترجم: پرویز داریوش؛ تهران، اشرفی، 1346؛ در 227ص؛ چاپ دیگر: انتشارات آبان؛ 1362؛ چاپ دیگر: تهران، اساطیر، 1371؛ در 214ص؛ شابک: 9643312410؛ موضوع: داستانهای کوتاه از نویسندگان ایرلند - سده 20ممترجم: محمدعلی صفریان، تهران، نیلوفر، چاپ نخست 1372، در 300ص و 143ص؛ چاپ دوم 1378؛ چاپ سوم، 1383؛ چاپ پنجم 1388؛ شابک 9789644481024؛ دوبلینی ها ص 1، تا ص 300، ترجمه صفریان، و ص 1، تا ص 143، آینه ای در راه، مقالاتی در نقد دوبلینیها با ترجمه صالح حسینیمترجم: صالح حسینی، تهران، نیلوفر، چاپ نخست 1389، در 453ص؛ شابک 9789644484681؛ مترجم: سولماز واحدی کیا؛ تهران، کوله پشتی؛ 1389؛ در 200ص؛ شابک 9786005337976؛ با عنوان: مردگان؛ مترجم: علیرضا متین نیا؛ مشهد، سخن گستر؛ 1389؛ در 228ص؛ شابک 9789644778551؛ مترجم: امیر علیجانپور؛ تهران، آوای مکتوب؛ 1394؛ در 232ص؛ شابک 9786007364208؛ گویا همین پانزده داستان کوتاه را با عنوان: «بهترین داستانهای کوتاه جیمز جویس»؛ با ترجمه جناب «احمد گلشیری» انتشارات نگاه در سال 1388؛ در402ص منتشر کرده استجویس در داستانهایش، عناصر ناهمگون را باهم درمی‌آمیزند؛ عرفان شاعرانه را، با شیوه ی ناتورالیستی، بیان میکنند، برای تصویرپردازی به صدا و آهنگ صدا، توجه دارند؛ در آثارشان، هماره، از طنز و کنایه و اشاره به اساطیر، و کتاب‌های مقدس، سود می‌برند؛ خوانشگر اگر بتواند این همه رمز و کنایه را دریابد، به لذتی می‌رسد، که شاید از خوانش هیچ اثر دیگری نتواند؛ «جویس» پیش از آنکه نویسنده باشند، یک مهندس زبان هستند؛ نگاه ویژه‌ ی «جویس» به زبان، و واژه، به عنوان سلول‌های تشکیل‌ دهنده‌ ی بدنه‌ ی داستان، چنان ژرف و بدیع است، که هنوز منتقدان، درگیر کشف لایه‌ های مبهم داستان‌های ایشان هستند؛ بخش‌هایی که در لا‌ به‌ لای کلماتی نو، که خود «جویس» اختراع کرده اند، پنهانند؛ در باره «جویس»، دو نظر کاملاً مخالف وجود دارد؛ عده‌ ای او را، دیوانه‌ ی مغلق‌ گو می‌دانند، که درگیری‌ اش با زبان، او را به بیراهه کشانده، و دیگرانی که میگویند؛ ایشان استعدادی بی‌نظیر دارند، که از درک انسان امروز فراتر است؛ نوآوری «جویس» در زبان، ناباورانه است؛ ایشان نه تنها واژه‌ های کهن زبان خویش را زنده می‌کنند؛ بلکه در آثارشان واژه‌ سازی نیز می‌کنند؛ گاه، واژگانی با بیش از صد حرف، و یا ترکیبی از چندین کلمه، که یک کلمه را تشکیل می‌دهد، تا حسی چندگانه را نشان دهد؛ واژه‌ گانی چند لایه که چندین راز را باز میگویند و می‌رسانند؛ به باور «جویس» دنیا بد مخمصه‌ ای ‌است، که در آن شادی‌های حقیر و فقر و رذالت، زندگی انسانها را تهدید می‌کند؛ کتاب مجموعه ای از پانزده داستان کوتاه را، در بر و در آغوش خویش گرفته، که در آنها به مسایلی نظیر: تاریخ ایرلند؛ انسانها؛ مرگ؛ عشق؛ زندگی؛ ترس و... می‌پردازندبیشتر شخصیت‌های داستان‌های این مجموعه، دوباره در کتاب «اولیس» فرا خوانده می‌شوند؛ داستان از نثر بسیار قدرتمندی برخوردار است، و جزو شاهکارهای ادبی به شمار است؛ مجموعه داستان یک سیر ادبی را از ابتدا تا انتها در بر می‌گیرد که به داستان بلند «مردگان» ختم می‌شود؛ اسامی داستان‌های کوتاه: خواهرها: کشیش «فلین» می‌میرد و پسر جوان که همراه با خانواده‌ اش برای مراسم ختم او آمده‌ اند یاد خاطرات و کارهای کشیش می‌افتد...؛ برخورد: یک بچه از مدرسه بیرون می‌رود...؛ عربی: پسری عاشق دختری در محله‌ شان می‌شود، او به بازار «عربی» می‌رود تا برای دختر هدیه‌ ای بخرد...؛ اولین: دختری خانواده‌ اش را ترک می‌کند تا همراه با ملوانی برود...؛ همتایان؛ پس از مسابقه: مردی با دوست و همدرسه‌ ای قدیمی خود روبرو می‌شود...؛ دو زن‌ نواز: دو مرد زنی را دنبال می‌کنند تا با او طرح دوستی بریزند...؛ ابری کوچک: مردی همراه با دوست قدیمی‌ اش مشغول خوردن ناهار است و به یاد آرزوهایی که داشته میافتدیک روز در ستاد انتخابات: کارکنان یک ستاد انتخاباتی دور هم گرد آمده‌ اند و از پارنل یکی از رهبران مبارزات ایرلند یاد می‌کنند...؛ گل؛ پانسیون؛ یک حادثهٔ دردناک؛ مردگان؛ تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 06/07/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 25/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

(Edited for typos, pictures added 11/15/2021)Dubliners is a collection of short stories published in 1914. The concluding story is “The Dead,” which has been cited as “the best short story ever written.” You can see that on GR’s entry for the story. We are told in a brief introduction that Joyce was a pioneer in popularizing the structure of the modern short story as focused on “a fleeting but decisive episode.” Elsewhere I’ve read of the focus of the modern short story described as “the moment.” So, is The Dead the greatest short story ever written? I’ll add my two cents: I first read it 50 years ago in college. I’ve always remembered the ending like I read it yesterday. How many of the hundreds of short stories I have read since can I say that about? Many of the stories are very short - only four or five pages. Here are a few samples:In The Sisters, their brother, a priest, dies at home. Was it because he broke a chalice during mass shortly before his death?In An Encounter, two boys play hooky from school and encounter a strange man. His conversation is such that it seems that he might be a molester.In Araby, a young boy lives in a house in which a priest died a short time ago. The young boy is frustrated in buying a present at a bazaar for his puppy love.In Eveline, a young woman debates leaving her father and running off to Buenos Aires with her lover.In Two Gallants, a young man waits to see the result of his best friend’s visit to a young woman they assume is a prostitute.In A Little Cloud, a man is invested in his friend’s success in London. He determines that you have to “go away” for success. He feels trapped in Ireland by his wife and baby.In A Painful Case, a man frequently visits a married woman and her daughter at home. The husband thinks he’s visiting because he’s interested in the daughter. He’s not. Some of the stories are modern in outlook, bringing up issues of feminism and racism. The Dead touches on both issues in conversation around the Christmas table. An elderly aunt is furious about boys getting preference over girls in a choir. A man around the table raises the issue of no one appreciating a great tenor. “Is it because he’s only a black?” The story, A Mother, focuses on a dispute over a payment for a daughter singing in a choir. “They wouldn’t have dared to have treated her like that if she had been a man.”Top photo: Grafton Street, Dublin, early 1900s from vintag.esA still from a movie made of The Dead, (Anjelica Huston and Donal McCann) from irishcentral.com Postcard of Dublin in the 1920s from monksbarn.wordpress.comThe author from theculturetrip.com

In The Dead, the last story in this collection, Gabriel Conroy recounts an anecdote about his grandfather and his horse, Johnny, who used to walk in circles to drive the grinding stone in a mill. One day, the grandfather harnessed the horse and took him out to a military review. But Johnny, disoriented as he passed by a statue of William III, started circling the monument stubbornly as if he were back at the mill. This little tale within a tale encapsulates perfectly the spirit and essence of Joyce’s Dubliners.At first glance, Joyce’s stories could be read as a series of naturalistic vignettes, “slices of life” depicting the insignificant day-to-day misfortunes of a few random Irish characters at the turn of the 20th century. Children playing in the street, young girls playing the piano, working men getting drunk and mouthing off at the pub… In a way, that is indeed what Dubliners is about: the shabby neighbourhoods, the outdated manière d’être, the constricted lives, the frustrated yearnings and the spiritual bleakness of those times. Dubliners is also a twin of A Portrait of the Artist, where Joyce focuses on minor characters rather than on Stephen Dedalus.Of course, there is more to these tales than meets the eye. Firstly, most of these trivial stories hark back to deeper cultural, even archetypal models: the Arthurian quest (Araby), or the voyage from Hell to Heaven (Grace) – Johnny, the horse, as an eternal and hopeless Sisyphus, etc. Secondly, Joyce also infuses these tales with the political arguments of his time: the debates around Irish identity, Protestantism and the influence of the Catholic Church, the unionist and the separatist movements (still topical today), and the general opinion that Ireland was being strangled by the crown of England – again, old Johnny going round and round at the foot of King Billy.Further still, the overarching structure of these tales takes the reader through the different stages of life, like a disjointed Bildungsroman. Childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age and death. Indeed, the motif of death frames the entire collection, from the remains of Father Flynn at the very beginning, to the distant loss of Michael Furey at the end, and the eternal snow falling over an ever-darkening universe. This recurring theme makes Dubliners, at the core, a sort of literary vanitas, and the fifteen stories, taken as a whole, reveal a poignant picture of the transience of life and the circularity of time.John Huston’s last film, an adaptation of The Dead, is an underrated and heart-breaking masterpiece that captures exactly the nostalgic atmosphere of Joyce’s novella.

I was put off by reading James Joyce because I was scared of reading him — that I wouldn’t understand a damn thing he said although I knew he was a brilliant writer…one for the ages. I think it was ‘Ulysses’ that scared me off, and I made a massive generalization (if I don’t understand that book, I won’t understand anything by Joyce). My mistake. I remember a Goodreads friend recommended I read it, because I think I or they had read a short story collection (whose author escapes me right now), and they said there was some similarity of ‘Dubliners’ to the short story collection we were discussing. So, I procured a copy and was blown away. My copy was an issue by Oxford World’s Classics. There were oodles of footnotes to each story near the back of the book, and after I read a short story I would then go the back of the book and read the footnotes (not every footnote but a large number of them). I learned a lot via the footnotes, and found them to be very interesting. There were 15 stories, and as I read, I took notes and rated each story — I’ll just list the ratings next to the stories (average is 3.8 stars but add in the Introduction, an alternative translation of ‘Sisters’, and the footnotes and it adds up to 5 by my reckoning. 😊 ). • Sisters: 4 stars• An Encounter: 3.5 stars• Araby: 4 stars• Eveline: 4.5 stars• After the Race: 2 stars• Two Gallants: 3 stars• The Boarding House: 5 stars• A Little Cloud: 4 stars• Counterparts: 4.5 stars• Clay: 3.5 stars• A Painful Case: 5 stars• Ivy Day in the Committee Room: 2 stars• A Mother: 3.5 stars• Grace: 4 stars• The Dead: 5 starsThat last story ‘The Dead’ has to be one of the best short stories I have read in a long time. So much to pack in it (it was about 40 pages long). The last page in which the husband Gabriel is thinking about the young man who once loved his wife, and she him, before Gabriel came onto the scene was just … so sad, so beautifully written. What a wonderful way to end the short story collection… “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”I learned where “beyond the pale” came from. Up until today, I was clueless. • ‘The pale’ was the name given in the 14th century to that part of Ireland over which England exercised jurisdiction before the whole was conquered; centered on Dublin, it varied in extent at different times from the reign of Henry II until full conquest under Elizabeth I’ in ‘in the pale’, ‘pale’ connotes ‘civilization’ or ‘civilized behavior’; here, it means specifically ‘conceding in his behavior the authority of the Church’ and ironically inverts the historical meaning where the ‘wild’ Irish Catholic native population existed ‘beyond the pale’; they now, of course, figuratively represent ‘the pale’ itself (referred to in ‘Grace’).I didn’t know in Catholicism that The Immaculate Conception (mother of Jesus having conceived although a virgin), though a generally held belief from the time of the Middle Ages, did not become dogma until 1854 (from ‘Grace’). There was one part of a short story I found to be quite humorous (‘The Dead’): several Catholics are conversing with a Protestant. Mr. Browne, about monks who put people up who visit them at the monastery and do not charge room and board, and the kind of ascetic lifestyle the monks live: He was astonished to hear that the monks never spoke, got up at two in the morning and slept in their coffins. He asked what they did it for.— “That’s the rule of the order,” said Aunt Katie firmly.— “Yes, but why?” asked Mr. Browne.— Aunt Katie repeated that it was the rule, that was all. Mr. Browne still seemed not to understand. Freddy Malins explained to him, as best he could, that the monks were trying to make up for the sins committed by all the sinners in the outside world, The explanation was not very clear for Mr. Browne grinned and said:— “I like that idea very much but wouldn’t a comfortable spring bed do them as well as a coffin?”One final observation from me and then I’ll shut my piehole. There were a number of stories in which people were alcoholic, or were drunk, or their family wished they would stay abstinent. In the majority of cases the alcoholism centered on male characters. (The cover illustration shows a man at a pub with a beer mug in his hand (‘Porter at the Fair’ by Jack B. Yeats, 1910).

"Irlanda es un gran país. Lo llaman la Isla Esmeralda. Después de siglos de estrangulamiento, el gobierno metropolitano la ha dejado desierta y es ahora un campo de barbecho. El gobierno sembró hambre, sífilis, superstición y alcoholismo: puritanos, jesuitas y reaccionarios crecen ahora." James JoyceCuando uno recorre la lista de los más grandes escritores que dio la literatura y pone especial atención en aquellos que amaron en el real sentido de la palabra a su tierra natal, la cantidad de autores se acorta notablemente.Además de los aedos griegos, que le escribían a su terruño en forma inevitable descubriremos que ciertos autores tuvieron el concepto de pertenencia muy claro. Muchos escritores sintieron una especialísima afición por su país: García Márquez por Colombia, Balzac, Hugo y Flaubert por Francia, Hawthorne y su naturaleza americana por nombrar algunos.Pero cuando se habla de amor por una ciudad, pocos, muy pocos son los que rescatamos. Creo que junto a Fiódor Dostoievski, un apasionado de su querida San Petersburgo y a Julio Cortázar, desdoblado entre la urbanidad de Buenos Aires y la cosmopolita París, sólo James Joyce es un devoto y fiel amante de su ciudad natal, Dublín, una de las principales ciudades de Irlanda junto a Belfast y Kilkenny.Los quince cuentos y relatos de “Dublineses” se impregnan de esa mística irlandesa en sus calles, su gente y edificios. Nuevamente recuerdo a Julio Cortázar porque creo que estos dos autores supieron ahondar profundamente en la idiosincrasia de sus ciudades logrando mostrarnos con firmes pinceladas cómo era la naturaleza real de sus habitantes y de esos submundos descriptos en bares, oficinas, casas, parques, calles, ciudades, muelles y plazas.Joyce retrata en cada cuento la frustración y la soledad de muchos dublineses. La gran mayoría de ellos son simples oficinistas, mucamas, señoras mayores, alcohólicos, políticos de poca monta, jóvenes desempleados. Joyce quiso retratar la “parálisis” dublinesa. Los relatos como vienen se van, algunos de ellos quedan abiertos a las múltiples interpretaciones de los lectores y siempre nos dejan un sabor agridulce.La muerte sobrevuela omnipresente y poderosa en muchos de estos cuentos y el desasosiego se instala en los personajes. En la mayoría de estos cuentos los intentos de estos son fútiles, no alcanzan para cubrir sus necesidades, anhelos o esperanzas. No encontraremos aquí pasajes divertidos. Tal vez alguna anécdota cuasi graciosa, pero el ambiente de los cuentos es el de un leve flotar de almas en suspenso.De todos los cuentos y además de “Los Muertos”, del cual ya hice la reseña correspondiente, los que más me gustaron fueron “Eveline”, “Copias” y “Un caso doloroso”. Son tres cuentos profundos, escritos con suma fineza y bellísima precisión literaria y creo además que el trato que Joyce le da al contexto psicológico de los personajes es realmente maravilloso.Releer “Dublineses” reafirma mi profunda devoción por Joyce, un genial escritor del que supe vencer el “miedo literario” a la hora de afrontar su obra más difícil como lo fue el “Ulises” y como será en breve leer su “Finnegan’s Wake”. Mientras tanto, la lectura de este libro, “Los Muertos” y “Retrato del artista adolescente”, que constituyen la parte más accesible de su obra definen lo que escribí previamente: que cada día quiero más a James Joyce.

This is my first reading of Joyce’s “Dubliners.” I know, shocking, everyone else read it in high school or collegiate undergraduate literature courses and were forced to author papers on Joyce’s themes and symbolism. I read it for pleasure and for background on a project I’m working on. It’s considered one of Joyce’s more accessible works, certainly when compared with “Ulysses” which has a reputation for everyone claiming to have read it, but no one actually does. Anyways, I did find it readable, even with it being over a hundred years old and full of references to cultural and colloquial phrases which are beyond me. Anyway, I’ll try my hand at a short analysis of this collection of fifteen short stories. The first thing that strikes me is how pedestrian and mundane the characters and even the plots of these tales are. This is the dreary, everyday life of Dublin commoners. It’s also largely filled with horrible people – thieves, drunks, and abusers to name a few. Most of the tales either end tragically (e.g., suicide) or at best – an unresolved melancholy stalemate. As I was reading it, I wasn’t sure if Joyce was going for a realistic expose of Dublin (sort of a 107-year-old version of a modern reality show) or something else. But when you step back and look at the whole of the book, it shows a stunted Dublin filled with people going nowhere and unable to break out of their gloomy routines and lives. And knowing a little of the history of Ireland, it makes me wonder if this was a delicate cut on the impact of English colonialism and maybe even to a lesser extent the restraints of the Catholic Church. About the only positive you’ll take away from 1914 Dublin is the pride in Irish hospitality. Still, despite the dismal subject matter, Joyce writes with beauty. His ability to rapidly create complex characters with realistic needs and desires is extraordinary. He describes everyday life, but with such a fine blend of place, dialog, and narration, it feels all too real. Character’s display little notions, quirks, and thoughts that feel authentic, like Joyce is reporting on what’s going on around him, but able to jump in everyone’s head. The last story is particularly beautifully told, about an annual dance, that spins characters and motivations and songs, food, and drink until you’re dizzy. The prose is lush and vivid, but still with the same underlying sadness and cold themes. Although I probably don’t have the proper context of 1914 Ireland and Joyce’s intentions, I was still able to appreciate this impressive classic.

As powerful a commitment to the form to be found in English. The original fourteen stories should be read as a set piece: as they portray the evolution of thought from childhood to adulthood: from dogmatic belief to reasoned denial. The Dead should be viewed separately. Five-stars!

For anyone thinking of putting James Joyce on your “must read this year” list for 2019 here are my suggestions.BY1. DublinersBrilliantly atmospheric scraps of Irish miserablism – must read to get where JJ is coming from. 2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManStrangely – tiresome and inessential. Bangs on about religion and more Irish miserablism and a bit too much like a portrait of the author as an insufferable young genius. 3. UlyssesThe essential book out of all of these. Difficult but also very funny and not impossible. FWIW my short bluffer’s guide to this truly astonishing book is herehttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show...and my long review of it (chapter by chapter) is herehttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show...and herehttps://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...(it’s very long)4. Finnegans WakeThis is really not recommended. But this is – a 10 minute excerpt (“Anna Livia Plurabelle”) read by JJ himselfhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grJC1...I had thought, this small part being so beautiful, that FW would be another masterpiece, but the rest of it isn’t one tenth as fascinating or linguistically lovely, and it will do your brain in. The only thing I’ve been able to do with FW is parody it, rather lamelyhttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show...which was unnervingly easy to do once you get into the swing of it. The reader who can gain enjoyment on any level from the great mapless madhouse that is FW has my undying respect. ABOUT1. The Most Dangerous Book : The Battle For James Joyce’s Ulysses By Kevin BirminghamBy far the best book on JJ and Ulysses I ever read – you almost don’t need a real biography after this. It’s a total page turner. It’s not an analysis, it’s the story of how it was written and how it was published – long, painful and thrilling. 2. James Joyce : Richard EllmanBut if you do want a big biography, this is the one. 3. My Brother’s Keeper : Stanislaus JoyceOr you could stick to this memoir by JJ’s faithful brother. It will make you love JJ (and Stanny) a lot more than most books will.4. The New Bloomsday Book : Harry BlamiresI liked this not-too-scholarly voyage round & through & about Ulysses better than any other analysis/interpretation5. The Finnegans Wake Experience : Roland McHughI only read one book about FW. It was this. It’s hilarious. Mr McHugh is a total obsessive with a screw loose & dedicated his whole waking being to reading FW correctly and then explaining how to read FW correctly. Elastic bands are an important part of the process as I recall. I think it was self published so might be hard to track down. 6. James Joyce’s Odyssey : Frank Delaney7. James Joyce’s Dublin : Edward QuinnThese two are luxury items - gorgeous photo books full of black & white pix of dear dirty Dublin as it was and I don’t think is anymore. Not essential but just a delight. AVOID1. Ulysses and Us : Declan Kiberd2. Ulysses on the Liffey : Richard EllmanThese two do exactly the same thing – with their jawbreakin pontificatin somnambulatin ramblin they like to make you want to find the English Literature department in your nearest university and burn it down. 3. Ulysses Annotated : Don GiffordProving that the more you know the less you understand.***Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping, soused their bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf’s gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody’s body. —Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel! "How many roads must a man walk down...."Sorry JJ, couldn't resist.

Esta novela es pura poesía. La narración de un episodio ordinario escrita de manera extraordinaria.Parece imposible escribir algo tan bueno de algo tan cotidiano.Si después se refuerza la lectura con la película de John Houston, se crea una alianza perfecta.This novel is pure poetry. The narration of an ordinary episode written in an extraordinary way. It seems impossible to write something so good about something so everyday. If the reading is then reinforced with John Huston's film, a perfect alliance is created.

“There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin”--Joyce "Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.” Dubliners is, by reputation (among English professors and scholars, at least) one of the greatest collections of short stories ever produced. Of course, as they say, them’s fightin’ words, so have it your own way, but I vote with that crowd of high admirers, and always have, having read it or stories from it, many times. This is the first time I am hearing it read aloud, in the appropriately Irish voice of Connor Sheridan, that somehow captures the dry and at sometimes mournful wit the ex-patriate Joyce brings to this tribute to the Dubliners he left behind. Some have found it maudlin, even grim, primarily a critique of the people Joyce left behind, but I found it at turns gently satirical, sometimes melancholy, and always loving, portraits of a time and place, filled with local politics and religion and (especially) finely sketched characters, some stories focused on lost opportunities for love or leaving. In 2000 Time Magazine listed the greatest novels of the twentieth century and listed the difficult English major Everest of Ulysses as the worthiest literary mountain to climb, #1, which prompted thousands of Americans who may never have read 100 novels to read the first three pages and promptly declare Joyce a boring and inscrutable idiot. Though I do think Ulysses is one of the greatest novels ever written, I don’t think it would be particularly enjoyable for the general population; nor do I think most people “should” read it. But Joyce is an amazing writer; he wrote four works of fiction, in increasing levels of difficulty and formal experimentalism. If you like short stories and want to try Joyce I would try Dubliners, the most recognizably traditional stories he wrote. If you like that, I might then try the somewhat more formally challenging A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. If you decide to go to graduate school, then consider Ulysses, sure, but only then, which owes something mock-epic to Homer’s Odyssey, and each chapter in a literary style of different periods/centuries. Finnegan’s Wake, which took him twenty years to write, almost no one reads, for good reason. It is so experimental most people can’t make heads or tails of a single paragraph. (No, I have not yet finished it, and probably never will).Dubliners, published in 1914 (after nearly ten years of his trying to get it published!), is short, as story collections go. I have my favorites: “Eveline,” about a young shop girl conflicted about leaving her widowed father to live life with a sailor:“He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.” And “Araby,” about a shy young man’s fruitless pursuit of a young woman, dooming them both to loneliness.“. . . and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.” “Sometimes he caught himself listening to the sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he would ascent to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his companion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal voice which he recognised as his own, insisting on the soul's incurable loneliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own.” He’s ambitious for her, but at the same time, he sees himself clearly and sadly: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”Some of the deft observations of character in the writing are beautiful. Of one woman: “She respected her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office, as something large, secure and fixed: and though she knew the small number of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male.” And about Mr. Duffy: “He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a verb in the past tense.” The true gem of the collection may be the magnificent and mournful closing long story, “The Dead,” which features Gabriel, asked to give a short speech in honor of his aunts at a holiday party, who is disappointed not to “experience intimacy” with his wife Greta after the party, seeing her sadly draped on the bed. A song that was sung at the party reminded her of a time when she was seventeen when she had loved a boy, Michael Furey, who lost his life in the war. Gabriel is jealous of a love she sees Greta had for this boy, a love that he and Greta have perhaps never had themselves. And then, this reflection, using snow to punctuate Gabriel's sense of himself and maybe Joyce's view of Dublin:“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”Proust wrote: "In reality, when he reads, each reader is actually the reader of his own self. The work of the writer is nothing more than a kind of optical instrument that the writer offers. It allows the reader to discern that which, without the book, he might not have been able to see in himself."Do we not in our empathetic reading of Gabriel, see ourselves and reflect on our own lives?Many characters in Dubliners experience the struggle about whether to stay or leave, or to just act passionately, facing a kind of paralysis that Joyce refers to in the opening story, “The Sisters”:“I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.” One must act, one must move, one must engage with the world, one must break free from provincial beliefs. Dubliners is a wonderful collection, short enough to read in a few hours. It’s full of self-reflection and "inwardness." Listen to it, read it. Some of the stories have been made into films, like John Huston’s The Dead.Here’s the whole story “The Dead” for you to read. (You’re welcome):http://english-learners.com/wp-conten... .