Tag: James Joyce

21 Great Stories – A Book Review

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When I was a kid in high school back in Brooklyn in the early 1970s every school either public or private had an English class that used this book as a source of classic short stories.  Now at the time it never occurred to me to look at the bio on the editors who selected these “great” stories.  Many years later I did and discovered that these two editors were actually educators who worked at two local high schools (Abraham Lincoln H.S. and Sheepshead Bay H.S.) that were both within a mile of my home.  In fact, Camera Girl went to one of these schools (although as I learned, she wasn’t really putting in the effort she should have and it took all my help to get her over the finish line her senior year).  So, there is my link to this revered literary treasury.  And back then I really wasn’t particularly interested in the kind of stories represented.  There was one Ray Bradbury story but it wasn’t really science fiction so it wouldn’t have been on my radar.

But many years later I saw the familiar cover of the paperback on the shelf of a discount book store while we were on vacation in Old Orchard Beach, Maine and since I hadn’t packed enough reading material, I bought the book for (I think) two dollars.

And over the course of the week we were there, I read the whole thing for the first time in my life.  And damned if most of the stories weren’t excellent in their own separate ways.  Sure, I liked some of them much better than others but I had to admit that almost without exception they were well-crafted stories that could stand the test of time and quite a few of them could be re-read over the years without becoming tiresome.

Here’s the table of contents:

  • War by Luigi Pirandello
  • Eve in Darkness by Kaatje Hurlbut
  • There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury
  • Tobermory by Saki
  • The Two Bottles of Relish by Lord Dunsany
  • Footfalls by Wilbur Daniel Steele
  • Hook by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
  • Wine on the Desert by Max Brand
  • The Lady or the Tiger? by Frank Stockton
  • An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
  • The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
  • So Much Unfairness of Things by C. D. B. Bryan
  • The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant
  • The Adventure of the Speckled Band by Arthur Conan Doyle
  • To Build a Fire by Jack London
  • Leiningen Versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson
  • Eveline by James Joyce
  • The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber
  • What Stumped the Bluejays by Mark Twain
  • The Pearl by John Steinbeck

If you asked me which was my favorite once a year it’s likely that I’d give you a different answer every time.  It seems to change based on what mood I’m in that day.  If I’m in a light mood it might be “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.”  If I’m feeling cynical, I might enjoy “The Cask of Amontillado” or “To Build a Fire.”  But I can usually find a story to reread if I’m waiting for an oil change or a dental appointment.

Now, let me be clear.  These are not all the short stories I like.  In fact, these are not even my favorite short stories.  I can find funnier sections in P.G. Wodehouse and I can find more engaging science fiction short stories by several other authors.  Specifically, “There Will Come Soft Rains” isn’t even in my top twenty Ray Bradbury short stories.  But this is a good book for tasting a cross section of classic short story styles.  Not a bad book to own.

11MAR2023 – Quote of the Day

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This triviality made him think of collecting many such moments together in a book of epiphanies. By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments. He told Cranly that the clock of the Ballast Office was capable of an epiphany. Cranly questioned the inscrutable dial of the Ballast Office with his no less inscrutable countenance:

—Yes, said Stephen. I will pass it time after time, allude to it, refer to it, catch a glimpse of it. It is only an item in the catalogue of Dublin’s street furniture. Then all at once I see it and I know at once what it is: epiphany.

Imagine my glimpses at that clock as the gropings of a spiritual eye which seeks to adjust its vision to an exact focus. The moment the focus is reached the object is epiphanised. It is just in this epiphany that I find the third, the supreme quality of beauty. … No esthetic theory, pursued Stephen relentlessly, is of any value which investigates with the aid of the lantern of tradition. What we symbolise in black the Chinaman may symbolise in yellow: each has his own tradition. Greek beauty laughs at Coptic beauty and the American Indian derides them both. It is almost impossible to reconcile all tradition whereas it is by no means impossible to find the justification of every form of beauty which has ever been adored on the earth by an examination into the mechanism of esthetic apprehension whether it be dressed in red, white, yellow or black. We have no reason for thinking that the Chinaman has a different system of digestion from that which we have though our diets are quite dissimilar. The apprehensive faculty must be scrutinised in action.

—You know what Aquinas says: The three things requisite for beauty are, integrity, a wholeness, symmetry and radiance. Some day I will expand that sentence into a treatise. Consider the performance of your own mind when confronted with any object, hypothetically beautiful. Your mind to apprehend that object divides the entire universe into two parts, the object, and the void which is not the object. To apprehend it you must lift it away from everything else: and then you perceive that it is one integral thing, that is a thing. You recognise its integrity. Isn’t that so?

— And then?

—That is the first quality of beauty: it is declared in a simple sudden synthesis of the faculty which apprehends. What then? Analysis then. The mind considers the object in whole and in part, in relation to itself and to other objects, examines the balance of its parts, contemplates the form of the object, traverses every cranny of the structure. So the mind receives the impression of the symmetry of the object. The mind recognises that the object is in the strict sense of the word, a thing, a definitely constituted entity. You see?

— Let us turn back, said Cranly.

Now for the third quality. For a long time I couldn’t make out what Aquinas meant. He uses a figurative word (a very unusual thing for him) but I have solved it. Claritas is quidditas. After the analysis which discovers the second quality the mind makes the only logically possible synthesis and discovers the third quality. This is the moment which I call epiphany. First we recognise that the object is one integral thing, then we recognise that it is an organised composite structure, a thing in fact: finally, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we recognise that it is that thing which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany.

Having finished his argument Stephen walked on in silence. He felt Cranly’s hostility and he accused himself of having cheapened the eternal images of beauty. For the first time, too, he felt slightly awkward in his friend’s company and to restore a mood of flippant familiarity he glanced up at the clock of the Ballast Office and smiled:

— It has not epiphanised yet, he said.

James Joyce