ReJoycing that I didn't attempt Finnegans Wake: James Joyce's Dubliners

I'm a dual Irish citizen, but growing up in the U.S. I had very little exposure to Irish literature in school: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett in AP English Literature and Part VII of "Station Island" by Seamus Heaney in Intro. to Poetry Writing in college.  I've read more Heaney, several contemporary Irish authors, and some Yeats, Kavanagh, Pearse, and Wilde (well, part of The Picture of Dorian Gray, anyway), but despite all the pubs and festivals named after him, I had yet to read any Joyce.

Thus, in early January, James Joyce topped my "to read" list for 2012.  Several friends tried to warn me away, so I read more about his writing style.  I knew that he had written short stories, the semi-autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake.

 Now, the song "Finnegan's Wake" is a fun, funny little Irish ballad about a man who falls off a ladder at work because he's drunk.  At his wake, a fight breaks out over whether he's the nicest corpse you've ever seen, and the "corpse" revives when someone spills liquor on him.  However, as I read about Joyce's Finnegans Wake, the words "stream of consciousness" and "Jabberwocky" jumped out at me.  Faulkner's A Light in August was hard enough to get through, but that crossed with made up words?  For 600+ pages?!?  No thanks!

I was leaning towards either Dubliners or Ulysses.  A collection of short stories seemed easy to read in snippets, and I was particularly intrigued by Dubliners ever since I'd heard that Cathie Ryan's song "Eveline" was inspired by one of its tales.  Regarding Ulysses, I was in Dublin before and after Bloomsday in 2000 -- though I missed it so that I could see Newgrange, Tara, and Drogheda.  Any novel that could continue to inspire people to celebrate it more than a century after it was written had to be a good read.  The library made the decision for me, since it only had Dubliners available.

You can read my long, detailed reactions to most of the stories (or skip to the end for the snarky version) after the jump.

Chekhov's "Chekhov's Gun" Gun: Anton Chekhov's The Sea-Gull

Anton Chekhov had a very firm opinion about loaded guns in stories: "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."  The non-firing of a Chekhov's gun can leave the reader with an unsettled feeling at the end of a piece of literature.*  When I saw a loaded gun appear in Act II of Chekhov's The Sea-Gull, I became excited since I knew it would be fired by the end of the play.

Mission Impossible: Twenty Minutes, Main Branch Library, Two Books

June had started, and I was on a time-critical mission.  I had 20 minutes to compare Russian classics, pick the easiest one to read, find it and Twelfth Night on the shelves, check out, and start the walk back to church in time for mass.  Easy-peasy lemon squeezy, right?

I entered the library and walked to the elevator, where I was reminded by the map that adult fiction was at the front of the library, in the display rooms.  As I backtracked, I sidetracked to the computer card catalog, since I had found other classics in the reference section before.  Confirmed, 822-something and 891-something.  There were no pencils and papers, but it was okay.  I could remember that.

I mashed both elevators' buttons and rode the first arrival to the third floor.  Only 15 minutes left.