Something Disappointing about James Joyce's "The Dead"

While I believe that James's Joyce's story "The Dead" is probably his most satisfying piece of fiction, I have also over time come to believe there is something disappointing about it.

In his autobiographically influenced book  "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," one of the most memorable scenes is a Christmas dinner that devolves into an argument over whether the Catholic Church should be involved in Irish politics. This stemmed from an attempt by the Church to assert its authority in such matters after the death of Ireland's great political leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, whose reputation had earlier been tarnished in the eyes of some when his long-running adulterous affair with an English woman, Kitty O'Shea, had become public. That gave the church running room.

In the story, an older woman named Dante, who had apparently once been a nun before becoming a governess of the family's children, defends the Church on the basis of its moral authority against a family friend named Casey, who is furious about Church-led attempts to condemn Parnell and thus undermine secular authority. This particular question of Ireland's future dominates the dinner.

A similarly controversial issue arises in "The Dead" over whether Ireland should look inward or outward in trying to set matters on a better course in the process of getting out from under British rule and British culture.

During an annual family-and-friends party held on or near the Epiphany, a woman named Molly Ivors accuses the chief character, Gabriel Conroy, of being insufficiently nationalistic. When she invites Gabriel and his wife to visit the Aran Islands, where Gaelic is still spoken, Gabriel tells her that he will instead by cycling on the European continent and that he is tired of his country.

What's disappointing is that Ms Ivors then promptly leaves the party before all sit down to dinner where a general discussion of Ireland's best future course could have taken place. 

Joyce, of course, had other fish to fry when he wrote "The Dead," but this topic arguably looms large, if mostly indirectly, in "Ulysses" as well as in Joyce's own life. It would have been interesting to hear Joyce's characters argue the relative merits of the two paths as they ate the famous roast goose.

 

Viewing "A Challenge You Have Overcome" Through Ghosts

 I suppose we are all to one degree or another creatures of our past, which in my case, in this particular instance, has to do with my having spent a lot of time reading and thinking about Virginia Woolf.

In that context, Allegra Goodman gets high marks for her short story "A Challenge You Have Overcome" in the Jan. 25, 2021 New Yorker in that it treats with ordinary people going about their ordinary days. But Goodman loses points when viewed through another Woolf filter for depicting her characters first and foremost through materialistic concerns -- whether someone will get into college, whether someone will lose a job, and so forth.

 Fundamentally, it is a gloomy story that Goodman makes a metaphorical attempt to redeem at the end in a fashion that also brings Woolf to mind. In "Mrs. Dalloway," Richard famously brings roses home to reassure Clarissa he hasn't abandoned her by accepting a lunch date without her. In "A Challenge," Steve first thinks to bring home flowers to his wife, Andrea, to reassure her as his job ends, but then ops for a rather impractical ficus plant, impractical because he has to carry it from Manhattan home to New Jersey on a crowded Jersey Transit commuter train. The ficus is metaphorical because it hearkens back to a song Steve and Andrea used to sing to their young children about the nature of life -- and Steve wants to start over again.

It's easy to see why because Ms Goodman's story fits nearly into a New Yorker short story trope: life is a downer. (Please click on that phrase to see what I have had to say on that topic.)

What was Steve and Andrea's house like? "Unhappiness filled every room." That extract gives the flavor of this story about professional disappointments and, first and foremost, a family in which communication between husband and wife, and especially between parents and child, has pretty much disappeared.

Well, perhaps Ms Goodman thinks that characterizes all too many American families and that is her point. But the title of her story suggests there is a way out, and readers can decide for themselves. There is also a hint of a sequel since this is apparently to be part of a cycle of short stories about Jewish family life (there is nothing in this story that jumps out at one as singularly Jewish) and, in one of the usual New Yorker author interviews, Ms Goodman declines to say whether what happened to one of the sons in the story was a favorable or unfavorable development for him. Presumably she intends to pick up on that in a follow-on effort.

In another respect, Ms Goodman's story brings to mind "The Dead" in which James Joyce depicts a dotted line between those who are living and those who are not. Joyce may well have borrowed this idea from one of his own favorite authors, Henrik Ibsen and his play "Ghosts" with which Joyce was very familiar.

The ghost in question in "A Challenge" is Andrea's deceased mother-in-law, Jeanne, who Andrea keeps hearing and whose "breathtaking honesty" she has come to appreciate -- after the fact. This is a bit like the relief many Americans apparently felt when Donald Trump dismissed the need for political correctness.

In this case, the ghost helps Andrea see life from more than just her own perspective, but does it matter? There, Ms Goodman is disappointing.

A New Yorker Short Story for Our Time by Graham Swift

 Graham Swift's story "Blushes," published in the Jan. 11, 2021 New Yorker, is a tale for our time, not because it is set in the current coronavirus pandemic, but because it is all about the uncertainties of gender.

The protagonist of the story is a lonely, retired doctor who has volunteered to go back to work in the prevailing crisis.  His second wife -- "the love of his life" -- died two years previously and neither marriage resulted in children. And his mother, to whom he was exceptionally devoted, is also deceased.

On the day of the story, as he drives to work, earlier than necessary, along silent suburban roads, his thoughts revert to his childhood as they often do on such occasions.  This time, he remembers an incident when he was 10 years old, sick in bed with his delightful mother stroking a foot or knee as a doctor examines him.  It was just after his birthday party.

The doctor say's the boy's illness is not hard to identify: scarlet fever.

 "Then his mother said, with a sly kind of smile, 'Unless he's just blushing.'"

The doctor, readers are told, "couldn't have known what special meaning this had. If his mother had been given to winking, she might at this point have winked."

After the doctor concludes his examination, declares it a minor case and writes a prescription, he gives some instructions among which is the following:

"As for blushing, young man, I can't cure that. You'll have to take care of that by yourself."

Although Swift's story is appropriately far from explicit in this delicate matter -- we are now back in about 1948 -- the source of the boy embarrassment, or even shame, stemmed from an incident in which his gender identity was called into question when he was teased by a woman who evidently had certain suspicions..

The young man is clearly a "mother's boy." His father, who soon divorces his mother, is depicted as uninterested and there is a hint his mother is unable to have another child -- perhaps the daughter she was hoping for.

His birthday party was in the afternoon of a working day and other mothers were the only grownups. The children were both boys and girls -- the girls and the mothers all wearing "party frocks." While there is no precise definition of a "frock," one can say with confidence that it is a dress that departs from the strictly utilitarian, sometimes significantly. You know one when you see one. It radiates desirable femininity,

The frock his mother wore, for instance, was "a mass of swirling red blooms on white, and in a delicate waft of perfume."

There was a moment "when the mothers all claimed him" and one wanted to have him -- like a piece of cake.   And as she said it, a piece of the cake she was eating fell into the plunge of her cleavage, the neckline of her own floral dress cut low.

"So come on, Jim, you've got to tell us ... which one is your favorite? ... Which party frock?"

Confused -- was the woman talking about just a dress, or a girl in a particular dress? -- Jim doesn't know how to answer and begins blushing.  With relief, he is gently saved from further questioning by his mother.

But his thoughts, about "party dresses, rustling, pressing, whispering around him" left him understanding that "for a moment, he'd been claimed by the women, even made to feel he belonged to them," and "he'd even seemed to see everything through their eyes."

Still driving along, Jim Cole,  ponders what is means to "blush like a girl."  Or a boy. And what about "that vexing question" the woman had put to him? Had it meant "that life itself might be a great choosing of girls. Girls! How delightful. What happiness."

Or, readers might easily suppose, had the woman --a certain Mrs. Simms -- perceived what we might now call a certain degree of gender fluidity within Jim and with her teasing, put her finger on it. Had he picked out a certain frock at the party as a favorite, would the next question have been would he like to wear it? Would he have liked to have been one of those delightful girls, or just like them, seeing the world as they did?"

The look his mother had on her face when she had told the doctor "unless he is just blushing" was meant for him, the boy had realized. She, too, knew and was happy with his latent femininity. It would make him a better person as a boy and a man, she no doubt thought and she was evidently right.

In the usual New Yorker author interview,  Summers is, in effect, asked the wrong question: what drew him to writing a story set in the coronavirus crisis, and in response he talks rather vaguely about ghosts, eventually explaining that "ghost worlds, lost worlds" became the atmosphere of the story.

The interviewer doesn't press him to explain how his character felt drawn into the world of women amid all the frocks, and Summers doesn't himself go there on  his own during the interview. That's a disappointment, but no disaster.

I think one can easily imagine the nature of at least some of the ghosts the author had in mind.

More About How Black Artists Are Currently Doing Well

I've written several posts recently about how this is a very good moment in time for Black artists -- long overdue many would argue, and I don't dispute that.  But at the same time, when one hears endlessly of "white privilege," I think it is useful to shine a bit of light on a trend that goes against that notion.

On Dec. 27, 2020, for instance, the New York Times interviewed Black playwright Jeremy O. Harris, who, after years in the financial wilderness has suddenly come into much better fortune thanks to contracts with the fashion industry (where Black designers are now getting a lot of attention) and the TV network HBO.

Harris' wrote "Slave Play," which I saw on Broadway before the pandemic. It was recently nominated for a record number of "Tony Awards" and will probably come out tops in at least some of them. The play, suitably controversial, centers on interracial sex therapy and one message is that a white male has to love his Black wife because she is Black as opposed to despite that fact. But the manner in which the woman in question was depicted profoundly (and audibly) irritated a Black woman sitting in the audience just behind me -- steam was almost coming out of her ears as she got up to leave the theater -- and, indeed, some have complained that the play has misogynist aspects.

To me, the most convincing interchanges took place between two gay men, one white and one Black, and, indeed, Harris identifies as gay.

The thrust of the Times interview with Harris is his philanthropy -- he appears to be giving much of his windfall away without knowing whether or for how long his good fortune will continue -- and those interested can click on the link above and read about it.