I am no fan of realism. For me, realism is most frequently a crutch people use to excuse being poor writers and boring human beings, reassuring themselves that life is empty and potential is limited because ‘they’re only being realistic’. This sentiment rings especially true in fiction, where realism, in my experience, begets pieces less interesting than my own life. In which case, why would I waste time exposing myself to them?
There is, however, a place where realism folds over fantasy and back onto itself. A strong recent example of this would be Jarmusch’s Paterson (2016), where the events that happen are not particularly exciting, but the way they are presented suggests something deeper and more meaningful. Let’s call it meta-realism.
Joyce is an expert in this genre, and though I can only lay claim to having read half of Ulysses, I have read Portrait and now I’ve read Dubliners too, and so I feel I have a fairly firm basis on which to judge him as an artist.
First the bad. The main risk of meta-realism is falling into plain old regular realism, and Joyce frequently threatens to do this - in fact, he doesn’t threaten to, he often just do.
Long stretches of people looking at streets which are certainly quite meaningful and evocative to him are frequently just names of places to everyone else (including his fellow residents of Dublin I’m sure). Likewise, long banal conversations between representatives of the titular city may be depicting the hypocrisies, the assumptions, often the moral perversions of folk who consider themselves upright, catholic citizens, are just long banal conversations that run on for several pages and certainly contain some clever references, but clever references do not alone good storytelling make.
Joyce does, however, make up for this in demonstrating some of the most effective realistic conversation I’ve ever read in literature anywhere and sometimes even without the deeper suggestions he creates some conversations so tangible you can hear them, so natural that they flow effortlessly, almost as if they were not written, and so human that you feel part of the room. But this is not a constant, and I can’t wholeheartedly consider them a virtue.
Now the good. Joyce presents human beings as they are. We see up-tight over-educated housewives keen not to be ripped off, layabout drunkards poaching street-walkers for drink money, savvy landladies keen to get their daughters married, old men who are lost and lonely, snobs who have no real reason to be, indifferent academic-types who act against their own interests, warm and conservative old ladies, young lads willing to ruin their lives to have a good time, and many more characters besides. Joyce unfailingly represents the people of Dublin, not all of them of course, but a fairly strong cross-section of society, in their many guises and qualities, without averting his eyes.
Likewise, Joyce presents the complexity of the world. We are often keen to identify with this or that person, but we recognise that the world isn’t so simple as what is ‘right’ or what is ‘fair’, and so although we find such and such behaviour reprehensible, we don’t condemn it because, and this is the important bit, we understand it.
In one story two boys play hooky from school and come across an old man. The man appears friendly but repeats phrases of desiring young girls, and in a similar way repeats phrases of beating young boys. As a reader we want the boy to run away, because despite his smiling and friendliness, something is not quite right about him. Indeed it is the case, I wouldn’t trust this man with young boys, but let’s reflect on this man for a moment.
It has been years since he has known a woman’s touch, he lives in abject poverty, he is almost always alone, he was beaten as a child, and he has drank so much that he struggles to make sense of the world.
As a result, all he really wants is some company, but he neither knows how to relate to these boys nor how to get himself out of the rut he is in. He envies their youth and is dominated by base desires which we all share, we just manage better than he does. The friendly melancholic smile of this man is not too different than one we may have seen in our own lives, just from a different face for a different reason.
Joyce knows we are only human, that we are a result of our lineage, our environment, and our influences. He tries not to judge but often does, he tries not to propagandise but we sometimes get the impression he is anyway, and he’s absolutely sick of Ireland but he can’t stop thinking about it.
Joyce knows we live and die, and sometimes he considers the prospect abhorrent, that it would be better to go out young and passionate for a cause, and sometimes he thinks going out old with a smile on your face is the best of all ends, whether or not we’ve done things in life which were wrong.
Joyce knows that he doesn’t really know anything. He speaks through a third person, communicating the thoughts of folk who struggle to understand each other.
A man wants to sleep with his wife, and all she can think about is a boy she used to know because a guy at a party sang a song just for her.
Is she just saying that so she doesn’t have to sleep with her husband? Yes and no.
Is she thinking about him because primarily she pines for her youth? Yes and no.
Does she have fond memories of the boy and feels guilt for his death? Yes and no.
Is the man shameful for still wanting her even after she cries for a dead boy? Yes and no. Does the man redeem himself for crying too after she has gone to sleep. Yes and no.
There are many reasons we do things, and they often lay on top of one another, vying to be dominant and struggling remain principled when they are. We are a result of aeons of evolution, millions of human beings in our society interacting in ways that feel natural, trillions and more of living things helping and hurting each other for the sake of themselves.
We are, as Joyce knows, like snow, born of wet and cold, our lives the gentle falling towards the earth, before being extinguished on it’s face.
But of course he views things as such, he’s from Ireland.