Kurt's Reviews > The Dead

I planned on never reading anything by James Joyce because I was sure I wouldn't be able to understand it, much less enjoy and appreciate it.

Many years ago my brother told me about James Joyce – about how he was an extremely over-rated author because all of his works are incomprehensible. "In fact", he said, "one of his most acclaimed novels, Finnegans Wake, is nothing but pure gibberish from cover to cover."

Being a little skeptical of my brother's claim, I decided one day to go to the library, pull a copy of Finnegans Wake off the shelf, open it up to a random page, and randomly put my finger on a random sentence to see what it said. This is the sentence that emerged (I've had it memorized ever since):

But Noodynaady's actual ingrate tootle is of come into the garner mauve and thy nice are stores of morning and buy me a bunch of iodines.

It sounded like pure gibberish to me then, and it still does today. Thumbing through the book and reading several other similar non-sensical phrases, I realized that my brother was probably right: The whole book was incomprehensible, and James Joyce's writing was not for me.

So now, years later, after learning a little more about James Joyce (from less biased sources), I decided to give his most famous short story, The Dead, a chance. It turned out to be a great experience for me. Unlike Finnegans Wake, it was quite comprehensible, even though I had to read the first few pages two or three times over in order to get a clear understanding of who everybody was (at least 20 different people are named). The writing is beautiful and full of meaning. I had to read slowly and deliberately, but all the words fell into their proper places perfectly in a way that conveyed deep significance and feeling. Here is just one passage:

The air of the room chilled his shoulder. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.