Margot Norris

Reading Dubliners for the first time, someone could possibly expect Joyce to praise the city where he spent many of his formative years with an idyllic or pleasant homage, but instead he explores through dark and complex characterizations how the men and women of Dublin are made stagnant by their environment. . Joyce’s Dublin appears not as a city, but as a mother that swallows its young, a destructive vacuum of religious indoctrination and individual isolation that offers no exit.

I recently reviewed the text of Dubliners when I read it in another edition, so this review is about the supplementary material that comes in the Norton Critical Edition, which is the reason I bought this (even though I already own another copy of the book). I love Nortons. They include contextual material and critical reviews, contemporary to when the story came out and more modern. After reading Dubliners on my own, and without the support of other people to discuss it with, I decided that show more I wanted to dig a little deeper.

The contextual materials here are different from other critical editions that I've read before, which generally consisted of articles or reviews of the book upon publication. Instead, the editor has amassed photographs and maps of Dublin from the period that Joyce was describing in his stories to help make the vivid stories even more concrete, along with a couple of earlier versions of some of them. The critical essays did not cover all of the stories, just eight of the fifteen, but they certainly address them from different angles. Some of the authors look at symbolic interpretations, others at political overlays, and one delves in to linguistic interpretations and how they reflect on the meaning of the story.

Definitely reading these essays made me reflect on the stories in Dubliners in new ways. I'm not going to spend time recapping the analysis in each article, because that is what the book is for. Suffice it to say that I appreciated the articles and the thoughts in them. This book was exactly what I wanted when I ordered it, a collection of excellent resources for better understanding a seminal work of literature. show less

Simply Joyce by Margot Norris is an examination of Joyce and his works. Norris is Chancellor's Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, where she teaches modern literature. She is the author of four books on the works of James Joyce: The Decentered Universe of ’Finnegan’s Wake’, Joyce’s Web: The Social Unraveling of Modernism, Suspicious Readings of Joyce’s ’Dubliners,’ and Ulysses, a study of the 1967 Joseph Strick film show more on the novel.

Simply Joyce is more than an introductory biography of James Joyce. It is an examination of his work put into the perspective of his life and experiences. Norris also puts James' work into the context of the times. Modernism is not something that was readily accepted in either art or literature. Even among his peers, his work was not always readily accepted. Virginia Woolf originally recorded in her diary:

I finished Ulysses, and think it a misfire. Genius it has I think; but of the inferior water. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious sense, but in the literary sense.

Later in the Common Reader she who be less critical and called Ulysses an important work no matter how difficult or unpleasant it may be. It did undoubtedly influence Woolf's later work -- The Voyage Out compared to To The Light House. D.H. Lawrence was also caught up in the hype over Ulysses and wanted his publisher to get him a copy in the US even though it was banned for impure and lustful thoughts. Joyce is a unique writer in the period although his Ulysses is credited with the rise of modernism he remained distant from Bloomsbury and their circle of friends.

Norris takes the reader through Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, The Dubliners, Finnegan's Wake, and Ulysses chapter by chapter and explains not only the text but its context in relation to both Modernism and to Joyce's' life. Although not meant to be a study guide, it is a nice companion book to the novels as I am discovering in my rereading Portrait of an Artist. The story by story examination also helped explain the source of The Dubliners' short stories. I did not read much of the Finnegan's Wake chapter as that book is on my to read list for this year and would like to compare my impressions to Norris' writing. I will revisit it when I do read the novel, seeing how helpful Simply Joyce has been while rereading Portrait of an Artist.

Simply Joyce is one book in the series of Great Lives book covering the lives and works of people from Machiavelli to Hitchcock and my favorite Virginia Woolf. The series provides more depth than the typical overview of author's and their work. Simply Joyce gives depth and setting to the author's work. Norris' expertise in Modernism and Joyce's works makes this edition very readable and informative. show less

I really enjoyed these short stories, and I must say what I enjoyed most about this addition was the footnotes and critical essays. I have really gotten used to reading "classics" with explanatory footnotes and critical essays!

Of this short stories, I really enjoyed the last few dealing more with older and middle aged characters. I especially liked "A Mother" and "Grace".

Adrianne

Edit: After reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man I have no interest in keeping this book and/or reading show more or rereading any of Joyce's works. show less