Jim Fonseca's Reviews > Dubliners

Dubliners is a collection of short stories published in 1914. The concluding story is The Dead, which the blurb on GR cites as “the best short story ever written.”

We are told in a brief introduction that Joyce was a pioneer in popularizing the structure of the modern short story as focused on “a fleeting but decisive episode.” Elsewhere I’ve read of the focus of the modern short story described as 'the moment.'



So, is The Dead the greatest short story ever written? I’ll add my two cents: I first read it 50 years ago in college. I’ve always remembered it as if I read it yesterday. How many of the hundreds of short stories I have read since then can I say that about?

Many of the stories are very short - only four or five pages. Here are a few samples:

In The Sisters, their brother, a priest, dies at home. Was it because he broke a chalice during mass shortly before his death?

In An Encounter, two boys play hooky from school and encounter a strange man. His conversation is such that it seems he might be a molester.

In Araby, a young boy lives in a house in which a priest died a short time ago. The young boy is frustrated in trying to buy a present at a bazaar for his puppy love.

In Eveline, a young woman debates leaving her father and running off to Buenos Aires with her lover.



In Two Gallants, a young man waits to see the result of his best friend’s visit to a young woman they assume is a prostitute.

In A Little Cloud, a man is jealous of his friend’s success in London. He determines that you have to 'go away' for success. He feels trapped in Ireland by his wife and baby.

In A Painful Case, a man frequently visits a married woman and her daughter at home. The husband thinks he’s visiting because he’s interested in the daughter. He’s not.



Some of the stories are modern in outlook, bringing up issues of feminism and racism. The Dead touches on both issues during conversation around the Christmas table. An elderly aunt is furious about boys getting preference over girls in a choir. A man around the table raises the issue of no one appreciating a great tenor. “Is it because he’s only a black?”

The story, A Mother, focuses on a dispute over a payment for her daughter singing in a choir. “They wouldn’t have dared to have treated her like that if she had been a man.”



Top photo: Grafton Street, Dublin, early 1900s from vintag.es
A still from a movie made of The Dead, (Anjelica Huston and Donal McCann) from irishcentral.com
Postcard of Dublin in the 1920s from monksbarn.wordpress.com
The author from theculturetrip.com

[Pictures added 11/15/2021; edited 8/11/23]