What we’re about
This group started in May 2011, and we've read novels by Joyce, Malraux, Kafka, Wright, Mishima, Faulkner, Nabokov, Unamuno, Ellison, Hamsun, Woolf, Biely, Gide, and many others. We try to have a good time discussing the books without descending to small talk, think critically without descending to pedantry, etc.
Also, as the title shows, we've expanded our reading list since the group started. We don't really want to title the group something as vague as "Chicago Literature Group," etc., and modernist fiction and poetry still make up most of the reading list. But if some group members are excited about reading something else, be it Goethe or Ovid, Wallace or Perec, we're interested in that too. Feel free to make suggestions.
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- James Joyce’s “After the Race” & “Two Gallants” (Short Stories Discussion)Link visible for attendees
James Joyce’s Dubliners, first published in 1914, stands as one of the greatest and most influential short story collections in the English language. Offering an unflinching yet deeply evocative portrait of “dear dirty Dublin” at the turn of the twentieth century, it serves as both a meditation on a city in stagnation and a moral history of a people whose “golden age” has passed. Joyce’s characters — at once profoundly Irish and universally resonant — linger in the reader’s mind, their inner lives rendered with striking psychological depth. Through prose that is at once mesmerizing and meticulously crafted, Joyce captures the rhythms of Dublin speech and the quiet struggles of its citizens with extraordinary realism. This collection of fifteen stories represents Joyce at his most accessible and, arguably, his most profound. (Penguin)
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This is a series of occasional meetups hosted by the Toronto Philosophy Meetup to discuss short stories by various authors. We started in 2023 and generally meet every other Sunday evening. Authors we have read include Haruki Murakami, Anton Chekhov, Alice Munro, James Baldwin, Feng Menglong, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
This time we will continue our discussion of James Joyce's Dubliners with the 5th and 6th stories in the collection. In "After the Race", a young man joins wealthy foreigners in a night of revelry, and in "Two Gallants", two men roam Dublin, revealing a plan to manipulate and exploit a trusting woman.
Please read the stories in advance (~17 pages in total) and bring your thoughts, reactions, queries, and favourite passages to share with us at the discussion. A free pdf copy will be posted on the main event page. We'll be joined by many participants from other groups.
Stories by Joyce we've previously discussed in this group:
