Ivy Day in the Committee Room

John Banville warns that "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" is the hardest story in James Joyce's Dubliners for non-Irish readers, then supplies what you need. The central character never appears: Charles Stewart Parnell, head of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Ireland's great hope for autonomy, destroyed by the church and petty politicians after his affair with Kitty O'Shea, and too arrogant and cold to save himself. Mourners plucked ivy for their lapels at his funeral. The story sits nine or ten years later, among men who mostly want a dozen bottles of stout and to get paid.

The turn is Banville's verdict on heroism: there are no heroes, they're made in myths and national stories, and the men here are grubby and small while seeing themselves in heroic light. Nothing much happens; people come and go. Yet he calls it a perfect picture of a Dublin still largely the same, and finds Joyce's great strength here: he despised these people and had a deep affection for them, at once.