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.

 

A Poem Pertinent to "Gina/Diane"

The other day, I came across a poem in the New York Times Sunday Magazine  entitled "Self-Portrait as Myself," which you can read by clicking on that title.

I found this particularly poignant because the sentiments expressed by the author, Meghan O'Rourke, are pertinent to my novella "Gina/Diane," which can be found in print at The Book Patch or as an e-book at Amazon.

I also like the manner in which the poem promotes additional thoughts.

For instance, one line talks in terms of "casting a lawyer of snow over our losses." This rather vividly brings to mind Gretta's sorrow and Gabriel's sense of inadequacy at the conclusion of James Joyce's story, "The Dead."

Later, the poem talks of "the propeller planes humming past."  One of the joys of sitting on our roof deck in the summer here in Seattle is watching float planes on their way to or from Lake Union. These are mostly De Havilland "Beavers," the last of which was built in 1967. Fortunately, they appear likely to keep flying more or less indefinitely.

Ghost Stories and the Line Between the Living and the Dead

I was reading the New York Times Sunday magazine the other day and came across an interesting little item entitled "How to Tell A Ghost Story." If you've never written one, but would like to try your hand at it, the brief article is  definitely worth a read.

The tips contained in the article are attributed to Ruth Robbins, professor of Victorian Literature at Leeds Beckett University in England, and she makes several interesting points, among them that people tend to be possessed by their possessions.  That's a notion that authors of many genres of fiction might want to keep in mind.

The Role of the Dead in the Lives of the Living

The other night, I attended a performance of "Cinderella" by the Pacific Northwest Ballet.  This was not a conventional "Cinderella," such as that choreographed by Fredrick Ashton and performed by the American Ballet Theater, but rather a reinterpretation of the story by Jean-Christophe Maillot, of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo.

The main difference: Cinderella's father is obsessed with his deceased former wife (Cinderella's mother), and dance connected with that relationship both opens and closes Maillot's ballet, leaving viewers as thinking as much about that as about Cinderella's successful conquest of the famous prince, which is of course pre-ordained and thus perhaps not as interesting.