Product Description: A New Year's Eve gathering in Dublin is the setting of this elegant, accessible masterpiece that ends with a signature epiphany by the protagonist, who offers a perspective on the lives, dreams, and feelings of the party's guests.
This beautifully packaged series of classic novellas includes the works of masterful writers. Inexpensive and collectible, they are the first single-volume publications of these classic tales, offering a closer look at this underappreciated literary form and providing a fresh take on the world's most celebrated authors.
Wrong date in description The description says that the events of "The Dead" took place on New Year's Eve. They did not: the most likely date for the events (I'll spare you all the reasons and details) is the evening of January 6th, also know as "the Feast of the Epiphany."
I HEAR THIS SETLOCK RENDITION OF THESE STORIES OVER AND OVER AGAIN This review was written for the Setlock spoken word recording entitled the Dead but which also includes Ivy Day in the Committee Room.
Unfortunately amazon tends to reprint reviews for items of equal title, even across formats. Please do a search of The Dead, with commuter's library in the parameter and you will discover the correct item and an excellent unabridged recording of the Dead which you may soon grow to love and appreciate.
I have several different recordings of these stories, none done better than Setlock.
Ivy Day is my favorite tale for its complexity of "dialogue" (really octologue) which Setlock skillfully and subtly and in a lowered key relates. I have heard more dramatized and individualized readings, but Setlock gives a proper subdued, not quite melancholic tone, with quiet respectful humor, like a dear friend telling an ancient great tale at an old firplace while seated upon comfortable chairs before a gentle turf fire with adequate and appropriate beverage of an evening.
Ivy Day from Dubliners is truly a great story which stands up to multiple listenings, even after the initial jokes grow familiar ("and be glad he has a country to sell!"). Like rereading Ulysses several times, one's understanding and appreciation of the profounder universal themes only grows more acute upon each listening.
In fact I find in the profundity and conversational conflicts of Ivy Day the germ of the technical skills Joyce required to write the multiple conversations in the Cyclops and the newspaper office episodes (the latter I will not risk mispelling here).
The grace and gentle approach of Setlock bears up even under repeated and constant listening. I only wish these were transferred to CD before my tapes run out!
Joyce is made to be heard, not read. Hear him truly here.
An Evocative Christmas Evening Set in early 20th century Dublin this short story was the last in a collection called The Dubliners by native son, James Joyce. Despite the mournful title there is no murder nor mysterious death involved in this seemingly simple piece, set in an old-fashioned Society home during the Christmas season. Instead this proves an introspective tale from the viewpoint of middle-aged Gabriel, favorite nephew of his respected aunts who host an annual dinner party. The role of music and performers is debated among their many lively guests.
Gabriel's required speech during dinner praises the Irish tradition of warm hospitality. But something causes his wife, Gretta, to hark back to her girlhood and her first love--whose poignant memory threatens his plans for connubial bliss in their hotel room. Delicate as the snowflakes which blot out the city landscape, barely plotted with delicious hints of unexpressed emotion, The Dead transports readers to a different gas-lit age, where beauty and grace are subtly exhibited and passionately sought after. Joyce reminds us that music possesses the power to evoke the past and serve as a catalyst both for pain and pleasure. This may be read in one sitting, but don't miss the author's other reminiscences.
Useful Case Study Collection of Literary Masterpiece I've found this to be the most useful of all the "case study" texts I've tried from both St. Martin's/Bedford and Norton. The primary text is sufficiently contained and the representative critical methodologies presented clearly enough to introduce students to both literature and literary theory without overwhelming them. Moreover, "The Dead" is capable of repaying the close and observant reader with a Joycean "epiphany" perhaps not surpassed by any other literary text (the last several paragraphs, especially, require attention to the developing, altering meanings of each and every word).
I have one caveat: the essay representing feminist criticism I frankly find baffling. The writer, apparently trying to have her cake and eat it too, manages to indict Joyce as a sexist while applauding the story as a critique of sexism and patriarchal hegemony! It does not "seem" to occur to her that Joyce may be removed from his central character, Gabriel, or that her evidence for Gabriel's male arrogance may actually be Joyce's idea from the start. A close reading of the character certainly suggests an ironic portrayal--everything that appears to be in Gabriel's favor is exposed through Joyce's subtle language as self-delusion. The feminist critic, however, impugns Joyce by suggesting that his "intentions" are less honorable than the meaning of the text itself!
Perhaps the writer is overstating a point in order to provide a better example of the type of critical approach she was asked to represent for the purposes of this anthology. I know that I will suggest as much should I again have occasion to use this particular essay.
James Joyce read by Richard Setlock I have listened to Setlock's readings, this one in particular, many times. He is very close to Joyce's voice, in interpretation and execution. The readings are masterly. This recording just grows and grows on you.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
