What if you showed up (sorta) in a James Joyce novel?

Reading "Counterparts" in "Dubliners" sorta hit home.

Editor’s Note: It was James Joyce’s birthday yesterday. He would have been 143. I wrote this way back in June, long before I had many readers on my Substack so I thought I’d repost this today. When I read the story from Dubliners called “Counterparts,” well, it echoed something from my own life in such a way, I knew, once I started teaching, that we’d have to revisit that story. Along with “Araby” and “Eveline” and the closing story “The Dead,” they were superbly written stories that my classes came to enjoy. But “Counterparts” — well, that was something else…

James Joyce's "Dubliners" remains a classic

Have you ever sat down to start reading a book and, you’re going along and then, almost miraculously, you start reading about something that happened to you.

Maybe not exactly, of course. But close enough to get you shivering, wondering, pausing for a moment to shake your head. Art imitates life? Or vice versa?

The great James Joyce’s book “Dubliners” is a marvelous collection of short stories about the lives of mostly forgotten citizens of Ireland’s capital city. It is superbly written, not a comma out of place, and it’s closing story - “The Dead” (more of a novella, really) has been acclaimed as one of the finest short stories in the English language.

I first read Joyce’s collection of stories early in my career in the newspaper business, having read so much about his gift and skillful writing techniques. I used to read them one-by-one, taking the dog for a walk and stretching out on the grass in a nearby field. Some of the stories were poundingly sad but flawlessly crafted; “Eveline” about a sheltered woman who cannot bring herself to leave her abusive father; “Araby” about a young boy’s unrequited first love, stories of people whose lives seemed restricted, bound up and cramped by a repressive, restrictive society and a dominant religion. But so brilliantly written. A must read.

Then I came to “Counterparts,” a story that seemed, oddly enough, to echo my own life. It’s the story of a scrivener, a copyist named Farrington who works for a little bald man with gold-rimmed glasses named Mr. Alleyne and Farrington is perpetually late and in trouble (and often hung over - he has a serious drinking problem.) Unlike me, who barely can sip a beer without advice.

And at one point in the story, Alleyne is being visited by the attractive Miss Delacour and while she sits aside his desk, Farrington is summoned to his office. He’s in trouble. He was supposed to have copied two letters and, out at the pub for a liquid lunch, didn’t.

“I know nothing about any other two letters, he said stupidly” Joyce writes.

“You-know-nothing. Of course you know nothing said Alleyne. Tell me, he added, glancing first for approval to the lady beside him, do you take me for a fool? Do you think me an utter fool?”

“The man glanced from the lady’s face to the little egg-shaped head and back again; and almost before he was aware of it, his tongue had found a felicitous moment.: “I don’t think, sir, he said, that that’s a fair question to put to me.’

“There was a pause in the very breathing of the clerks. Everyone was astounded (the author of the witticism no less than his neighbors) and Miss Delacour, who was a stout amiable person, began to smile broadly. Mr. Alleyne flushed to the hue of a wild rose and his mouth twitched with a dwarf’s passion…”

I stopped reading. Holy crap. A bald, snotty boss, trying to flirt with an attractive woman at his desk when a comment sets EVERYONE laughing - except, of course, the boss.

That HAPPENED TO ME. Almost EXACTLY.

Back at my first job, we were in the middle of a playful, somewhat off-color newsroom chat – you could do that in those days.  All of us, even the haughty, “I’d never lower myself to talk to OTHER newsroom people” boss, who never did this kind of thing. We all were laughing about it. At the time, our attractive female reporter, evidently seeking some favor, was practically unfolded on the edge of his desk, something we were also quite stunned about.

Good-natured jabs went back and forth until the Boss first made a crack about “The Toy Department” - my Sports Department - then threw in a few other nasty jabs, some literally below the belt, trying to impress the reporter.

Well, I wasn’t going to stand there and take that. I fired back with a saucy quip that not only set the newsroom alight, the attractive woman sitting on the edge of his desk just about lost a lung. And the bald-headed boss got as red as… well, as Mr. Alleyne.

(BTW: There’s a full recounting of that exact moment (and what I said!) in my new book “Nashua: How Ronald Reagan led us to Donald Trump” available on Amazon!)

This is the story of that week in Nashua, that ill-fated debate and that bald-headed boss

I don’t know that the memory of that moment was in the boss’s mind when he fired me a couple of years later, but it might have been. I certainly thought about it and years later, when I decided I had to write about that moment and heck, the whole week when that boss managed to convince our dim-witted publisher that it’d be a swell idea for the newspaper to get involved in the New Hampshire Republican primary that year, and yeah, let’s go ahead and endorse George Bush against Ronald Reagan.

In fact, let’s have just the two of them debate here, like Reagan’s man suggested. So what if there’s five other candidates. So what if Ronnie is way behind in the polls. The hell with all those other morons.

The deal was Bush vs. Reagan. Period. What’s Reagan going to do? Bring ‘em all out on stage the night of the debate? (Yup)

Well, that newspaper is down to one day a week now. That butchered 1980 Presidential debate didn’t help.

This was the moment when my old bald boss tried to tell Ronnie to shut up. Didn’t go well.

By the way, Farrington isn’t fired in Joyce’s story, but is told he’ll have to apologize to Mr. Alleyne. Instead, he leaves early, pawns a watch chain so he can get drunk, goes home and beats his kid.

So maybe ART doesn’t imitate LIFE. But in my case, it came awfully damn close.