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.

12 in 2012: Reading Classics from around the World

"I should read that some day," I often think when I hear an allusion to a particular book.  But "some day" is vague and never happens, so in 2012 I decided to read more good literature.  What is "more"?  What is "good"?  And what is "literature"?

In 2012, I will read at least 12 classics that I have never read before, focusing mostly on non-American and non-British literature.  The classics can be fiction, non-fiction, novels, plays, short stories, poetry, essays, etc.  With the help of family, friends, and librarians, my goal evolved into reading at least one book from each (permanently inhabited) continent.  My tentative list of classics includes (bolded are ones I've read so far in 2012):

1. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Japan/Asia) -- Tyler or Seidensticker translation
2. Night by Elie Wiesel (Romania/Eastern Europe) -- Marion Wiesel translation
3. Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Dubliners by James Joyce (Ireland/Western Europe)
4. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria/Africa)
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude (or something else) by Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia/South America) -- ? translation
6. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan/the Middle East)*
7. Tao Te Ching by Laozi (China/Asia) -- Chichung Huang translation
8. The Analects of Confucius by his followers (China/Asia) -- Ames and Rosemont translation
9. The Art of War by Sun-tzu (China/Asia) -- J. H. Huang translation
10. Twelfth Night or King Lear by William Shakespeare (England/Western Europe) -- I would eventually like to read the Bard's complete opus, so I figure reading one this year is a good start
11. something Australian, preferably available at Dekalb County (GA) public libraries
12. something Russian (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, or Nabokov)
13. oops, guess I still need something from North America, too -- maybe Canadian? (but nothing too cold!)