To an unsentimental new year!

This isn’t what you think — I’m not trying to be deliberately provocative just for the sake of it.

And in fact, I celebrated Christmas with a big collection of family (I have a HUGE family, so it’s possible to fill a house and have plenty left over, unaccounted for, probably wandering around in the snow lost and abandoned. Not that I would ever do that.)

I also had a great, reasonably low-key New Year’s Eve with my “other” family and a group of interesting, engaging friends. So I can lay down the sentimentality.

During Christmas, though, I broke up the spaces between family events by re-reading Dubliners by James Joyce.

— Scoff if you want, claim that a dead white Irish male writer isn’t relevant to modern multicultural society, note that a collection of short stories first published almost 100 years ago might not stand up that well.

All I know is this:

Dubliners kicked me in the head. With no fanfare, it was an unsentimental wake-up that was a perfect antidote, to me, for what had been a heavily commercialized holiday.

I first read this in college. That event was pretty much lost on me, since it was an assignment rather than an exploration. I picked it up again in my early 30s, but I had to put it down because I was still dealing with my father’s recent death and some of the stories hit too close to home.

More recently, a co-worker lent me a copy of “The Dead”, the novella that closes Dubliners (and which John Huston made into a film, along with his son, Tony, and daughter, Angelica).  That same co-worker, Patrick, believes the final paragraph of “The Dead” is one of the most astounding pieces of English literature, period. Personally, I believe it’s great, but give the edge to the closing of The Great Gatsby.

So for about a year, I’ve been primed to take on Dubliners as an adult. I just wasn’t expecting its bleak AND beautiful nature.

My point? I’ve unexpectedly found inspiration from a great artist, reaching out from a different world and a different century. I’m going to use that inspiration this new year to better attempt looking at things as they are, not as I want (or hope) them to be.

And then moving on from there.