James Hisler

Dubliners is my favorite collection of short stories. If you’re going to jump into Joyce, and perhaps you don’t have several lifetimes to get through both Ulysses AND Finnegan’s Wake, read Dubliners and in doing so enjoy the very best prose in the English language. Fifty-five years ago a college professor of mine came right out and said Joyce’s story, Araby, is...”the greatest story ever written.’ I agree.

My creative writing professor, seemingly eons ago, proclaimed to our undergraduate class: “This is the greatest story ever written. Read it by next Tuesday.” That was it. 1967. Since then, I have returned to this story, more than any other. Read it. Read it aloud. Then just think. Just think the thoughts of another time; of plain-ended cigarette butts, cobblestone streets and pints of tepid Guinness. All of it. James Joyce has preserved his observations for all of us too.