James Joyce's Dubliners

I just finished reading Jame Joyce's "Dubliners" which is great. It is a collection of short stories; some of these stories are so brilliant I am sure to spend some more time studying them individually later. It is interesting to read a collection of short stories as a book; these stories are put together in the same collection for a reason, so when you read them together you try to find some sort of an arc that links them together. But by doing so it is hard not to consider what the collection has to say about the author, or what the author's intention is for writing them and putting them together. You may have already known from some of my previous entries that I have absolutely no interest in an author's intent. So, reading it this way is...quite intersting.

I didn't enjoy some of the stories, or parts of some of the stories, which makes me feel like they shouldn't be read as a collection. And like I said, some of them are so brilliant that I wish I had read them separately. And I will. Later.

Joyce is one of those authors whose voice is so distinct to me. There is a tone that underscore his writing, which to me is what hold these stories together. I didn't spend any time analyzing his style so I can't say exactly what it is about his voice that is different, but I feel the same way about him that I feel about William Saroyan or Jane Austen; these voices convey a sense of place, making the settings of the stories just as important as the lives of the characters and all the other elements.