Total Page : 120
Publisher : Research Education Association
Publication Date : 1996 05 13
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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encountered discord in getting this work published because various influential factions found it to be blasphemous This outdated assessment represents the Irish Catholic View of the age which had somehow carried over from the Victorian Period Today one might characterize these tales as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
>> 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
