Dubliners

     I recently finished my first reading of James Joyce's, Dubliners. I say first, because, although I rarely will read a book more than once, I found Joyce's work to be quite difficult, and I think it deserves another read.  Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories. Though each of the fifteen protagonists are all from different walks of life, their respective stories all deal with many of the same themes. One of Joyce's primary motives in writing Dubliners was to detail common life in Dublin and to chronicle the changes taking place in Ireland at the time. A couple of the stories deal with politics and Irish Nationalism, and those required a little outside reading and a quick lesson in Irish History to understand. All in all, Dubiners is really a difficult and thought-provoking read. As I said before, some of the stories required background knowledge of Irish history, and much of the vocabulary includes old Irish slang terms, which had me reaching for the dictionary often, and almost just as often, finding descriptions of the words to say little more about the word than to reference Joyce's use of the word. Additionally, the themes are approached very subtly in most of the stories, which, for me, meant, after reading a story, I spent just as much reflecting on the meaning as I did reading. And in fact, it wasn't until I was a couple stories in that I began to understand the stories and the themes within them at all. The general tone of the stories also has me shying away from using the term, "enjoyable" to describe this book, although I did enjoy making sense of some of the abstract ideas, and attempting to understand the importance of each story. The entirety of the book, story after story, is dark, and morose, leaving quite a dismal picture of turn-of-the-century Ireland. I'm not sure I would recommend the book to anyone who is looking for nothing more than a pleasure read, as Joyce is far too realist for escapist readers. On the other hand, if you are at all interested in studying literature, history, anthropology, psychology, politics, or even philosophy, Dubliners is a worthy read, I suggest picking it up for a good cerebral read, perhaps on a cool October evening.