Another Bloomsday, this one coinciding with Father's Day--which seems poignantly fitting, for Mr Bloom lost a son in infancy and has never fully recovered: it's the main source of his tender, loitering sorrow. If you've ever thought of diving into Ulysses, generally regarded as the best novel ever written--and possibly the second most demanding, behind only Joyce's next and last offering, Finnegan's Wake--read this appreciation (especially section 3) from Michael Chabon to boost you into the morning hours of Mr Bloom's adventures on the sixteenth of June, 1904, in Dublin.
Meanwhile, I've been devoting a post to each of the fifteen stories in Dubliners, Joyce's first and most accessible work. But in this post I'm going to skip lightly over the fifth and sixth, which are "After the Race" and "Two Gallants." They aren't my favorites. The young Joyce despised Dublin, and these are the stories in which his disdain is most thinly veiled. Moreover the stories bear a weight of symbolic representation that to me seems labored: their three gallants are meant to stand for all Ireland, but they are just three sorry samplings of humanity such as one might meet up with anywhere. Still: it's only in comparison to the others that these seem weak. Here is the interior monolog of one "gallant" as he sits in a cheap restaurant refreshing himself toward the end of his despiciable little adventure:
He would be thrity-one in November. Would he never get a good job? Would he never have a home of his own? He thought how pleasant it would be to have a warm fire to sit by and a good dinner to sit down to. He had walked the streets long enough with friends and with girls. He knew what those friends were worth: he knew the girls too. Experience had embittered his heart against the world. But all hope had not left him. He felt better after having eaten than he had felt before, less weary of his life, less vanquished in spirit. He might yet be able to settle down in some snug corner and live happily if he could only come across some good simple-minded girl with a little of the ready.
I've indicated that the stories display too crudely Joyce's disdain but you could not fairly say that he sneers. This sponge's loftiest goal is to make a mercenary marriage and he is at least dimly aware that it would require a simple-minded girl to realize it. That is all true. To hate the man, however, you have to be simple-minded yourself.
