1. 19:04 22nd Jun 2012

    Tags: writing

    …the atmosphere of the story is alive in the city to this day. For many years, for example, I went to the party which a friend and her daughter gave on the south side of Dublin on the Sunday before Christmas. Each year it was attended by the same people, with the same bustle in the hallway about coats and scarves. Each year there was speculation in advance about how drunk one of the guests in particular would be on arrival, and how the party would manage if he were very drunk indeed. Each year there was food served at the same time and then the same people recited the same poems and sang the same songs, and there was always a group at the very end who waited for a few final songs, which had a special emotion attached to them, before setting out into the December night.
    — 

    Colm Tóibín on Joyce’s Dublin: city of dreamers and chancers

    Some very fine comments on ‘The Dead’ in this essay by Colm Tóibín focussing on Joyce’s short story collection, Dubliners.