Ivy Day In The Committee Room: Short Story

By James Joyce

As a few minor politicians discuss child-rearing and bicker about defending a rival candidate, one, Joe Hynes, reminds them it is Ivy Day, in memory of Charles Stewart Parnell. A silence falls on the room briefly, before the politicians resume their bad-mouthing and discussions.

Critically acclaimed author James Joyce’s Dubliners is a collection of short stories depicting middle-class life in Dublin in the early twentieth century. First published in 1914, the stories draw on themes relevant to the time such as nationalism and Ireland’s national identity, and cement Joyce’s reputation for brutally honest and revealing depictions of everyday Irish life.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jul 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781443440202

James Joyce

James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882. He came from a reasonably wealthy family which, predominantly because of the recklessness of Joyce's father John, was soon plunged into financial hardship. The young Joyce attended Clongowes College, Belvedere College and, eventually, University College, Dublin. In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle, and eloped with her to Croatia. From this point until the end of his life, Joyce lived as an exile, moving from Trieste to Rome, and then to Zurich and Paris. His major works are Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922) and Finnegan's Wake (1939). He died in 1941, by which time he had come to be regarded as one of the greatest novelists the world ever produced.

Book preview

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Ivy Day in the Committee Room

James Joyce

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CONTENTS

Ivy Day in the Committee Room

About the Author

About the Series

Copyright

About the Publisher

Ivy Day in the

Committee Room

Old Jack raked the cinders together with a piece of cardboard and spread them judiciously over the whitening dome of coals. When the dome was thinly covered his face lapsed into darkness but, as he set himself to fan the fire again, his crouching shadow ascended the opposite wall and his face slowly re-emerged into light. It was an old man’s face, very bony and hairy. The moist blue eyes blinked at the fire and the moist mouth fell open at times, munching once or twice mechanically when it closed. When the cinders had caught he laid the piece of cardboard against the wall, sighed and said:

That’s better now, Mr. O’Connor.

Mr. O’Connor, a grey-haired young man, whose face was disfigured by many blotches and pimples, had just brought the tobacco for a cigarette into a shapely cylinder but when spoken to he undid his handiwork meditatively. Then he began to roll the tobacco again meditatively and after a moment’s thought decided to lick the paper.

Did Mr. Tierney say when he’d be back? he asked in a husky falsetto.

He didn’t say.

Mr. O’Connor put his cigarette into his mouth and began search his pockets. He took out a pack of thin pasteboard cards.

I’ll get you a match, said the old man.

Never mind, this’ll do, said Mr. O’Connor.

He selected one of the cards and read what