Currently in the process of finishing off James Joyce's 'Dubliners', being halfway through the final (and longest) short story in the collection, 'The Dead'.
One thing I really like about the collection is how Catholicism often atmospherically lurks in the background of the stories, as a kind of unifying contextual principle.
Before starting 'Dubliners', I'd read that Joyce had a kind of antipathy/distaste for Catholicism, but this never seems to have been overt throughout my reading of the anthology. Through internet surfing, I've just read that Joyce had a complex relationship with Catholicism, on one hand, having a certain distaste for it, while on the other hand, having continued to attend the Latin Tridentine Mass (plus the Byzantine liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church) as he valued its deep beauty.
Really like the way Joyce juxtaposes a tension between (Catholic) moral duty and the need to escape from imprisonment-type social situations in 'Dubliners'. For this reason, 'The Boarding House'; 'A Little Cloud'; 'Counterparts'; 'Clay'; 'A Painful Case', and above anything else, 'Eveline' are my favourite short stories in the collection.
'Eveline' is a deeply moving, four-page story with the central female character not being able to sail off with her lover for a better life in Argentina, because a strong sense of duty and promise to her dead mother, forces her to stay at home to look after her two much younger siblings.
Have a friend in county Cork who writes a lot of short stories, and I've kind of pointed him towards reading the 'Dubliners' collection, because I think a short story writer can learn a lot about his/her craft through comparing and contrasting the various themes, styles, and lengths of story at play in the collection.
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