A Saturday Evening Meditation: Dubliners — James Joyce

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I am instinctively put off by lionising accounts of writers. Joyce is not a God either. In fact, his work begins to lose much of its appeal with Ulysses, which is supposed to be his masterpiece. To me it is not, for it is already burdened with opacity, the very opposite of what makes his earlier work stand out — lucid vistas. 

I have always liked Stephen Hero and the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, his two early novels about his childhood and youth in Ireland. They are absolute masterpieces of atmospheric description — they make me feel as if I am physically involved in the goings-on.

This quality is preserved in Dubliners, his selection of short stories from life in fin de siecle Ireland. Mind you, do not read them all at one go - the tenor of each story is rather melancholy, even sad.

Here is a good, brief introduction to James Joyce, and below it a reading of one of the stories from Dubliners.

Enjoy.

Eveline — the reading is too hurried, to my taste, the atmosphere evoked in the story is slow-flowing, inert, somber and laden, not as jumpy, eager and bustling as the reader's voice:

See also this Saturday Evening Meditation with Marcel Proust.