Dubliners

Description

This is a beautifully-designed edition of James Joyce's classic DUBLINERS. Complete and Unabridged.

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Customer Reviews

Review posted on The Literate Man ([...]) on July 28, 2010
I have a confession to make ... I don't really like short stories. I mean, I see their utility for teaching the elements of story structure and characterization, and I appreciate the odd twist that makes for a memorable story scene, but I never find them really fulfilling. And I generally forget them very quickly. They are, I would contend, the rice cakes of the literary scene ... universally respected as the most healthy of literary treats, but consistently failing to deliver any actual nutrition to their hungry readers. I find it hard to believe that I am alone in this. Come on, be honest. Have you really gone out of your way to read short stories since you were ten and forced to read The Lottery?

Now, when I state a dislike of short stories in the context of a review of James Joyce, I feel guilty ... and I mean seriously guilty. Even the mention of Joyce conjures for me images of the staunch Irish Catholicism that I endured as a child and have been running from ever since. It's enough to make me want to confess.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned ... it has been more than three years since my last short story."

Fortunately for me, Dubliners is a bit different. First published in 1914, Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories (okay, it's really 14 short stories and one novella) that depict middle class life in Dublin just after the turn of the twentieth century. The stories revolve primarily around topics that are near and dear to the Irish heart: death (The Sisters, A Painful Case, and (of course) The Dead), poverty (After the Race, The Boarding House, and Clay), alcohol (Counterparts and Grace), and politics (Ivy Day in the Committee Room). Now, even as I write it, that depiction sounds downright drab, but Joyce's lyrical skills are at their peak in these stories, and every single one manages to warm your heart just as if you yourself were standing next to a peat fire in some country pub out on the cliffs of the old sod ordering a round of pints for the lads.

Between the consistency of the Dublin scene that it paints and the beautiful effect of Joyce's lyrical prose, Dubliners is a very enjoyable read. In fact, though it was written by the same Joyce that we love and hate for Ulysses and (ugh) Finnegans Wake, Dubliners is even completely understandable! It makes me wonder what Joyce might have produced if he hadn't grown so enamored of experimenting with form and language. Not that what he wrote wasn't good ... I mean, the best ... oh there I go feeling guilty again. That's what happens when you criticize the master. Does anyone have a rosary?

2010-07-28 | literateman(dot)com (Miami, FL USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Good service, good product
The book was delivered quickly and arrived in the condition stated by the seller. Great service, great product.

2010-01-18 | Cal Girl (Berkeley, CA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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The Modern Library hardcover is the one you want (details of the work and edition)
First, a little about the Modern Library edition...

Astute scholars have toiled quite diligently here to preserve the fifteen stories which make up this work in the precise way that James Joyce himself wanted them presented. To save time it's best to just note that Joyce encountered discord in getting this work published because various influential factions found it to be "blasphemous." This outdated assessment represents the Irish Catholic View of the age which had somehow carried over from the Victorian Period. Today one might characterize these tales as very slightly irreverent, if that. In the end, this work of top British (Irish) literature eventually saw publication in 1914.

Joyce embraced certain caveats which he wanted included via the publishing process -- he used dashes to set out dialogue instead of quotation marks as he considered the latter to manifest unnecessary baggage. Honestly, I fell right in to his technique (which is how it's presented here) and discovered that this practice makes for very palatable reading. He also wanted many corrections made to the original text and as many as possible were included in this 1993 edition.

As to the stories, I savor Joyce to the highest degree because I can relate to his paradigm -- my own writing is quite like his. I am James Joyce just as Dan Quayle was JFK. Anyway, here we have fifteen fictional accounts over the course of 286 pages (the product description is incorrect). The writing is very straight-forward, with the occasional subtle nuance which escalates this compendium into the realm which we now classify as literature. At times James is as morbidly dreary as Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment (Wordsworth Classics) and at others he panders a level of acerbity which William Faulkner conveyed in As I Lay Dying (Norton Critical Edition). These are all culturally folksy tales of Dublin salt-of-the-earth residents.

Each story chiefly focuses upon members of a repressed society, the urban working Irish at the outset of the 20th Century. These people were subjugated by archaic laws, dissolute politicians, greedy employers, by one another, but most of all by the hop and grain. Alcohol was as vast a problem for the Irish as it has historically been for both Russians and Native American Indians. The ultimate consequence for all three cultures has been essentially equivalent.

The Irish poor somehow managed to live a slightly more civilized existence than the aforementioned groups but they were still enslaved to their overwhelming social burdens -- Joyce brought these actualities to life. He lifted the mundane, indeed the melancholy, to the plateau of the melodramatic without being in the least exploitive of their collective plight. His writing style, especially his vague story conclusions, best lend themselves to suit the analytic ponderer.

If you would like to begin your reading of Joyce in chewable bites rather than tearing into Ulysses (Penguin Modern Classics) or Finnegans Wake (Penguin Modern Classics) then this book is precisely what you're seeking.

Highly recommended.

2009-12-29 | The Old Grottomaster (Lucasville, OH USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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"Dubliners," Penguin Classics Edition, Intro by Terence Brown
Since Amazon seems to have lumped reviews of sundry editions under one category, I have specified the exact edition on which I am commenting instead of a proper title for my review.

It would be presumptuous of me to comment upon Joyce's prose, which in "Dubliners"--in my reader's opinion--seems flawless. I can only tell you the reasons why I adore this book. Joyce views his residents of Dublin--of various ages and social classes--through a melancholy lens, albeit tinged with grace and humor. Of all the stories, my favorite is "Araby," which recaptures the expectations, frustrations, and delusions of adolescence. The stories seem intended to be read in order from beginning to end. Indeed, each story is linked to the next by recurrent vocabulary and imagery--for instance, conceptual images of light and dark, vision & blindness, paralysis, and death--among others--to be understood both literally and figuratively. All these images have been interwoven so carefully that unless one is looking for them, they will be noticed only subliminally; they nevertheless contribute to the feeling of satisfaction after Joyce brings them together in his final heartbreaking paragraph, which will linger in one's thoughts long after one has closed the book.

I especially appreciate the editor's notes in this edition, which clarify a range of topics, including Dublin topography, vocabulary and slang that has gone out of usage, obsolete social and political matters. This Penguin Edition is therefore excellent for students as well as for the serious reader.

2009-10-26 (Irvine, CA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Bildungsroman
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners
--By James Joyce

Joyce's earlier works are his most accessible and personal. His semi-autobiographical "Portrait of the Artist" traces the personal and spiritual growth of the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus. The narrator encounters a series of physical and spiritual experiences, including losing his virginity and wrestling with his faith, on the journey to manhood. He is attracted toward the priesthood because of its ceremony, but afraid of the commitment it requires:
"A flame began to flutter on Stephens's cheek as he heard in this (priest's) proud address an echo of his own proud musings. How often had he seen himself as a priest wielding calmly and humbly the awful power of which angels and saints stood in reverence. He had seen himself, a young and silent-mannered priest, entering a confessional swiftly, ascending to the altar steps, incensing, genuflecting, and accomplishing the vague acts of the priesthood which pleased him by reason of their semblance to reality and of their distance from it." "A Portrait of the Artist" ranks among the finest autobiographical essays like "The Education of Henry Adams."

"Dubliners" is more a series of vignettes than a collection of conventional short stories. In stories like "Araby," the narrator has a sudden revelation or insight (Joyce called it "epiphany") that brings out a significant truth.
The boy who narrates "Araby" dreams of going to a street fair where he hopes to meet a girl, but his uncle is late getting home to give him the money.
He arrives as the fair is closing, and lingers while the carny's finish their work. "I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar... I allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. Gazing up in the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."
Joyce's language is sparse and economical, but still evocative of a time and mood.

2009-09-29 (Rialto, CA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Description

The Classic "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", a semi-autobiographical novel by James Joyce.

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Customer Reviews

Absolutely terrible.
First of all, this is not really a stream of consciousness novel. Ulysses is. This is a semi-autobiographical novel detailing the rather uninteresting youth of a turn of the century Irish boy. Perhaps if I had lived at that time this book would be more meaningful, but in 2010 there is nothing controversial about doubting the infallibility of the Catholic church or the existence of God. This question is one of the main themes of the book, as well as a sort of semi-existentialist quest for the boy to define himself as an artist or whatever. Well, the existentialist debate has been better offered by superior authors from Dostoevsky to Camus, and Joyce falls flat here. The other main subject which Joyce attempts to invoke is some of the political divisions in Ireland. He uses a few characters to try and personify the rivaling political factions of the nation at that time. However, this attempt is short-lived, and it also falls flat.
The one gimmick Joyce used which I found mildly interesting was the use of different language as the boy grows older. So the book starts off with some laughable dribble about a "moocow" and a "nicens little boy named baby tuckoo," and ends with Joyce trying to parody the "Hail Mary" (again, the played-out religious themes).
Did I mention how boring this book is? Nothing of interest happens. Terrible book. Avoid at all costs. Read Nabokov instead.

2010-06-11 (New Orleans, USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1

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The flight from family,nationality and religion
In PAAYM we have the artist-hero,given a mythical name,Dedalus.There is really only one character,Stephen himself, and we see the world through his consciousness, other characters only impinge upon his mind. The girl,E.C., whom Stephen watches on the beach provides him with the epiphany that determines him to be an artist..There is an arrogance to the title,the mythicisation,the ambition:"to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race".But this is accepted by the reader who has been taken through the developing stages of his consciousness.Stephen becomes Daedalus,the master-craftsman who in his daring and ambition partook of the Promethean.

Joyce gives a precise portrait of the artist as a young man,with the tension between his ambition and what,in the novel,he has actually achieved:the novel as dramatic poem.Like the `God of creation',Joyce is quite outside this and`remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible,refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his finger-nails.'There is a struggle against forces-family,Church and state-that threaten to stifle his development.Concomitant with the movement outward from Ireland,is the movement downward into myth.On a superficial level Stephen is dissociating himself;on a deeper level he is becoming a creature of myth.This decision-systemization-led onto Ulysses.Stephen Daly became Stephen Dedalus.Joyce was determined to emerge from the groove of previous literature.

He gives the picture of infant consciousness,with tastes,touches and smells all distinct if not yet understood.The narrative is not sequential but a hodgepodge of memories due to Stephen's fever,early schooldays,holidays at home, rendered discontinuously and with intensity.The great injustice inflicted by Father Dolan makes Stephen a victim, who becomes heroic,whose protest against unjust pandying at a Jesuit school is a prelude to larger protests against Church and State.Joyce makes his (and modernism's) 1st employment of interior monologue,the stream-of-consciousness technique,moving through a range of more complex styles,which chronicle the development of his consciousness and culminates in meditations on the aesthetics of Aristotle and Aquinas and a commitment to an art based on`silence,exile and cunning'.The novel becomes a manifesto for the task of Ulysses.

The novel brings out well that his rebellion against Irish life and R/C religion did not stop their deep influence,substituting art for religion;and turning ideas of mass and substantiation into the `epiphany' of literature,everyday life into art:'the spiritual eye seeks to adjust its vision to an exact focus'.Passionate intellectual argumentation has remarkable emotional force.He renders the'luminous silent stasis of aesthetic pleasure..the supreme quality of beauty,the clear radiance of the aesthetic image..arrested by its wholeness..fascinated by its harmony..the enchantment of the heart'.That Joyce lived out the conclusion of the novel's `non serviam' vow increases his achievement of the non-juring exile of extreme self sufficiency in his encounter with `the reality of experience'.Because he is dealing with the prurient Victorian world of his adolescence the preoccupation with guilt and fear and growing sexuality play a major part:a sermon on hell,a visit to a prostitute,masturbation.

Joyce's poems are like songs,he had an auditory imagination,he was a singer:Joyce lived in a world of words,words as sounds,divorced that is from meaning,using verbal association.There is the hypnotic use of repetition,chains of association are built up,words of sensory significance deliberately used to work on our subconscious minds.The relationship develops between author and object rather than author and reader.This equates the prose with the experience or replaces the experience with the prose.This makes the work self-conscious,deliberate,stylistically akin to Flaubert.He captures subjective experience through language rather than the actual experience through prose narrative(Cf.Stephen Hero).I prefer this and Dubliners to Ulysses.

2010-04-25 | jack (Rugby) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Pure Joyce
No worries. It's not Ulysses. No footnotes needed. Read it the way Nature (assuming Nature were a profane Irish genius with lousy eyesight) intended.

2010-03-25 | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 5

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First chapter of Ulysses?
Here we have the life of Stephen Dedalus before we meet him in the Telemachus episode of Ulysses. The most riveting section of the book is Stephen's decision to speak up to the rector about being wrongly accused about the breaking of his glasses. Stephen seems so powerless, facing the unyielding bulk of the Irish Catholic church. I cringe along with him as he makes his way slowly along the passage-way towards the rector's office to seek a reprieve and justice.

Joyce is a master of the intensely subjective point of view, allowing the reader into the head of a charactor but also just enough outside to gain the perspective necessary to understand the character's environment. In his effects, Joyce is unyielding and yet the immediacy is so great that I become intensely absorbed in the moment before being thrown outside and lost, required to then work harder at understanding than I thought was necessary.

While there is greatness here, after reading Ulysses it feels like a warm-up, without the imaginative leaps and greatness of scope of that novel. Yet "Portrait" also introduces the reader to the author of Ulysses - his preoccupations, his prejudices against the church and ambivalence towards much of Irish culture.

2010-03-09 | Randy Wilson (San Francisco) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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James Joyce
The Portrait of the Artist of as a Young Man, along with Ulysses and Finnigans Wake, is a part of the series of masterpieces of modernist prose by one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, James Joyce. The novel pays very close attention to the psychological state of its central character Stephen Daedalus. Joyce offers psychological insights in the way that the story is told, as he examines perceptions and pretensions. The Portrait of the Artist of as a Young Man dissects the very genesis of artistic creation. (From Source: [...])

2010-02-11 | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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Ulysses (Oxford World's Classics)

Description

Ulysses, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, has had a profound influence on modern fiction. In a series of episodes covering the course of a single day, 16 June 1904, the novel traces the movements of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus through the streets of Dublin. Each episode has its own literary style, and the epic journey of Odysseus is only one of many correspondencies that add layers of meaning to the text.

Ulysses has been the subject of controversy since copies of the first English edition were burned by the New York Post Office Authorities. Today critical interest centres on the authority of the text, and this edition, complete with an invaluable Introduction, notes, and appendices, republishes for the first time, without interference, the original 1922 text.

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Ulysses has been labeled dirty, blasphemous, and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it sufficiently unobscene to allow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession." None of these adjectives, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in a close-focus sort of way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease, as long as you're willing to be buffeted, tickled, challenged, and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's sheer command of the English language.

Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is: What happens?. In the case of Ulysses, the answer might be Everything. William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, stroll the streets, argue, and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream-of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river--we're privy to their thoughts, emotions, and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordian folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.

Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent--that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call Early Yeats Lite--will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naive curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" --James Marcus

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Customer Reviews

Awful
Indecipherable rubbish.

I bought this door stop because it is on everyone's list of Great Books. I read 200 or so pages and had to stop, I'd rather have a root canal without anesthesia than read the rest of it. I am a college educated English major, but how this random witlessness can share a shelf with Steinbeck, Vonnegut, Hemingway, Orwell or Forster and a number of other fine authors escapes me.

2010-07-26 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

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Be careful which edition you buy.
I bought the edition with the Despite it being on the expensive side, I do not think this is a good edition to buy. (I mean the one with the plain white cover with small black text). Be careful, the text chosen in the review is not accurate to this edition - it has no map, etc. I think it is possibly the uncorrected edition which means tons of mistakes that JJ later fixed, if I have it right. Well, 1/3 of the way through it is not too late for me to switch to one of the 'corrected' editions.

There is no publication information in this book.

The novel is great, but just be careful which edition you buy.

2010-07-24 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Imperfect text
I suppose I shouldn't complain much at 95 cents, but the text has a disconcertingly high error rate. There are no italics, verse is not offset, there are scattered typographical errors, and I've found a few instances where stray numbers appear in the text. Also, I'm only three chapters in.

If you are unfamiliar with this book and care about these things, you might want to look elsewhere.

2010-07-18 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 2

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Stream of................
This is a LITERARY gem! The PERFECT novel! However, I do have one beef with all the erudite scholars out there who chose this book as the greatest novel of the 20th century. Close, but no cigar. I think that honor deserves to go to Finnegan's Wake by the same author; however, with that said, I do believe this DEEPLY PROFOUND work deserves a ranking at number 2. But, hey! That's not too bad considering all the novels that have been written since the beginning of time. Ah, yes!... Stream of consciousness............ SSSUUUCCCCCCEEESSSSSSFFFUUULLLLLLYYY RRREEENNNDDDEEERRREEEDDD by the GENIUS of James Joyce! How anyone can pan this novel baffles the ENLIGHTENED mind! Such BRILLIANCE! Such ART! Such a way of WEAVING words with woven grace! INTRICATELY structured and a testament to the GREATNESS of the English language! Check out the passage below, but I warn you... I almost guarantee that you'll be slapping this MASTERPIECE on your visa:

"Stephen's nose droppings flicked bugger across room. Red-faced angry but crunching sounds of disgruntled nuns. Skipping bugger under dress. Squeak! Squeak! How goes it, sister? Lift cherry face to sky and twinkle."

Okay... Go ahead... Get the visa out or mastercard... come on... you know you want to!... Seriously, I'm envious that you're about to embark on such an adventure as reading Ulysses for the first time! Stream ahead!............

2010-06-10 | Jaycharlnc (Charlotte, NC) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1

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More than just a book, and sometimes less... know what you are getting yourself into
This whoel review began as a comment, and tehn I realizedi had soemthign to say for myself on the topic, so here it is:

I took a Course on Joyce at NUI Galway and I am thankful that I did because otherwise I would not appreciate Ulysses. Many of the points made by detractors of Joyce and Ulysses are valid, in fact most of them are. Even Yeats who praised the book confessed that he never finished it. But that is indicative of some peculiar choices by Joyce, for instance, the Third Chapter is intentionally unreadable. Joyce apparently did this to make a point about the mentality of the educated Irishmen, such as himself, who had the tendency to make themselves irrelevant to their countrymen. He did this by filling the entirety of the chapter with verbiage so obtuse and obscure that even educated people would have trouble telling you what's actually happen, which isn't much, they guy just sits there on the beach and feels sorry for himself. If I had not been in a Module whereby the Lecturer explained that this is essentially unreadable I surely would have put down the book forever.

There are many points of interest for me in the book, I highly suggest reading the last chapter by itself as its prose is quite enjoyable and really provides of portrait of a time and a place and a people. It's not really necessary to read the book stait through, as my good friend and classmate (though he never took this course) explained it to me: "Ulysses is a book which is never intended to be finished, you just pick it up and open it up anywhere and start reading and when you can't take it anymore, you put it back down."

In regards to this book, if it can help provide the insight I needed to help me understand Ulysses I would say it is worthwhile, but my experience is that these books never do that, they just tell you what they think it is you should know about the famous book, banking on the name-recognition of the book and the author, knowing full well that most people has never read enough of the book to refute them.

It was a strange thing for Joyce to do in his effort to "write the greatest book in the English language" where the result was really much more (and then again sometimes less) then a book at all. The volumous "story" - we'll call it that for lack of a better word, really became an entity within itself because he hi-jacked the English language to make statements by the use of the text itself rather than within it, and within the hundreds of pages he hid what was considered pornographic imagery, knowing full well that those who would take exception to it would be hard pressed to actually read it for themselves. The result was so un-approachable that he actually had to tell people that it was a parallel to the Odyssey (despite the name) and provide notes on how to interpret it. If this was any other book this would signal the utter worthlessness of the book, but what Joyce did, and which has never been recreated, is the exception, if you are ready to accept it for what it is, and what it isn't: a good story.

The story itself, is rather boring and uninteresting, this was part of Joyce's design though. He was making a statement about Ireland by making this incredibly uneventful and uninteresting story and then contrasting it with the heroic tales of Odysseus. There-by making the Joyce-equivalent all the worse by comparison. Like I said, it makes the story itself boring, but it's interesting if you know that going in, thank goodness Joyce provided the author of the first literary analysis of Ulysses with his notes!

Even though I whole-heartily agree with many of these points on their own, I believe that Ulysses is an import book to peruse, if not read. And it should not be dismissed in its entirety. However for an enjoyable work by Joyce I highly suggest something else, such as Dubliners, where the short story form restricts Joyce from getting to ostentatious.

2010-06-09 (MA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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James Joyce (Oxford Lives)

Description

Richard Ellmann has revised and expanded his definitive work on Joyce's life to include newly discovered primary material, including details of a failed love affair, a limerick about Samuel Beckett, a dream notebook, previously unknown letters, and much more.

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Although several biographers have thrown themselves into the breach since this magisterial book first appeared in 1959, none have come close to matching the late Richard Ellmann's achievement. To be fair, Ellmann does have some distinct advantages. For starters, there's his deep mastery of the Irish milieu--demonstrated not only in this volume but in his books on Yeats and Wilde. He's also an admirable stylist himself--graceful, witty, and happily unintimidated by his brilliant subjects. But in addition, Ellmann seems to have an uncanny grasp on Joyce's personality: his reverence for the Irishman's literary accomplishment is always balanced by a kind of bemused affection for his faults. Whether Joyce is putting the finishing touches on Ulysses, falling down drunk in the streets of Trieste, or talking dirty to his future wife via the postal service, Ellmann's account always shows us a genius and a human being--a daunting enough task for a fiction writer, let alone the poor, fact-fettered biographer.

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Customer Reviews

One of the best literary biographies ever written
Not only is this a great biography of Joyce (as the many other reviewers point out), but it stands as one of the best literary biographies ever written in English. I've read dozens of bios of authors, and this one stands well above all the others (with Robert Richardson's bios of Emerson, Thoreau and William James close behind).

The only thing, though, is that this biography is so good that no one is writing a new one. As this book is 50 years old (yes, it was updated in 1982, but I don't think much was changed), a lot more is known about Joyce than when this was written. While this has the advantage of being written close to Joyce's time, it is time now for someone to step in and write on that takes into account new discoveries and new information that Ellmann didn't have. In the meantime, however, even if you're not a fan of Joyce, or if you don't like biographies, do read this. It reads like a novel, and is hard to put down.

2010-03-06 | Mac author and journalist and French-English translator (A village in the French Alps) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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James Joyce comes alive
Biographies frequently fail to convey the personality of their subject but not this one. James Joyce jumps off the page in all his vainglorious, self-centered, generous, mooching, fearful and beyond brilliant glory.

Richard Ellman is particularly good at giving us an unvarnished Joyce and neither lionizes or demonizes him. Ellman lets him simply exist with all his varied moods, opinions and behaviors. The lesson here is that a biographer doesn't need to editorialize about a subject's life but simply bring to the reader evidence of the person's varied nature.

I can't say enough about the power, subtlety and elegance of Ellman's prose. Every sentence is engagingly written, telling us something important to Joyce's life, work, millieu without calling attention to itself or Ellman's bias. If there is a bias to the book it is that Joyce's work is his life and his life is his work.

The only Joyce I've read is "Ulysses" and I found Ellman particularly good at showing how so much of that book come out of Joyce's life and not his imagination. The book gave me the insight that a great work can come from one who has no idea how to create an alternative world but who does know how to take the stuff of their life and re-imagine as something completely new.

My only criticism is that the creative process so well described with "Ulysses" didn't come across as well for "Finegans Wake." But that might be me, having not read the later book, I was unable to connect with his discussions about Joyce and that book.

2009-04-25 | Randy Wilson (San Francisco) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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The greatest book on Joyce's life and writings
This ia a "must-have" book for any Joyce lover. The book goes into every relevant detail of Joyce's life and to my taste is written in an incredibly vivid style. Many aspects of Finnegans Wake become clearer once you get to know about how it was being created and especially once you get to understand a bit what Joyce himself was like. Amusing meetings with Proust and Gertrude Stein are also inside there...
Another great feauture of this edition are numerous photografs.
Anthony Burgess called this "The greatest literary biography of the century" and Tom Stoppard got so inspired that he wrote "Tarvesti", while reading this book.
To put it short - GREAT BOOK on a GREAT MAN.

2009-02-07 | Pavel Ryzhakov (Saint-Petersburg, Russia) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Groovy chronicle of an eccentric and groovy cat
Puts all of his work into a far more enlightening context. When most scholars are reading Joyce for the interplay of signs and signifiers and deeper questions about what can and can't be said in words, Ellmann returns us to the days when Cyclops was written because he though Michael Cusack was absurd and Penelope was a homage to his wife (as was all of Ulysses). There's something very endearing about this book and, like Bloom himself, incredibly humaine.

2009-01-27 (Boulder) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Simply Extraordinary
I just cannot praise this book enough. Ellman's biography of Joyce is amazing, bewildering, daunting (at least in its length) and wonderful -- not coincidently, just like James Joyce. One caveat: I imagine a reader might be quite confused if s/he read this before reading any of Joyce's major works (Ulysses or Finnegans Wake). I am kicking myself that I didn't read this biography years ago! Truly a marvelous work -- and a must for readers of Joyce.

2008-01-22 | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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ULYSSES by James Joyce

Description

Ulysses takes place in a single day, 16 June 1904, also known as Bloomsday, it sets the characters and incidents of the Odyssey of Homer in modern Dublin and represents Odysseus (Ulysses), Penelope and Telemachus in the characters of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, and contrasts them with their lofty models. The book explores various areas of Dublin life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Nevertheless, the book is also an affectionately detailed study of the city. In Ulysses, Joyce employs stream of consciousness, parody, jokes, and virtually every other literary technique to present his characters. Many consider it the best novel of the twentieth century. It is powerfully written, a book for the ages.

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Customer Reviews

Ulysses by James Joyce
I don't feel really worthy to review this book. It's Ulysses. It's the greatest modern novel in the English language. It's a love letter to it and a history of it and has a sick, twisted relationship with it's readers and has actually driven people to a lifetime of studying just a few chapters of it. I know I missed a thousand things in every ten pages I read, and if I went back again, I'd see things completely differently.

And nonetheless, I did read it, and I feel the need to mark that down because it was an accomplishment for me. And it was deeply, deeply beautiful. James Joyce, for all his ornery nature, was capable of prose that will bring tears to your eyes. Perhaps it's about a repulsive subject, or a funny one, but you'll find yourself hugging the book to you as much as throwing it across the room. Or at least, I did.

People often grow attached to particular chapters in this book, since it is so large. It is easier to connect with just one particular vignette of the day. The chapters can largely stand on their own, with some plot threads as background. My personal favorite was "Scylla and Charybdis," based off an episode in the Odyssey where Odysseus has to choose between him and all his crew going down in a black hole in the sea, or a sea monster that will eat most of his crew, but leave Odysseus alive to continue his journey. They spend it in a library, talking about theories of Hamlet and Shakespeare, while one of the main characters (Stephen Daedalus, for those of you who have read Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man) fights with himself inwardly. It's so beautiful, and in a novel of obscurity, introducing Shakespeare was my way of seeing the message.

2010-01-21 (Vancouver,BC) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 5

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Duplicates others
Typical straight-from-Project-Gutenberg textfile conversion: no ToC, no italics, no chapter breaks. See comparative review here: Ulysses

2009-12-03 | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 1

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Comparison of Ulysses ebooks
Looking at the sample chapters of the 99c MobileReference edition, I notice an entire missing paragraph (after "and chanted:"). The chapter breaks are poorly formatted, and other typos include a small 'i' for 'I' and a period for a comma.

The $1.29 edition touted as "w/ Active Table of Contents and Chapter Navigation" is blatantly false advertising-- the 18 chapters aren't indicated in any way, just the three 'books'. The indentation of paragraphs is inconsistent. (Why is there no publisher listed?)

The anonymous $3.99 edition (ASIN: B0019NGLNC) has unreadably awful formatting, and no TOC.

2009-11-25 | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 3

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Wonderful reading experience
One of the drawbacks of reading Ulysses is the size of any printed text. This makes for a wonderful reading experience. The text isn't any less complex or shorter. This is a book that has to be absorbed. I'm starting my 4th reading of the book. This time on my Iphone. This is a massive work, but all I can see at any one time is what is on the screen. This book isn't for everyone. If it is to your taste, it will draw you back over and over again.

2009-09-09 (Fort Worth, TX USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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This is a masterpiece!
Ulysses by James Joyce

Kindle edition of Joyce's extraordinary novel. Great ebook!

2008-07-14 (USA) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 5

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The Dead

Description

“The Dead is one of the twentieth century’s most beautiful pieces of short literature. Taking his inspiration from a family gathering held every year on the Feast of the Epiphany, Joyce pens a story about a married couple attending a Christmas-season party at the house of the husband’s two elderly aunts. A shocking confession made by the husband’s wife toward the end of the story showcases the power of Joyce’s greatest innovation: the epiphany, that moment when everything, for character and reader alike, is suddenly clear.

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Customer Reviews

Complex college course book.
Talk about a hard read, this book is not for the literary amateur or someone looking for a fast paced and exciting read. Although it is rich with descriptions and definitely one of Joyce's better works, the story itself is tedious and hard to follow. The actual physical book quality was standard and the price is decent.

2008-12-13 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 3

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Wrong date in description
The description says that the events of "The Dead" took place on New Year's Eve. They did not: the most likely date for the events (I'll spare you all the reasons and details) is the evening of January 6th, also know as "the Feast of the Epiphany."

2007-04-01 | mashny (New York) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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I HEAR THIS SETLOCK RENDITION OF THESE STORIES OVER AND OVER AGAIN
This review was written for the Setlock spoken word recording entitled the Dead but which also includes Ivy Day in the Committee Room.

Unfortunately amazon tends to reprint reviews for items of equal title, even across formats. Please do a search of The Dead, with commuter's library in the parameter and you will discover the correct item and an excellent unabridged recording of the Dead which you may soon grow to love and appreciate.

I have several different recordings of these stories, none done better than Setlock.

Ivy Day is my favorite tale for its complexity of "dialogue" (really octologue) which Setlock skillfully and subtly and in a lowered key relates. I have heard more dramatized and individualized readings, but Setlock gives a proper subdued, not quite melancholic tone, with quiet respectful humor, like a dear friend telling an ancient great tale at an old firplace while seated upon comfortable chairs before a gentle turf fire with adequate and appropriate beverage of an evening.

Ivy Day from Dubliners is truly a great story which stands up to multiple listenings, even after the initial jokes grow familiar ("and be glad he has a country to sell!"). Like rereading Ulysses several times, one's understanding and appreciation of the profounder universal themes only grows more acute upon each listening.

In fact I find in the profundity and conversational conflicts of Ivy Day the germ of the technical skills Joyce required to write the multiple conversations in the Cyclops and the newspaper office episodes (the latter I will not risk mispelling here).

The grace and gentle approach of Setlock bears up even under repeated and constant listening. I only wish these were transferred to CD before my tapes run out!

Joyce is made to be heard, not read. Hear him truly here.

2006-07-13 | least helpful reviewer (among us humans) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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An Evocative Christmas Evening
Set in early 20th century Dublin this short story was the last in a collection called The Dubliners by native son, James Joyce. Despite the mournful title there is no murder nor mysterious death involved in this seemingly simple piece, set in an old-fashioned Society home during the Christmas season. Instead this proves an introspective tale from the viewpoint of middle-aged Gabriel, favorite nephew of his respected aunts who host an annual dinner party. The role of music and performers is debated among their many lively guests.

Gabriel's required speech during dinner praises the Irish tradition of warm hospitality. But something causes his wife, Gretta, to hark back to her girlhood and her first love--whose poignant memory threatens his plans for connubial bliss in their hotel room. Delicate as the snowflakes which blot out the city landscape, barely plotted with delicious hints of unexpressed emotion, The Dead transports readers to a different gas-lit age, where beauty and grace are subtly exhibited and passionately sought after. Joyce reminds us that music possesses the power to evoke the past and serve as a catalyst both for pain and pleasure. This may be read in one sitting, but don't miss the author's other reminiscences.

2004-11-15 | kitka12345 (Westchester, NY) | Helpful Votes: 10 | Rating: 3

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Useful Case Study Collection of Literary Masterpiece
I've found this to be the most useful of all the "case study" texts I've tried from both St. Martin's/Bedford and Norton. The primary text is sufficiently contained and the representative critical methodologies presented clearly enough to introduce students to both literature and literary theory without overwhelming them. Moreover, "The Dead" is capable of repaying the close and observant reader with a Joycean "epiphany" perhaps not surpassed by any other literary text (the last several paragraphs, especially, require attention to the developing, altering meanings of each and every word).

I have one caveat: the essay representing feminist criticism I frankly find baffling. The writer, apparently trying to have her cake and eat it too, manages to indict Joyce as a sexist while applauding the story as a critique of sexism and patriarchal hegemony! It does not "seem" to occur to her that Joyce may be removed from his central character, Gabriel, or that her evidence for Gabriel's male arrogance may actually be Joyce's idea from the start. A close reading of the character certainly suggests an ironic portrayal--everything that appears to be in Gabriel's favor is exposed through Joyce's subtle language as self-delusion. The feminist critic, however, impugns Joyce by suggesting that his "intentions" are less honorable than the meaning of the text itself!

Perhaps the writer is overstating a point in order to provide a better example of the type of critical approach she was asked to represent for the purposes of this anthology. I know that I will suggest as much should I again have occasion to use this particular essay.

2004-10-10 (Kenosha,, WI United States) | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 4

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