The Irish poet of the English language, James Joyce, has captured here the absolute spirit of early 20th century Dublin in a collection of short stories about various people carrying on their lives. Joyce makes the mundane fascinating and, while few of his stories are wildly dramatic, all are infused with real life and the longings and pleasures of people who seem as real as the ones we meet every day. Included in the collection is his acclaimed story "The Dead," which lives up to its reputation. This edition has a magnificent set of footnotes that provide detailed background into the city of Dublin and the smallest of obscure references. ( )

El proyecto literario de James Joyce (1882-1941) se cuenta entre los más complejos y arriesgados del pasado siglo. Partiendo de un acuciado interés por la sociedad humana, renovó el lenguaje narrativo en busca de las herramientas que le permitiesen retratar la vasta red de relaciones materiales y simbólicas que la constituyen, y en la que el individuo anónimo debe desenvolverse en busca de su propia identidad. En su primera obra, "Dublineses", Joyce despliega ya un mapa de su pensamiento literario. A lo largo de sus quince relatos, se nos presenta la Dublín de principios del siglo XX a partir de algunos de sus ciudadanos de a pie, a los que se confiere, en su ajetreo diario, una significación heroica. Así, y con un afán tan localista como totalizador, el autor plasma en detalle la imagen de su ciudad natal, que se ve convertida, metonímicamente, en una representación del mundo urbano de su tiempo.

Reread after many long years.

"Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

"The Dead" is so brilliant because it defies the reader's expectations at every turn, leading to a powerful culmination of these vignettes of life in Dublin. Gabriel Conroy suffers a kind of imposter syndrome. Even though he is loved and respected, he understands that there is a deeper attitude and emotional world to which he doesn't belong. What could be a petty reaction to his wife's sorrow transforms into a more general meditation on death.

If Joyce has a larger project in his fiction, it is the attempt to connect the domestic and the cosmic. The retelling of The Odyssey in Ulysses is a perfect framework for this - it is all about the liminal state between the home and the larger world. Dubliners introduces this theme, as in each story it questions the meaning of home in terms of the literal hearth and the homeland of the Irish nation, the familiar trappings of Dublin city. ( )

Not so pleasant to read, maybe, but engrossing. And, of course, "The Dead" Joyce's very famous story about life. ( )

Maru