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This past weekend I read James Joyce's "The Dead," allegedly one of the best short stories of all time. Spoilers: it isn't.
Oh, I see what it was trying to do. Like a good neurotic overachiever I've now read five essays on the damn story, to make sure I didn't miss anything.
But the great "twist" at the end, which the whole story hinges on (has to hinge on, due to how little motion there is elsewhere), just fell utterly flat.
Here's your situation.
Your wife, who you've been married to for years and years, who you have a child with, tells you that the last song she heard at the party tonight reminded her of a boy who died young. She tells you this in the darkness of your bedroom, close to tears. She says he was seventeen, and he sang love songs outside her window. What do you do?
You may be a little startled—this is something new, something you hadn't known before. But that's what I love about people; they never stop surprising me, no matter how grouchy and jaded I get. Maybe you're a little sad, wondering why your wife never shared this with you before. Maybe you ruminate a bit on life and death. Certainly I hope you hug her.
Joyce's protagonist, instead, feels a sharp flash of jealousy—I'm younger than the protagonist, and even I can't imagine feeling anything like jealousy over something that happened in my partner's life when they were seventeen; that's so damn long ago. And then the narrator ruminates wistfully that he's just never loved as passionately as a seventeen-year-old kid, and thinks about the way the memories of the dead haunt us living souls, and then the story... tapers out.
It's not awful, but I couldn't help wondering: does this husband talk to his wife? does he know anything about her? does he care? (Maybe that's Joyce's point; the protagonist is meant to be a bit of a loser. But the story gives him the last thought, gives him just a little too much weight, if it's meant to be a subversive thing.)
And now for the very personal jab—to some extent I think all criticism is about the very personal things, is about that finicky question of, does this story affirm the kind of world I believe in? And, no, it doesn't. Again, it's not awful—the final image of the story is very beautiful, and I think meditating on how much the dead live among us and influence our lives is quite wonderful. But the professor takes this revelation and responds with strange resignation. He thinks how he has never loved anyone as passionately as that seventeen-year-old kid—but neither does he see any virtue of his own quieter life, or any impetus to change, he just takes it as an excuse to... continue, as a passenger in his own life.
You can tell it's personal because I'm being unfair. Not everyone can be gung-ho and finnicky and relentless as you, Lua. But still, it doesn't work for me. O how I wish he'd hugged his wife at the end, and held her as she went to sleep. That would've felt like an affirmation of something. Instead we've just got the snow, general all over Ireland, and it's very pretty but that's all it is.
( Read more... )
This past weekend I read James Joyce's "The Dead," allegedly one of the best short stories of all time. Spoilers: it isn't.
Oh, I see what it was trying to do. Like a good neurotic overachiever I've now read five essays on the damn story, to make sure I didn't miss anything.
But the great "twist" at the end, which the whole story hinges on (has to hinge on, due to how little motion there is elsewhere), just fell utterly flat.
Here's your situation.
Your wife, who you've been married to for years and years, who you have a child with, tells you that the last song she heard at the party tonight reminded her of a boy who died young. She tells you this in the darkness of your bedroom, close to tears. She says he was seventeen, and he sang love songs outside her window. What do you do?
You may be a little startled—this is something new, something you hadn't known before. But that's what I love about people; they never stop surprising me, no matter how grouchy and jaded I get. Maybe you're a little sad, wondering why your wife never shared this with you before. Maybe you ruminate a bit on life and death. Certainly I hope you hug her.
Joyce's protagonist, instead, feels a sharp flash of jealousy—I'm younger than the protagonist, and even I can't imagine feeling anything like jealousy over something that happened in my partner's life when they were seventeen; that's so damn long ago. And then the narrator ruminates wistfully that he's just never loved as passionately as a seventeen-year-old kid, and thinks about the way the memories of the dead haunt us living souls, and then the story... tapers out.
It's not awful, but I couldn't help wondering: does this husband talk to his wife? does he know anything about her? does he care? (Maybe that's Joyce's point; the protagonist is meant to be a bit of a loser. But the story gives him the last thought, gives him just a little too much weight, if it's meant to be a subversive thing.)
And now for the very personal jab—to some extent I think all criticism is about the very personal things, is about that finicky question of, does this story affirm the kind of world I believe in? And, no, it doesn't. Again, it's not awful—the final image of the story is very beautiful, and I think meditating on how much the dead live among us and influence our lives is quite wonderful. But the professor takes this revelation and responds with strange resignation. He thinks how he has never loved anyone as passionately as that seventeen-year-old kid—but neither does he see any virtue of his own quieter life, or any impetus to change, he just takes it as an excuse to... continue, as a passenger in his own life.
You can tell it's personal because I'm being unfair. Not everyone can be gung-ho and finnicky and relentless as you, Lua. But still, it doesn't work for me. O how I wish he'd hugged his wife at the end, and held her as she went to sleep. That would've felt like an affirmation of something. Instead we've just got the snow, general all over Ireland, and it's very pretty but that's all it is.
( Read more... )
