By Geo Ong

The approach of Valentine’s Day got me thinking… What would be my perfect Urchin date?

It’d be a first date. I’d meet her at a cafe she frequents on a regular basis to read on her days off working at the Tate Modern. I am particularly thrilled not to have to use my Oyster card, since the cafe is walking distance, exactly halfway between her London flat and mine. On my way there, I find a pound on the ground. It’s tails-up, but my reasoning tells me that finding a pound on the ground regardless of what’s up is good luck. We arrive at the cafe at the same time. She is more attractively-dressed than I am, but not by much. It’s packed except a small table for two by the back window.

We talk about the important people in our lives. She tells me about her mother. I tell her about James Joyce. I realise later that our meandering, tangential conversation would make little sense to any lurking eavesdropper, which makes me feel she’s one of those rare individuals who actually understands me.

We go for a walk and happen upon a used bookshoppe called Reid Books. I propose a game: we each pick a book for the other to read. I hastily pick a charmingly-tattered copy of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein, but she stops me and tells me she just read it last week. We get sidetracked talking about Alice and Gertrude and somewhere along the way plan a trip to Paris next weekend. Thirty minutes later, I remember our game and find a copy of Dubliners, priced at a pound. I pay for it with the good luck coin I found earlier. (I read her pick within the week and it quickly becomes one of my favourite books of all time. We spend much of the Chunnel ride to Paris discussing it, interspersed with her semi-successful attempts to teach me French.)

After walking her home, I walk back to my flat thinking, how wonderful I didn’t just imagine all this.

Fluid Boarders and Naughty Girls: Music, Domesticity, and Nation in Joyce’s Boarding Houses

Julieann Veronica Ulin

I can’t help it–this story gets to me every time.  It’s not my favorite story in Dubliners; in fact, I avoid it in the gazillion anthologies it graces (mostly because I don’t want to read it to death).  But then when I do read it,  every ten years or so, the narrator sends his story right back around my heart and squeezes.  I love the boy–his questing, his longing, his normalness, his imagination, his possibility.

I love how each of these first three stories builds, one to the next. (Another reason I don’t like it to be anthologized, for it belongs with the other two, grows out of them, revising my sense of what was going on in the one before, and the one before preparing me for the one I’m reading and the one to come.  “Eveline” changes things up big time..but more on that story after I read it again.)  The images from one story call to the next as though they are houses themselves along North Richmond Street. I’m thinking here, again, about Alan’s observation that reading these three stories is like “peeking into a musty window of these people’s lives.”  The shuttered world of “The Sisters” becomes the full city in “The Encounter” becomes the wild swing between inside & outside, imagination & reality, domestic and other in  “Araby.” The rhythms and sounds of the first two–those remarkable cadences– prepare us for the astonishments of this story:  “…shook music from the buckled harness” or “Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.”   So simple those soft syllables. The boy has slowed down enough from the “career of [their] play” to notice, to sense, to feel.

Chris mentioned in his post the indebtedness of so many twentieth-century writers to Joyce.  I think here in “Araby” of Flannery O’Connor’s use of sentence rhythm and sound–the way Joyce breaks up a sentence– in  the magnificent opening of her “Parker’s Back”: “Parker’s wife sat on the front porch floor, snapping beans. Parker was sitting on the step, some distance away, watching her sullenly.  She was plain, plain.”  I love to reorder Joyce’s sentences to learn from him, to see how the meaning comes out of his grammar, his syntax. The opening sentence, for example–What if it read, “Being blind, North Richmond Street was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ school set the boys free?”  Or even worse, “Except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ school set the boys free, being blind, North Richmond Street was a quiet street.”  What he does with word order and punctuation.  (Watch out–wait until we get to “The Dead” and that opening sentence!)  There are many, many sentences in this story that just knock me down.

I love the language of “Araby” and how it, too, grows out of “The Sisters” and “The Encounter.” We’re ready for the mix of peculiarly childish perspective and adult use of language–the child’s fresh hearing of “Swaddlers! Swaddlers!” from “The Encounter” becomes the more nuanced language of longing when he describes her hand on the railing .  Something has intensified in “Araby,” sharpened and matured–the gauzy confusion felt by the boys in the opening stories lifts in the presence of longing.  Where in “The Encounter” the streets are “noisy”, in “Araby it is “flaring.”  “Araby” ends in “anguish and anger,” a stressed declaration of feeling that the other stories do not find, one just ending mid-sentence, the other penitent. (Going back to my earlier point about the sounds and rhythms carrying so much of the power: imagine if Joyce had ended the story in “anguish and rage”…)

I love that this story (the other two, as well) are narrated in the first person, but using the past tense, and thereby keeping us–and the narrator– at a distance from the events.  This is told through the scrim of memory, and that the narrator is telling the stories must mean that he keeps returning to these memories, catches on them like a wool sweater on a nail.   In fact–and this is in response to something Chris said in a discussion with Nancy about the language–I do not think at all that Joyce missteps a bit with the swings between elevated and simple language.  I think he offers us another divide here between adult and child, a deeper angst, sadness, and impossibility precisely because the stories are told by the older self re-entering the younger self.

So much to respond to in this story, so fun to read it slowly aloud, but I’ll leave it here for now.  I’m rather enjoying this motley reading:  writing a bit here, responding a bit there, sending off another bit in a postcard, messing around with photos I took on my last trip to Ireland. What a gift to be on this journey with such a motley crew.

…to get me back in a bloggy frame of mind.  Thanks to Chris Lott, I have, for the moment, put aside the many books piled up waiting (just finished Alexandra Fuller’s truly beautiful The Legend of Colton H. Bryant), to return to James Joyce’s Dubliners, a book I first read in ninth grade, and that didn’t do much for me then–I was a confirmed Hardy Girl (Thomas, that is–having read all of his books once and some of them twice by then) but found its way to my heart in college and several times since.

I’ve never joined in a loosely-connected reading group, and I’ve always hated book groups though I have cherished some classroom/discussion rooms around books.  Since leaving teaching I’ve become a bit of a solo reader, ravenous, making my way through books I never seemed to have the time to read.  I’m ready for company.  I miss fellow readers embarked on the same adventure.  What I love about this reading experiment is that it’s bringing people together from all over the reading map, people I know, people I don’t, and we can respond however and wherever we like.  Already people are talking about some creative approaches to responding.  Who knows where we all will post/respond/connect.  Postcards are going to wing through the air.  Blogposts, Twitter, Posterous–who knows what else, where else, how else we will discuss and respond.  How different from a book group or most formal settings.  How intriguing…

I’m only one story into my reading, but already I have been struck by how much there is to get out of reading aloud (and committing to heart).  Perhaps especially the work of Joyce who struggled with poor eyesight and thus felt the world acutely through his ears?  Some think so.  Some think his musicality has to do with his being Irish (the Irish English being a sort of music, the Irish language resonating through accent and phrasing), leaving Ireland and moving about so much, country to country, languagescape to languagescape.  I think he just understood how language and storytelling, the world of place and people, are so much about meter and sound.

Nancy White’s post about finding an Italian copy of the book, and then links to audio recordings of the collection got me to thinking about how important it is to me to read aloud and to listen to others reading.  And how sound creates such a problem in translation, especially for a writer so sensitive to the soundscape.  I just read the first story aloud to myself, and wish I could hear my fellow readers’ voices on the stories–not someone hired to read–but those trying to understand the text alongside me as part of this exploration.  It would bring me closer to them as they respond and it would, I am sure, bring me ever closer to the stories and make them live again.

To that end, I’ve recorded the first paragraph of the opening story, “The Sisters”, and in so doing slowed down enough to feel with the narrator that night, the power of the words in their sounds–paralysis, gnomon, simony, to notice the “darkened blind” and feel the flicker of the candles through the staccato notes of the phrase’s syllables.

I had no idea that when I joined this group for the month of February that I would be recording myself reading the opening paragraph, dusting off the dormant blog, and searching about for stamps for postcards…

Come join us–see what crazy things you’ll do!

“there was no hope for him this time: it was the third

stroke. Night after night I passed the house (it was

vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window:

and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way,

faintly and evenly”

James Joyce, Dubliners

Mr. Morris, I presume?

Among the fascinating possessions my late partner left me when he died is an antique Morris Chair. It’s been repaired more than once in such a way as to decrease its value significantly. However, it is a Morris Chair.  

Yesterday morning I was sorting through some piles of important stuff in my office/storage room to organize things a bit so the room is useable. It’s the area in my loft apartment that’s intended as the dining room (making the concept of “loft” questionable). 

In sorting stuff, I came across the springs for the seat of the Morris Chair (it’s being restored). I also found the 1892 edition of Miscellanies, Aesthetic and Literary: to Which Is Added The Theory of Life, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I inherited from my father’s library (on which he wrote “824.7” for the Library of Congress catalogue of his library). Both “The Theory of Life” and the Library of Congress system of cataloguing one’s books boggle my mind.  

I didn’t find my copy of James Joyce’s Dubliners. I usually manage to keep copies of short stories together in the midst of the chaos because I refer to them constantly. Dubliners is one of my favorite collections. I’ve even attempted “scholarly” writing [meaning “obfuscated,” as is so well described by Ray Magliozzi on his “Car Talk” puzzler every week (1)] about a couple of those stories. I didn’t obfuscate enough: journal editors are not interested.  

Today is my sixty-fifth birthday. I can’t imagine that bizarre reality is the reason for the trouble I’ve been having for the last forty-eight hours, but it may be. I wrote about my near melt-down at the grocery store on New Year’s Eve. Near melt-down has continued since then. Perhaps anyone who spends a couple of days alone will begin to confuse time and the order of events and even the reasons for decisions or actions. Perhaps. Only my neurologist needs to know (and after the fact there’s nothing he can do—except put it in his notes and try to guess later what it means).  

A double confusion. I thought all day yesterday that I’d spoken on the phone with one of my dearest friends, and he said he could help me move some stuff to my storage area upstairs. So I thought he was coming. He didn’t, so I messaged him to ask if I’d imagined our conversation. Yes and no. We did converse, but it was on New Year’s Day, and I asked him to come today, not yesterday. OK. Two absent minded old farts (except he’s only 50-ish) remember the same event differently. It happens more and more the older you get. I didn’t remember when we talked, and he misunderstood the day I was asking him about. No big deal.  

Later I went back to Krogers to shop for my birthday party. I was almost in tears when arrived. And then, the lights. How on earth do you people stand those ubiquitous fluorescent lights? They must give everyone headaches, if not make all of you crazy. Has anyone done studies on the effects of fluorescent lights on serial killers? You all are in agony 90% of the time when you are inside, and you’re so used to it you don’t even notice. Did I say I’m giving myself a birthday party? I didn’t get any invitations for a date tonight, so I took matters into my own hands.  

By the time I was half finished with my shopping, I was in agony. Fortunately, I ran into one of my best friends, and he helped me talk through what was going on (he helps me a great deal that way—thanks, Wayne). Do I want sympathy? Well, probably. But he said, and I immediately began to calm down, “I can’t imagine how you must feel.” That’s all. Acknowledgement that 1) what I am feeling is, at least to some degree, real—at least my perception is—and 2) hardly anyone feels the way I do. Friendship.  

I couldn’t find candles for my table. Target and Wal-Mart and other ugly places with lights worse than Krogers—they keep everyone in a state of confusion so you all will buy more—sell thousands of squat little candles (with fake odors cloying enough to drive the few people not already over the edge with fluorescents crazy with smells). But a nice eight-inch taper to put into a brass candlestick? I finally found one variety at Krogers. Enough.  

And canned tomatoes—I decided to save one step in party food preparation by using canned tomatoes in the stew instead of finding decent tomatoes and de-seeding them and all that crap. Canned tomatoes. Not in the “canned vegetables” aisle. “Sure,” the manager, who happened by said, “they’re right down this aisle.” It was the aisle with “sauces.” Canned tomatoes aren’t vegetables, they’re sauces.  

Finding canned vegetables in the sauces aisle is pretty much like finding the springs for a Morris Chair in a box of books. Finding the springs for a Morris Chair in a box of books is pretty much like finding just the right friend in a gawd-awful place like Krogers when you are about to make your second scene in 48 hours. But not nearly so important!  

All of this is about research. My research in how to get through this life after 65.  

I tell my students that one never knows what one is searching for when one begins to research. I quote one sentence from a scholarly article that is not obfuscated. “Surprise is the natural companion of research” (2). If you are researching rather than proof-texting, you never know what surprises are in store. Proof-texting is responsible for much of the evil in the world (see “religious fundamentalism” or “homeland security”).  

So here I am doing my research on how to get through this life after 65. I have my presuppositions. I suppose I am proof-texting based on my experience of the difficulty of maintaining some sort of equanimity in the face of fluorescent lights, non-vegetable tomatoes, impossible-to-find candles, all in the context of a bizarre incorrect memory of important phone calls.  

My blog name, as I have pointed out before, is my attempt at the Latin for “I am not crazy.” But I’m not so sure. I know I’m not crazy and what I experience is really (and I mean REALLY) not debilitating. I know that. I’m a cry-baby and a wuss. Back to Coleridge.    

While Coleridge often accepted a medical explanation for madness, he never accepted any explanation that would threaten his moral-religious view of humans as spiritual beings whose minds were constituted by autonomous laws not derivable from, because they were not the effect of, bodily order or disorder. From his own experiences he knew exactly what the medical texts had been saying. . . (3)  

I invite you to make of it what you will that on my 65^th birthday, the research that brings me the most solace, that I understand the best, is a not-so-comforting paragraph by John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress.  

And now was I both a burthen and a terror to myself, nor did I ever so know, as now, what it was to be weary of my life, and yet afraid to die. Oh, how gladly now would I have been anybody but myself! Any thing but a man! and in any condition but mine own! for there was nothing did pass more frequently over my mind, than that it was impossible for me to be forgiven my transgression, and to be saved from wrath to come. (4)  

You may think I’m feeling sorry for myself, or thinking suicidally, or operating out of a mind frayed by TLE and (perhaps) Bipolar Disorder. You may think anything you like. Or you may wait until your 65^th birthday and see if you understand.  

Here’s the one thing my research keeps showing me over and over.  

Any ulterior motive diminishes friendship. Friendship is spiritual because its essence is love, one of the three ‘theological virtues.’ An ulterior motive in friendship seeks to exchange something spiritual for nonspiritual gain. Such an exchange fits the definition of simony. (5)  

Friendship is spiritual. Dilworth and Joyce understand. And so does Wayne. 

______________   
(1)  http://www.cartalk.com/content/puzzler/transcripts/200524/index.html
(2)  Nicholls, Richard E. “Postcards from the past: pressing questions and a persistent
         vitality.”  American Scholar 76.1 (2007): 34+.
(3)  White, Harry. “Coleridge’s uncertain agony.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-
         1900  49.4 (2009): 807+.
(4)  Bunyan, John. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (ed. Roger Sharrock;
         Oxford: Clarendon, 1962): 45. Quoted in Ruf, Frederick J. “Lyric autobiography:
         John Donne’s ‘Holy Sonnets.’.” Harvard Theological Review 86.3 (1993): 293+.
(5)  Dilworth, Thomas. “Not ‘too much noise’: Joyce’s ‘The Sisters’ in Irish
         Catholic  perspective.” Twentieth Century Literature 39.1 (1993): 99+.

–

Stephen Hero by James Joyce

–

Excerpt from Dirty Linen #60 October/November 1995
by Steve Winick (part of a review of the 1993 compilation, Original Dubliners, which was drawn from releases from the years 1966 to 1969)

In the history of Irish music, no group has created and maintained their niche as effectively as the Dubliners. At the beginning of “the ballad boom,” that heady time in the early 60s when the Clancy Brothers made “folk songs” a meaningful category that ordinary people could relate to and take pride in, the Dubliners began their own career. Whereas the Clancys were well-scrubbed returned Yanks from rural Tipperary, decked out in matching white Aran sweaters, the Dubliners were hard drinking backstreet Dublin scrappers with unkempt hair and bushy beards, whose gigs seemed to happen by accident in between fistfights. But their street credibility, their undeniable talent and their honest love of the music has kept them going and made them some of the most famous Irishmen in the world. For those who want a peek at their early career, EMI has released Original Dubliners, a two CD set featuring the Dubliners’ first four albums for EMI, recorded between 1967 and 1969.

It should be said that, contrary to what the sleeve notes claim, these were not the first albums the Dubliners recorded. But they were among the albums that put them in the international arena, and they included some of the songs most associated with the Dubliners’ name. “Seven Drunken Nights,” the title song of their first EMI outing, was the track that made them a household word in Britain and Ireland. One of the most popular folksongs in the English language (included by Child in his book of British ballads as #273, Our Goodman, and collected all over the world, including from rural black laborers in the American south and from black youth in Philadelphia), the song is so bawdy that rarely is it recorded or published intact. The Dubliners’ version, which only reaches five nights, was originally recorded for a 1967 album called The New Dubliners on the Major Minor label. It was released as a single, but when the official media banned it for obscenity it looked like it would languish in obscurity for good. Luckily for the Dubliners (and for the world), it was picked up the pirate station Radio Caroline and given saturation airplay. As a result, it shot to number five on the British Pop charts, launching the Dubliners to stardom.

“Seven Drunken Nights” set the stage for their later LPs and singles, but it was the talent and attitude of the band that made those records work. The Dubliners had everything: Ronnie Drew, whose gravelly, booming voice and guitar playing still fronts the band today, was offset by Luke Kelly, a serious, introspective man who played five-string banjo and sang with a soaring triumphant voice. Ciaran Bourke, their third vocalist and second guitarist, also added songs in Irish and exuberant tin whistle playing. John Sheahan’s fiddle and Barney McKenna’s tenor banjo were influential on a whole generation of performers, and added a dimension to the group that the Clancy clones never had: jigs, reels and hornpipes. In fact, The Dubliners were among the first groups to combine the ballad group sound with traditional instrumentals. In this they anticipated later groups like Sweeney’s Men, the Johnstons, and ultimately Planxty, yet the Dubliners are often overlooked when those three bands are mentioned. Ironically, I think this is partly due to The Dubliners’ success and longevity. Sweeney’s Men, The Johnstons and Planxty had members who became successful solo artists (Christy Moore, Andy Irvine, Paul Brady, and Mick Moloney) as well as future members of The Bothy Band, Steeleye Span, The Woods Band, De Danann, Patrick Street, Moving Hearts and The Pogues. This creates the impression that the Irish music scene was spawned from those three groups. The Dubliners, on the other hand, never broke up, so they never contributed musicians to later seminal bands. They have always been the Dubliners, and will always be among the spiritual grandfathers of most of the Irish traditional and folk groups playing today.

1964

Down By the Liffeyside (Peadar Kearney) - at the Irish Folk Festival

Kimmage

Bonny Lass of Fyvie – “We only know two Scotch songs…and we’re going to sing one of them now.”

1966

Within a Mile of Dublin

1967

Seven Drunken Nights

The Black Velvet Band - live 1970

Label: MAJOR MINOR
Date of entry: 07.09.1967
Highest Placement: 4
Weeks in the Irish Charts: 15

1968

Muirsheen Durkin

Whiskey in the Jar – live on the David Frost Show – 1968

The Wild Rover - date unknown

Song for Ireland (Phil and June Colclough)

Walking all the day near tall towers where falcons build their nests
Silver-winged they fly they know the call of freedom in their breasts
Saw Black Head against the sky where twisted rocks they run to the sea

CHORUS
Living on your western shore
Saw summer sunsets, asked for more
I stood by your Atlantic Sea
And sang a song for Ireland

Drinking all the day in old pubs where fiddlers love to play
Saw one touch the bow he played a reel which seemed so grand and gay
Stood on Dingle Beach and cast in wild foam we found Atlantic bass CHORUS

Talking all the day wth true friends who try to make you stay
Telling jokes and news singing songs to pass the time away
Watched the Galway salmon run like silver dancing, darting in the sun CHORUS

Dreaming in the night I saw a land where no one had to fight
Waking in your dawn I saw you crying in the morning light
Sleeping where the falcons fly they twist and turn all in your air-blue sky
CHORUS

“You have to attain a certain level of richness before you can complain about being poor, he thought. When you are this poor, you are not given the right to complain.“

— Between the Assassinations, by Aravind Adiga

Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger was one of the two best books I read last year and I was excited to start the short stories he wrote before publishing his extraordinary debut. The collection, Between the Assassinations is in much the same vein as The White Tiger, focusing on the shape of modern India and, specifically here, the years between the Hallowe’en 1984 death of polarizing Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi and the subsequent May 21st 1991 murder of her son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi.

Between the Assassination’s portrayal of the somewhat vanished hope and promise inherent in these years is demonstrated through the growing city of Kittur, a setting that he explores in a similar manner that Joyce utilized his hometown in his only series of short fiction, Dubliners. Kittur’s history, geography religious, ethnic and caste make-up are all presented in reoccurring interludes, Adiga mixing statistics with fiction to create an experience that works to effectively transport readers to the Indian city.

Adiga concentrates on the untapped frustration (and potential) of India’s immense population of poor, often lower caste masses, devoting The White Tiger and almost the entirety of Between the Assassinations to their perspective. This focus is a smart approach to a discussion of the emergence of modern India and illustrates much of the sentiment that Adiga would go on to brilliantly represent in The White Tiger. Between the Assassinations ends up feeling fairly similar to his novel but doesn’t overly retread the same ground. Every one of the short stories works to help create a compelling picture of the various demographics of Kittur and ultimately leads to a microcosmic depiction of crucial years in the formation of the India we know today. From a poor boy turned inadvertant spy, a devoted communist turning capitalist, a lower caste servant hoping to marry his employer and more, Adiga effortlessly forms a memorable cast of characters, endearing every one of them to readers through clever descriptions, funny dialogue and a refusal to narrow any of them down into a two-dimensional caricature.

There are only a few missteps in the entire collection, Day Five: Valencia (To the First Crossroads) and Day Six (Evening): Bajpe. Valencia’s examination of a Brahmin servant woman’s disdain for her younger, lower-caste coworker is functional but misses the opportunity to delve deeper into a complicated issue, providing a solid story but a fairly shallow examination of the given issues in much the same was as Day Six is too content to dwell on the surface of a facsinating topic.

Between the Assassinations is, on the whole, an outstanding work however and even the above, minor complaints are the product of the book briefly losing its momentum and dipping just a little below the quality of the other stories. Aravind Adiga is a welcome counterpoint to the melodrama of some of his fellow Indian writers and Between the Assassinations has the same refreshing, tongue-in-cheek feel that The White Tiger maintained when discussing extremely heavy situations and issues. Although the short stories here don’t break new ground in the same way that Adiga’s first novel’s surprising tone did, they’re still an extremely well written and excellent exploration of similar themes and cultural issues at a crucial juncture in 20th century Indian history.

— Reid

Dopo l’adolescenza, superata l’infatuazione per i Dubliners, i Cranberries e, soprattutto, Un giorno di pioggia e Il cielo d’Irlanda, ho perso sostanzialmente ogni interesse per l’Irlanda. In realtà credo sia stato un fenomeno generazionale: a un periodo in cui si andava in Irlanda, si pensava ai viaggi in Irlanda, (“Magari affittiamo un pulmino!” “Cretino, guidano a sinistra quelli!”), uscivano film irlandesi (o sull’Irlanda), Feltrinelli ristampava Bobby Sand eccetera, è succeduto un periodo in cui il folk di cui interessarsi veniva dai Balcani, dove nel frattempo avevano quasi del tutto smesso di ammazzarsi. Quindi good bye Bob Geldof, dobrodošlica dobrodošao Goran Bregovic [non si dice così, vero?].

Poi totale disinteresse per l’isola, con alcune eccezioni:

2002, una irlandese in Erasmus a Berlino mi racconta che aveva avuto un ragazzo italiano e infatti conosce una frase: “Volleeo Kee-avah-ree“;
2003, sulla via di un campeggio pansocialista in Grecia, un sindaco irlandese che mi racconta quanto quel paese sia strambo, dal sistema elettorale a quello dei partiti, della birra e dell’hurling
2004, infine, nasce questo blog, (che poi è questo) che ha un nome irlandese ma mi viene in mente soltanto ora.

Ad ogni modo, il gusto provato stasera, quando all’80° dello spareggio per i mondiali, mi sono reso conto che la Francia stava perdendo uno a zero con l’Irlanda, condannandola allo spettro dei supplementari, mi ha fatto tornare voglia di porte colorate, prati verdi, violini, sanpatrizî eccetera. E non vi dico ai supplementari, come pregustavo l’ecatombe francese.

Invece è finita come è finita, e posso ringraziarli per il sì a Lisbona e continuare tranquillamente a disinteressarmi di Irlanda.

“He remembered the books of poetry upon his shelves at home. He had bought them in his bachelor days and many an evening, as he sat in the little room of the hall, he had been tempted to take one down from the bookshelf and read out something to his wife. But shyness had always held him back; and so the books had remained on their shelves. At time he repeated lines to himself and this consoled him.”

James Joyce, Dubliners, A Little Cloud, Penguin Popular Classics, p. 77

I’ve just started reading Trinity: a novel of Ireland by Leon Uris, as I finished The Professor and the Madman this morning, and this was one my DH expressed an interest in my opinion of. I’ve seen novels by Uris before, but not read any of them. At the moment this is sharing the opening set-piece of Dubliners: the wake of an old man, respected in the community (if not by all), as viewed by a young boy connected to his family. I haven’t got far enough in it to say more than that as yet. Already, though, it’s got my DH and I discussing Irish history again, which is never a bad thing.

Still, if I’m to get to even having read a quarter of last year’s total books (320), I do need to get a move on, as I’m at precisely a fifth (64) today. Not that anyone besides me does or should care about that…

37. The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling

I believe I was given one copy of this and offered two or three more. Not sure if this says more about me or the book (I was being offered once read copies, where the purchaser thought it unlikely they’d reread the book). It is perhaps more of a book of children’s fairy tales than might be expected from Hermione’s fascination with it in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but for those who enjoyed the Harry Potter series in its totality it’s certainly worth reading once, and for more than the sake of completeness.

38. Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon

After 2008’s reading of the original American version, this was me going back through the series as I knew it originally. As I pointed out then, they are only fractionally different. I still love the story and the writing in this series, but on this reread I was getting disturbed by the huge amount of violence (sexual and non) within the books, so it may be awhile till I go back to them, presuming I do. I haven’t even got hold of or read An Echo in the Bone (the newest book, which came out this September just gone) because of this.

39. What Diantha Did by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I listened to this back to back with Mr Hogarth’s Will, as described two days ago, and since they have some overlapping themes I thought I was going to get them thoroughly mixed up, but I think I have them more distinct now than I did at the time!

Unlike Mr Hogarth’s nieces, who are educated to provide for themselves, and then turfed out to do so, Diantha has to do a lot of persuading of her family that she be allowed to try so to do (so far so like Agnes Grey), especially since she has a young man desperate to marry and look after her (so not like any book I’ve come across before the current generation). This is a clever, practical, principled young woman with her own plan of action, to benefit many women young and old, who will not be deterred from her path, especially by those she loves.

40. Posing for Portrait Photography: a head-to-toe guide by Jeff Smith

One of those random books I read for work, but I like to think it has and will help in my snapping, even though it’s decidedly written for those in or going into professional portrait photography. (I did some ‘proper photography’ courses in school, after learning a lot from my father, but these day I use an automatic digital camera mostly to record my crochet here and on Ravelry, and otherwise to snap pics of friends, family, and touristy stuff.)

Oh, and while I’m discussing improving photography skills, I just came across a really interesting photography blog. It is aimed towards proper photography, but those of us trying to get beyond ‘just snaps’ (again) can learn and be inspired too.

I have to admit, the number of books I have listed as read, but haven’t yet reviewed here is a bit daunting, so I thought I’d make things a little less so by discussing some of the books I haven’t finished. Hopefully most of them will get added to the list and mentioned again reasonably soon…

This post will mention some crochet, though, since the bookmark holder I made yesterday would seem rather relevant! I’ve been playing around with Tapestry Crochet, with the leftover yarn from the sheep’s head I made for Rosh Hashana, since that is the only set of matching yarns with different colourways I have at the moment. I’ve been using the white as background and the variegated browns for the pattern, which works fine when the actual browns show. The ecru, though, is rather too similar to the white for full impact. The first thing I made so is a present, for someone who does read this blog occasionally, so I won’t show the pictures, but Ravelers can see it here.

What I made yesterday was for my DH, however, and he received it when he arrived home (about five minutes after I finished it), so I can show you that. I used a cross stitch writing tool from Stitchpoint, which I’ve mentioned on this blog before, but shouldn’t have chosen an italic font, since tapestry crochet adds to the slant, meaning that a non-italic font would have looked somewhat italic, and been far more legible. That and the clumps of ecru mean that my DH can’t actually read the text (having it all around the container doesn’t help either, but it was going to be far too tall done sideways), but he appreciates the item and its immediate value to us (he’s a bookworm too), so that’s okay!

I’ve never blocked acrylic (I’ve barely blocked anything), but if anyone has good ideas for how to make it stand straight I’d appreciate hearing them!

And now to the unfinished books (I would say the ones still with bookmarks in them, but I have the habit of leaving bookmarks in after I finish the book, so that would not be the correct category).

Jewishly, I’m reading Praying with Joy by Rabbi Daniel Yaakov Travis, as well as Anshei Hayil: Volume 1 by Rabbi Haim Levy, both of which will hopefully help me improve my tefilla. I’m enjoying both in small sections at a time.

In print non-fiction, I’m reading The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, which I heard about when it came out, I think, but have never found before. Thankfully my lovely MIL gave it to my DH several years ago, so I get to read it now. It’s about the creating of the OED and two of the major players involved in the project. They were very different Victorian gentlemen, and it’s intriguing and apparently well-researched so far.

My DH and I are both reading a book my father gave him, What Did You Do Today, Professor?, edited by Eoin P. O’Neill, which is a collection of essays by TCD scientists about their research and what led them to this point, often with a particular emphasis on how mathematics is important to all the other sciences. It’s really interesting. I like learning about current research, and while this is written to be accessible to non-specialists, it isn’t dumbed down in the way some popular science is. I have to say I’m finding the Irish/Dublin/TCD references much easier than my DH, of course, but they aren’t stopping him enjoying the book.

The fiction is mostly audio at the moment, but I am occasionally dipping into Harry Potter agus on Órchloch (yes, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, in Irish, by J. K. Rowling, of course) just to see if I can… I amn’t getting through it very fast, but then I think I know the original well enough that it’s not very fun to read slowly.

From Librivox I’m most of the way through Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë. I haven’t read this before, and am enjoying it. The protagonist seems very self aware, and though some of the other characters are somewhat one-dimensional, most of these are being pointed out as what happens when children are thoroughly spoilt. There are multiple readers, so far all (I think) women I’ve heard on other Librivox recordings, so obviously quality and pronunciations vary, but they’re mostly pretty good, and none had me wanting to turn the thing off.

Unfortunately the same can’t be said of the new recording of Dubliners by James Joyce. Part of the problem is just that I am a Dubliner, so it jars when placenames, intonations and phrasing are completely wrong in a series of short stories so specifically written to show the city and its people. I’ll admit I only listened to the first one-and-a-half stories, each read by a different (American) man, so the later readers might be better, but at the moment I’m severely tempted to just read the whole book myself for Librivox. Not that I could do all the accents for the different groups of Dubliners in the book, but at least I would know what the references were too. Perhaps I could do that in time for 2012, when the book will be out of copyright in the EU… (And no, I wasn’t in the EU when I downloaded or listened to this, and amn’t now. Copyright is important.)

Okay, I admit it, I’m a snob. It doesn’t bother me for very English or American fiction to be read by voices from all over the world, but it does when the voice should be a Dublin one, and isn’t. Still, it does help for any reader to check unfamiliar words for their pronunciation.

So that’s what I’m reading (or amn’t, but chose not to finish).

James Joyce: taking the sea air in his place of exile.

I didn’t have much time in Trieste – transiting from Bosnia and Croatia to a sub-E10 Ryanair flight. All I knew was that Yugoslavians regularly camé here to shop, and that it featured in Churchill’s famous Iron Curtain speech. But heading past the immaculately-dressed machine-gun toting Carabinieri outside the bank, I was in for a surprise.

A glamorous senior walked me at race pace to the tourist office where I discovered that somehow – here on the edge of the Adriatic – James Joyce had conjured up the rich picture of Irish city life that is Dubliners. He also produced Portait of the Artist as a Young Man here, during the several years – and two stints – that he was here.

At a literary festival I once asked Iain Banks why so many of his characters are outsiders and he answered that it was the most useful standpoint to write from. Outside-looking-in is a an interesting perspective that can sometimes provide insights where the resident can’t see the literary wood for trees; Joyce also wrote Exiles here, during his second period in residence.

I recalled the Austrian station Feldkirch where he narrowly escaped the fallout of the Great War as he fled across Europe. Like Byron and Wilde before, and Hemingway after, he toed and fro-ed across the continent like a restless tabby cat.

His statue here is so subtle in its form and position that, from a distance, I thought it was just another man crossing the bridge, enjoying a moment of contemplation in front of the small boats anchored along the quay. It’s in the style that is so in vogue in public art right now, in places as disparate as Budapest and Bratislava.

No plinths, oversize busts or dramatic gestures for these bronze figures: they are presented in poses that accentuate their humanity and invite us to consider them as old friends rather than deities. Rather like the characters in Dubliners.

Lezers,

Als u gisteren zijn reactie gelezen heeft, dan weet u dat de heer Zutphen zich thans in Ierland bevindt. Wat zijn er niet geheel zeker van wat hij daar uit voert, maar wij rekenen erop dat hij met frisse muzikale ideeën terugkeert.

Om de druk wat op te voeren heden 3 liederen met een Iers gehalte…

The Dubliners – Whiskey in the Jar

Guy Clark with Karen Matheson – Dublin Blues

Thin Lizzy – Dublin

Owing to the tardiness of my post, Pok!, I’d like to comment on our in-class discussion of ‘paralysis’ in ‘The Dead’. For me, Gabriel is the most apt metaphor for this paralysis because of his ties to systems of re-presentation, and temporal displacement. First, Gabriel’s job as book reviewer immediately establishes him as a mediator or relayer of information rather than ‘originator’. Moreover, the examples we are given of Gabriel’s writing style (i.e. “One feels that one is listening to a thought-tormented music”) and oratory prowess (Irish hospitality) both ring incredibly hollow–rather vague commentaries on a time period and place he really ought to know more about (Ireland, the present). Second, and in a similar vein, Gabriel’s retelling of the Johnny horse story alludes to his passive and regurgitant relationship to the past. Here, Gabriel mimics, as well as embodies, his Grandfather’s malfunctioning beast of burden in a stultifying and multi-layered portrayal of the absurdity of ceremonial repetition. Through his reenactment, Gabriel becomes the psychologically abused horse, an image of subordination to both paternal past (“Out from the mansion of this forefathers” 179) and present senility (it is Aunt Julia who invokes the story of Johnny to begin with).

Given Gabriel’s implied cosmopolitanism (he bikes in France, Germany, etc.), Joyce seems to question the relation between place, time, and dymanic identity. Gabriel is mobile and yet stagnant.  For me this raises questions that I’m sure will reappear as the course goes on: What is the importance of historical and contextual understanding in Joyce’s view?  Considering Joyce’s own emmigration, is it possible to map a productive envisioning of transnational identity in Ulysses?

I am super embarrassed that I didn’t post last night. It literally slipped my mind completely. Anyway, here’s my retrospective analysis of “The Dead”:

As shown by the cigarette, among other things, in “Ivy Day,” and the idea of death and rebirth in “The Dead,” Joyce appears to be fond of framing. The image of snow both opens and closes “The Dead, both times closely associated with Gabriel. At the opening of the story, Gabriel and Gretta arrive at the Morkan’s, they quickly take off the galoshes they wore to the aunts’ house. Gretta jettisons her galoshes quickly, but Gabriel remains on the threshold, not yet entering the house which has a multiplicity of meaning that I won’t go into. Instead, he remains outside carefully, “vigorously” scraping the snow off his boots (153). Joyce goes into detail describing how the snow lit on Gabriel’s clothes and shoes, which he works diligently to remove.

Cold and winter weather appear again towards the end of the story, this time the weather, in the form of D’Arcy’s cold, is instrumental in shaping the unfolding of the story’s conclusion. In this case, D’Arcy’s cold prevents him from singing to the full dinner group, which means that he sings later, as Gabriel and Gretta are leaving, prompting Gretta’s poignant reflection and Gabriel’s lustful interest. In this case winter weather operates as a plot moving element.

Finally, paralleling Gabriel’s attention to the snow in his first scene, the story ends with imagery of snow, tapping on the window like Gretta’s long dead lover. The flakes are described as “silver and dark” rather than the traditional white, making them seem not sinister, but still connoting death. The movement of falling, the word being repeated six times in the last paragraph alone, also implies death. The final image of the story is snow falling on Michael Furey’s grave, falling “upon all the living and the dead,” touching everyone, just like the universal experience of death.

The specific scene to which I would like to point, which is actually more of a still-shot, is the picture near the end of “The Dead” of Gabriel looking up at his wife, who is ”standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music.”   What attracted me to this passage in particular was the clarity with which I was able to imagine this scene above all others in either “The Dead” or “Ivy Day,” as well as Joyce’s seemingly playful acknowledgment of the scene as a specific symbol.  I suppose then the most pressing issue would be to answer Gabriel’s question, which is what the scene is “a symbol of.”  Not having read any criticism pertaining to this particular scene, my guess is as good as any at this point, but I do have one on offer.

The beautiful music in the distance that Gabriel’s wife is listening to is representative of her youthful love of Michael Furey; it is something she yearns to hear in full again (I believe she knew the song prior to this particular rendition of it), but at the same time something that she cannot fully grasp at such a distance.  The shadow cast over Gretta and her marked distance from Gabriel in the scene represent, respectively, the parts of Gretta’s past that are hidden from Gabriel, and the subtle distance in their relationship (they are relatively close, but Gretta is held back by the distance music or Michael Furey).  Finally it may be important to note that it is Gabriel, not Joyce who “would call the picture” Distant Music “if he were a painter.”  This potentially points to Gabriel’s inability to grasp that the scene should ideally be about him overcoming the distance between him and his wife, rather than being about his wife’s relationship to the music.  Despite this scene’s place before the Michael Furey-reveal, this interpretation about the title would reflect the sentiment at the end of the story that Gabriel fears his inability to compete with the memory of Furey, or again the music in the picture.

Apologies for being a few hours late with this.

Ivy Day in the Committee Room was pretty much lost on me, but the social dynamics of ‘The Dead’ were quite interesting. It seems to have a theme of overt Irish nationalism, although knowing that Joyce himself moved away from Ireland and  did most of his significant writing elsewhere complicates this for me. While the Michael Furey character seems to represent some lost ideal representation of Ireland, Joyce does not reveal exactly the extent of Gretta’s affection for it. The notion of Irish hospitality also piqued my interest, as it would seem to relate to the concept of guest friendship in the Odyssey.

To be entirely honest, I read this really quickly once I found out that I was supposed to have posted by nine and will hopefully have a closer reading for class tomorrow. On the surface the story seems like it could be a trite homage to a sense of Irish patriotism, but surely Joyce’s own politics and life experience complicate this.

I was sort of hoping to avoid talking too much about nationalism since basically every class I took last semester focused on it, but I can’t resist:

In a lot of ways, “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” seems to be an indictment of the current state of Irish politics, with politicians like Mr. Henchy claiming to support the nationalist cause while welcoming a visit from the British king because it’d generate “capital we want” even if it sacrifices basic claims to Irish sovereignty (113). The way the story comes to a close, with a reading of “The Death of Parnell” followed by totally silent drinking and Mr. Crofton’s claim that “it was a very fine piece of writing” (117) implies that a piece of writing is all it is in the current state of things, and that current Irish politicians can say nothing meaningful to match or respond to it.

But then what of “The Dead”? Gabriel totally resists Ms. Ivors’ diehard Irish nationalism, asking “Was she sincere? Had she really any life of her own behind all her propagandism?” (166) and generally seems scornful of Ireland as a whole, claiming that he’s “sick of [my] own country, sick of it!” (164). Joyce seems like he’s lamenting for a time when Irish nationalists actually stood for something (like Parnell did), but then when a character enters who actually does stand for that thing comes along, he mocks her. So what’s an Irish nationalist to do?

Unrelatedly (maybe relatedly?!), what’s the deal with food? I know that food plays a large role in Ulysses too, and the focus on drink in “Ivy Day” and platters of food presented in great detail in “The Dead” makes me wonder what Joyce is doing with it. Is the reason that Gabriel “could not eat for happiness” (183) because he doesn’t eat sweets (172)?

Joyce’s “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” depicts several insignificant Irish politicians and bureaucrats engaged in a decidedly dismal state of affairs – namely, they’ve fallen so far from hopes of a free and prosperous Ireland as to toady to whichever candidate pays the most in money, alcohol, and lip-service to their once vaulted ideals. Contrasted with Mr. Hynes’ ending poem concerning Parnell, Ireland’s “Uncrowned King”, and the fallen champion’s vision and dreams, the Irish political future, with individual’s such as misters Crofton and Henchy piloting their “tricky” candidate to power, seems dismal.

This legacy of failure noted, my question turns back to the beginning of the story. The old man Jack decries the failings of today’s youth, specifically pointing to his son as being dissolute and degenerate, claiming all the while that he did his part in raising the lad, it’s just that the mother interfered. Later on, with regards to the boy bringing the stout in to the men, the boy is described as a lazy and disrespectful person by O’Connor and Henchy. When the boy finally brings their drinks, they grudgingly acknowledge the boy’s good character, offer him a drink, and then immediately comment on how the lad is likely to get hooked to alcohol: “That’s the way it begins.” All of the younger characters receive acrimonious judgment by their elders, from Lyons to Hynes – both of which invoked the memory and legacy of Parnell and ideals only to be ignored, misunderstood, or talked over by their elders. With the obvious conclusion that Parnell is exemplary, it seems to be that Joyce is presenting a rather sharp criticism of the older generation itself, a generation that failed to support, and then uphold, Parnell’s vision, an older generation rife with corruption and cynicism, an older generation that, from its lofty patriarchal placement, will harm the development and future prospects of Ireland and its youth. Anyone else see anything to support or detract from this interpretation?

As I read through “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” I was struck by the two instances in which the canvassers talk about young people: in which Old Jack speaks of his 19-year-old son and the part where we see the shoeboy bringing them alcohol.  In both instances, the boys’ ages are specifically stated (19 and 17), maybe to emphasize their youth, and they both have some connection with alcohol.  Old Jack’s son is “worse whenever he gets a job; he drinks it all” (104) and, after the shoeboy drinks a bottle of stout, Old Jack comments, “That’s the way it begins” (111).  In the latter instance, I am taking “it” to be alcoholism, but I can also see Jack’s statement as a comment on growing up–drinking perhaps being a sign of coming-of-age (or something).

What I’m curious about in these two instances is how, if at all, the portrayal of youth and its relationship with alcohol is representative of the narrator’s perspective on the contemporary political climate and Ireland’s prospects for the future.   Does the alcoholism foretell future failures and shortcomings in Ireland’s political arena?  And if the notion of alcoholism in youth does symbolize problems for the future, then what are we to make of the older men’s penchant for drink?  Could this be more representative of continuing problems (in a more broad sense than just drinking) in Irish society and politics, being handed down from generation to generation?

When Professor Simpson handed out the packet for Dubliners, I was hoping he hadn’t picked “Ivy Day.”  Now, I read all of Dubliners this summer more as a beach read than as an intellectual pursuit and “Ivy Day” is the only one I could pick out as the end and say  ”Now that one… THAT one I really didn’t like.”  For all the rest I felt a mild indifference.  On my second reading I hoped my opinion would be less trivial.  It is, but not by much.

Instead, I now have a list of ideas I thought may have been important to Joyce as he wrote the short story, but the politics he refers to mean almost nothing to me.  I kept trying to put the candidates mentioned in the story within the context of the recent elections…(recent to me because I seldom follow politics/news/tv and so I still have the BIG election on my mind) but without any idea of the historical context Joyce was writing in I CAN’T.

Now for the concepts I think Joyce was toying with:

• Patriotism
• Loyalty vs. Treachery
• Need (in regards to monetary wealth)
• Work Satisfaction?

I also noticed, and this carries through Dubliners, that Joyce likes people’s faces and will only mention one or two aspects of the face that are particularily revolting or nauseating.

I’m not sure to what end this all amounts, but it got me on a more positive plane with Joyce’s short stories.

No one has posted yet and I have the sneaking suspicion I’m going to feel really silly. Basically, I’m interested in exploring the themes of light and dark in Ivy Day in the Committee Room and paralysis in both Ivy Day and The Dead. I first tried to count the number of instances of the juxtaposition of light and dark in Ivy Day, and found that the dark references very much outweighed the number of light references, which emphasizes the sentiment of despair that is threaded throughout the story. I also wanted to discuss the idea of paralysis in both stories in regards to micro and macrocosmic realms, such as social, political, and emotional paralysis.

I was intrigued by a possible parallel existing between the first sentence of the final paragraph of The Dead and the first sentence of the first paragraph of page 190.  Both deal with noises outside windows, yet have very different implications and outcomes for the characters involved.  I’m not sure quite what to make of the similarities and differences yet, but the contrast between the two seems potentially significant.