Dubliners (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

'Dubliners' begins the work that was later to become 'Ulysses'. Although 'Dubliners' does not include the odyssey through language contained in the latter book (making it both more accessible and less groundbreaking), it is nevertheless a remarkable work. 'Dubliners' is a collection of short stories featuring single events over a few hours in the lives of inhabitants of the title city. Short story writing has traditionally involved sinuous twists or startling contrivances which create the feeling of a completed story, or in which the reader is invited to be thrown or amazed in the last few paragraphs (such as writers like Philip K. Dick or Borges). Joyce eschews this style. Instead his stories are snapshots in the Dubliner's lives, featuring relatively mundane events (a failed trip to the market, an afternoon skipping school) in which nothing remarkable happens. There is very little narrative here, and this may not appeal to readers that like a strong story.
Joyce described each story as an 'epiphany', an event in which a character within the story (and hopefully the reader also) is invited to re-examine the familiar, and re-assess their relationships with the events that make up their lives. Joyce is trying to show that the day that changes your life may not be any different than the one that precedes it, or the ones that may follow, and that the life-changing event may just be an alteration in the way you perceive something that you have encountered a hundred times before. Each story is impressive in its construction, and for most of them I was left amazed by the power of their impact when compared to the banality of their content. Joyce manages to observe human behaviour brilliantly and can seem to extract every drop out of each comment, each gesture. Each is short (with the exception of 'The Dead') and I read this book very quickly (unlike 'Ulysses').
'Dubliners' is a sort of abridged 'Ulysses' and fans of the latter, or anyone looking for a way in to the latter, should definitely read 'Dubliners', likewise anyone who is a fan of this sort of 'epiphanic' short story writing (Camus' 'Exile and the Kingdom' is the closest thing I have read to date). However the lack of a strong narrative and the occasional lapse into (for me) impenetrable archaic Irish jargon, means that this book probably isn't for everyone. As far as I am concerned, it is the archetype of its genre, and an incredible book to have read.

I have read this book dozens of times and i cannot add to what has already been said by other readers, However, someone once asked Joyce why his books were so hard to understand, he replied that if you read them out loud in a Dublin accent they would become clear. The penguin edition of Dubliners read by Gerald McSorley perfectly illustrates Joyce's point. I defy anyone to listen to the story 'A Painful Case' and not have a tear in their eye by the end of it.

Nabokov, who loved Ulysses, said that Proust was the Shakespeare of fiction. However, if might be more useful to think of Proust as being the comic spirit of Shakepseare and Joyce the tragic spirit. I distinctly remember reading this book in the early sixties, at least once, maybe twice, but I must have just been scanning it, or reading too quickly. In fact it occurs to me before this project I habitually read fiction too quickly. This reading was definitely as if for the first time; in fact I could remember almost nothing of any previous readings. It's a great book, and I'd be embarrassed to say anything more than that except that I read it with several maps of Dublin spread out on my desk, and none of the maps was detailed enough. I also read the copious and excellent (although some were very obvious) notes by Thomas Brown very assiduously, and a couple of critical essays on Joyce. But much of the material in the critical pieces seemed trivial when compared to the joy of reading the books closely without having to think of whether or not the stories are linked and searching for symbolism more subtle than what one notices just in an ordinary close reading. But for me so pleasurable was my reading I felt as if it was time to give up my project and devote the rest of my life to a study of Joyce. However, there are quite enough people doing that as it is. So I shall move on, reluctantly. It was a delicious, slow read.