I do enjoy Joyce, but it's not an easy read. I enjoy a challenge though. As for depressing stories, they are entertaining- just not in the same way as happy ones. I can stand hardly anything written by Hardy though. Part of it is plotline but it is mostly writing style.  I find it irritating.

I disagree that few enjoy reading stories that contain angst.  How many people read Romeo and Juliet and express their delight in this play? or other tragedies of the Bard?  The fact that so many Victorian novels have had appeal to large audiences must, indeed, confirm that there are many who did, indeed, enjoy reading these novels.

Unlike others, there are readers who do sense something positive in reading works such as Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Ubervilles  and James Joyce's Dubliners. For, one thing, these narratives are realistic and the reader can empathize with characters.  In addition, readers can find communion with the souls who suffer the Irish paralysis in Joyce's stories.  Have not many had similar experiences?

It is this commonality with human nature that is the appeal of Joyce's Dubliners, not to mention a better understanding of his people.  His writing is skillful, penetrating, unsympathetic, symbolic, thoughtful--well worth reading.  They remind the American reader of the tour advertised in New Orleans:  "Tour----- see the neighborhoods of the tragic Irish."

As #3 points out, "enjoy" is an interesting word that you need to specify precisely. I do appreciate the immense artistic achievement that these stories represent, but I don't necessarily enjoy reading stories about people who experience epiphanies and realise just how insignificant or immature they are. I do think these stories are incredible though, and enjoy reading them from this perspective.

I don't enjoy reading Joyce's The Dubliners. I don't enjoy it for the simple reason that I don't find sorrow, suffering, and angst enjoyable. It's my considered opinion that no one finds these topics "enjoyable" but that we profess cultural "enjoyment" because it is literary art. Dr. Peter Kramer supports this view--and is strongly opposed to such "enjoyment"--and explains why in his groundbreaking 2005 book Against Depression.

Did you enjoy reading The Dubliners by James Joyce?

Not really. I did a few essays for college on The Dubliners, but nothing in it stuck with me or made an impact. I may have enjoyed it if I had read it on my own. I have not read anything else by Joyce, but research on his two most famous novels -- Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake -- leads me to believe that they are on the style-over-substance side of writing.

I found much of the book beautifully written when I first read it (many years ago). The closing paragraphs of "The Dead" are among the most haunting I have ever read:

Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.

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.

On the other hand, I don't recall another of the stories affecting me this deeply. This is a book I need to re-read.

I have to agree with accessteacher (#3) on this one. I have never much enjoyed reading James Joyce, and I have read his short stories and even Ulysses. (I got talked into taking a college class on Joyce by a teacher whol loved him. I had never heard of his. I did all right in the class, but probably because the professor was so enthusiastic and helpful—I remember that there was a time during the class when I struggled with Joyce's work, but something finally clicked so I could at least find some understanding in what he was talking about. His style is difficult to connect with—the stories are not the kind you pick up and settle down to read some afternoon with a cup of coffee or tea.

The stories are not inspiring—they do not uplift the reader, but often (though realistically) concentrate on the seamy side of life. I prefer stories where characters may have to struggle, but they rise above their circumstances—if not to defeat them, to at least demonstrate admirable characteristics in the face of life's adversities. These characters battle their way through life, often with great unhappiness or severe conflict. Joyce was greatly influenced by Henrik Ibsen. I'd much rather curl up with one of his plays.

This excellent collection of stories in many ways is a hard read. It is not a feel-good book that restores your faith in human goodness and the joy of living. Often the stories are very bleak and rather depressing, but I do think they are very realistic, perhaps because of this. What is clear though is that these stories are written with such skill that reading them is a joy in terms of critically analysing them and being open to what Joyce is trying to convey through them. Thus I have mixed reactions to them.