Poor Little Chandler

A timid clerk, a golden evening in Joyce's Dublin, and the friend who got out: back from London, trailing stories of Paris, standing the drinks. That is the whole plot of A Little Cloud, the story at the dead center of James Joyce's Dubliners. John Banville keeps close company with Little Chandler through it, from the office door to the bar full of British officers, and home again, where a wife, a baby, and a book of Byron are waiting. And near the last page there is one short sentence Banville cannot leave alone. Come hear what he finds in it.