Araby

John Banville talks you through "Araby," one of the simplest stories in James Joyce's Dubliners, at least on the surface. A nameless boy of 11 or 12, living with his aunt and uncle, is helplessly in love with Mangan's sister, who is older. Banville lingers on one touch: her dress swaying in the lamplight and a tiny inch of petticoat, which inflames the boy's senses, though Joyce never says so. The boy wants to bring her "the treasures of Arabia" from a tawdry fair called Araby, and must wait for a drunk uncle to come home with the florin.

The scene Banville singles out is the stall: a grown young woman flirting with two young men turns to the boy, "can I help you," and his nerve fails. He goes home without the gift. That's all there is, and the economy is Banville's point. Joyce never tells us what to feel or think or see; he lets us infer it, and he did this at 23.