The Lie They Survive By

A commercial traveller in Joyce's Dublin lies at the foot of the pub stairs with a bitten tongue and a ruined hat, and two days later his friends gather at his bedside to save his soul. Grace is the one story in Dubliners that plays for laughs, and John Banville clearly relishes it: the sickroom theology, the drinks that never stop, the retreat full of businessmen squaring their accounts. He explains why Joyce told his brother the story was built on Dante, and what the priest's name is doing there: a sermon delivered, in effect, from a street with a secret. Then the comedy stops, and Banville names what is left.