The Great Books Society of Denver

The short-story collection Dubliners is an excellent introduction to James Joyce, the Irish author who is widely considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century but whose major works, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, are so long and difficult that almost no one makes it through them. If you haven’t read Joyce, this is a great place to start! (And who knows, maybe you'll be one of the few -- or already are one of the few -- who make it through one or both of his monumental masterpieces.)

The 15 stories that make up Dubliners, written between 1904 and 1907 and published in book form in 1914, depict moments in the lives of mostly middle-class people in Dublin at the time. As Wikipedia puts it, “The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging... Joyce felt Irish nationalism, like Catholicism and British rule of Ireland, was responsible for a collective paralysis--a theme permeating much of the work. He conceived of Dubliners as a 'nicely polished looking-glass' held up to the Irish and a 'first step towards [their] spiritual liberation.'”

Several of the stories involve an epiphany for the main character, yet the endings remain open to interpretation, making them popular assignments in high-school English classes. (“Araby,” anyone?) Here are a few more details about the collection from Britannica:

'“Dubliners” has a well-defined structure along with interweaving, recurring symbols. The first three stories, narrated in the first person, portray children; the next four deal with young adults, and, like the remaining stories, are told by a third person, whose tone and sensibility shifts to reflect that of the changing protagonists; the following four stories concern mature life from middle age onward; and the next three, the public life of politics, art, and religion. The 15th and final story, “The Dead,” is considered not only the jewel of the collection but also a world masterpiece.’

Just a couple of months ago, we read an Ernest Hemingway novel, and now we turn to an equally famous yet very different writer from the "Lost Generation," F. Scott Fitzgerald. Our book for April is his first published novel, which catapulted him to fame.

Here's an introduction to the book from Wikipedia:

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This Side of Paradise is the 1920 debut novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. It examines the lives and morality of carefree American youth at the dawn of the Jazz Age. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is a handsome middle-class student at Princeton University who dabbles in literature and engages in a series of unfulfilling romances with young women. The novel explores themes of love warped by greed and social ambition.

Following its publication in March 1920, This Side of Paradise became a sensation in the United States, and reviewers hailed it as an outstanding debut novel.

Although Fitzgerald wrote the novel about the youth culture of 1910s America, the work became popularly and inaccurately associated with the carefree social milieu of post-war 1920s America, and social commentators touted Fitzgerald as the first writer to turn the national spotlight on the younger Jazz Age generation... The novel created the widespread perception of Fitzgerald as a libertine chronicler of rebellious youth and proselytizer of Jazz Age hedonism which led reactionary societal figures to denounce the author and his work.

When Fitzgerald died in 1940, many social conservatives rejoiced. Due to this perception of Fitzgerald and his works, the Baltimore Diocese refused his family permission to bury him at St. Mary's Church in Rockville, Maryland.

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Historical note: More than 30 years later, Fitzgerald's daughter petitioned the Diocese of Washington, and F. Scott's body was transferred to lie beside that of his wife, Zelda, in the Catholic cemetery where he was initially denied burial.