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Scholarship Made Accessible
A Journey Through Dubliners
Scholarship Made Accessible
Prologue
When I was young, I found myself more fascinated by the mystique of James Joyce than his actual works.
Nevertheless, his legendary status as a writer and artist, living the bohemian life, an exile from his homeland, frequenting cafés with his eyepatch, and sharing moments with his wife and children in Paris, was undoubtedly a persona I envied and somewhat adopted.
My first experience in Paris, just 20, accompanied by a girl — Laura — I probably shouldn’t have been with, occurred just before university in England.
Our first stop was the Left Bank and Sylvia Beach’s bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, renowned for publishing “Ulysses.”
Back in high school, I had read “Araby” and fell in love with it. I also read “The Dead,” but I didn’t fully grasp it, though now, as a 54-year-old, I comprehend it much better. With Joyce, “fully” is an impossibility.
I also pretended to understand A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and I might have ventured into “A Little Cloud” and “The Committee Room.” These, as a 20-year-old, left me rather bewildered, though I didn’t want to admit it. In hindsight, I realized I didn’t…
