James Joyce wrote most of the short stories in his landmark collection, Dubliners, when he was still in his 20s, but a tortuous publishing history, during which printers refused or pulped them for their profanity, meant they weren’t published until 1914, when Joyce was 33. In their eighth episode, Mark and Seamus discuss the astonishing confidence of Joyce’s early work, which not only launched his literary career, but also initiated the grand project of his writing life. In Dubliners, the reader experiences already the vastness of Joyce’s literary imagination, his harsh criticism of the Catholic Church, his shameless plundering of the lives of his contemporaries, and a writer’s self-conscious vocation to ‘forge the uncreated conscience of his race’.
'The Long and Short' is part of the LRB's Close Readings podcast. To listen to the full series, and all our other Close Readings series covering literature from Ancient Greece to the present day, sign up in:
Sample other episode from 'The Long and Short'
Tennyson's Maud
Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself'
Henry James's short stories
Katherine Mansfield's short stories
Hart Crane's 'The Bridge'
D.H. Lawrence's short stories
Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' and 'Kaddish'
Ted Hughes's 'Gaudete'
Nella Larsen's 'Passing' and Langston Hughes's 'Montage of a Dream Deferred'
Alice Oswald's 'Dart' and 'Memorial'
Elizabeth Bowen's short stories
To listen to the series in full, and all our other Close Readings series, sign up in:
About Close Readings
Close Readings is a multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books exploring different periods of literature through selections of key works. Enjoy literary conversations like no other from Europe’s leading journal of culture and ideas.
RUNNING IN 2025:
- 'Conversations in Philosophy' with Jonathan Rée and James Wood
- 'Fiction and the Fantastic' with Marina Warner, Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis
- 'Love and Death' with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford
- 'Novel Approaches' with Clare Bucknell, Thomas Jones and other guests
ALSO INCLUDED IN YOUR CLOSE READINGS SUBSCRIPTION:
- 'Human Conditions' with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards
- 'On Satire' with Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell
- 'Political Poems' with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry
- 'Among the Ancients' with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones
- 'Medieval Beginnings' with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley
- 'The Long and Short' with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry
- 'Modern-ish Poets: Series 1' with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry
- 'Among the Ancients II' with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones
- 'Medieval LOLs' with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley
