Love, Death, and the Power of Simple Writing

Yesterday, while making one of my occasional attempts to clean up the office, I came across a ragged old edition of James Joyce‘s “The Dead.” So much for office cleaning: I scurried off with it like a dog who has rediscovered an old bone.

For more years than I care to remember, that story has been one of the great pleasures of my life. I could list the reasons all morning, but the most compelling is that Joyce, using the simplest of means–words of 1 or 2 syllables, no elaborate similes, no recondite allusions or fancy vocabulary–was able to deliver an absolute knockout blow of emotion on the final page.

“The Dead” is so long a story some call it a novella, but it’s those last few paragraphs I love so much. Even as I hit page one, I’m already looking forward to the story’s emotional payoff–for my money the best bittersweet ending you’ll ever come across in English.

For the full power of it, you have to read the entire story, but the context of that final moment is universal, thus easy to grasp: Gabriel, a young married man lies beside his wife after a long, contentious family party. She has just confessed to him that she carries long buried emotions for a boy who once loved her and died rather than live without her. Here is his slow descent into a troubled sleep:

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Thank you for that, James Joyce. It doesn’t get any better.