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The Dead and the Yes: Joyce's Two Endings in Mercy

By John Kaag

Featuring commentary from Philip Kitcher and John Banville

Both of James Joyce's great Dublin books end by turning, unexpectedly, toward love. Dubliners closes with "The Dead," and Ulysses closes with Molly Bloom's "yes." In their Rebind Classics readings, John Banville on Dubliners and Philip Kitcher on Ulysses each arrive at a Joyce who, after pages of cold diagnosis or hostile comedy, makes a turn toward mercy. The two endings, read together, reveal something essential: that Joyce's deepest subject is the strange traffic between the living and the dead, and the love that passes between them.

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