From the standpoint of a student writer reading Dubliners, Joyce appears to defy some of the common rules of creative fiction writing that we are taught: demonstrate through action, not description, the emotions of a character; in descriptions, avoid the simple qualifying adjectives, such as “just”, “very”, or “big”; use sparingly esoteric place names, products, and people when adding specific details in descriptions. In “Clay” Joyce violates what we think of as standard techniques for effective writing. So, one has to ask, “How does he do it, how does he make every detail feel comfortable, and why are they captivatingly appropriate?” Also, how does he discriminate between what details to include, which to exclude, and how does he present them? Let’s look at “Clay”.

Joyce’s second sentence appears to be one that would surely asked to be rewritten by a writing teacher or students in a workshop: “The kitchen was spick and span: the cook said you could see yourself in the big copper boilers” (95). “Spick and span” is a colloquialism — something to be avoided, like “slowly but surely.” The second part of the sentence tells what the cook said, but doesn’t show through some action the idea that the place was so clean you could see yourself in the dishes — it sounds like a commercial for “Joy” liquid detergent. Surely, there are other was of depicting this idea: Joyce could use dialogue and have the cook say “You can see yourself in the big copper boilers!”; he could describe Maria looking at her reflection in the pot; or, he could further describe the pot and perhaps make a reference to its shine. But, he doesn’t. Why? For one, his rendition is clean prose — nothing extraneous. In far less words, he’s able to demonstrate that Maria is a dedicated and fine worker. The use of “spick and span” also evokes a tone — it’s an image/phrase that people in the laundry would use. Perhaps it’s a substitute for the dialogue that could be there. By not entering the mind of person of the cook, Joyce makes certain his readers know that this story concerns Maria and not the cook … why waste time and words on a minor player. Instead of taking up valuable space in a short story, Joyce conveys his idea and packages it with a background scene: we can imagine Maria looking in the boiler and the cook saying how clean it is.

The next paragraph again surprises the aspiring writer, for we would never be allowed to include this character description: “Maria was a very, very small person indeed but she had a very long nose and a very long chin.” We would have to drop all the “very’s” or go about the description in a whole other way. Why does this work? I get a perfect sense of what Maria looks like and Joyce doesn’t spend a paragraph describing her facial features. Perhaps this description also evokes a voice: she’s a simple person with simple friends and this might be how they would describe her if asked. We might get a sense of her personality and situation this way, instead of a more complicated way of concentrating on the specifics of a “very long nose.”

The paragraph’s ending also points out a technique we might be told to avoid — that is doubly stating a fact: “She was always sent for when the women quarreled over their tubs and always succeeded in making peace. One day the matron said to her: — Maria, you are a veritable peace-maker!” What could Joyce have done otherwise? He could have included the situation of Maria seeing her reflection in the clean boiler, the cook remarking how spic and span they are, and also included a situation of a minor squabble in which Maria makes the peace between two workers. Now, how long and in how many words would that have taken? Two, three paragraphs? It would be another large scene. Or, in just that paragraph, he could have excluded the fact that Maria “always succeeded in making peace” or excluded the matron’s out-of-time exclamation. But, that brings up a point — Joyce keeps the story in one time and in one direction: Maria. So, to avoid cluttering the direction of the story, Joyce writes the way he writes and we know more about Maria and less about the matron, cook, or other workers. Joyce will use that same technique of an out-of-time statement again on the next page with Joe: ”— Mamma is mama but Maria is my proper mother” (96). The reader doesn’t need the entire scene with a buildup of description, setting, action, more dialogue, leading to “Mamma is mamma…” — we feel the background without having it shown in action.

But, then, further down the page we read something that sounds familiar — it echoes within us. Maria is serving the women workers their tea: “They settled down before their huge mugs which the cook and the dummy filled up with hot tea, already mixed with milk and sugar in huge tin cans” (96-7). The “huge” echoes the rhythm in Joyce’s description of Maria on the previous page — “the very long nose and very long chin.” Suddenly, these small adjectives accomplish far more than they appear. A pattern is forming. We sense repetition, we sense a simple routine — the words echo in the sentence much like how Maria’s (and even the workers’) days must echo if a sentence was a week and words were days. Maria is a working woman, who works hard, performs well, is liked and does this everyday to have the money in her pockets that makes her feel independent. The loss of this money gained through a regimented work-life (although, Maria enjoys it) or rather the plum cake will make up the pivot point in “Clay.”

In that very same paragraph which includes the “huge mugs”, “huge tin cans” Joyce depicts an amazingly active scene, but does not choose to use dialogue. From “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” we know Joyce can use dialogue to shape the action of the story — he relies on dialogue there. But not in this paragraph. Curiously, Joyce uses many “and’s” and “then’s” in his description:

“Lizzie Fleming said Maria was sure to get the ring and, though Fleming had said that for so many Hallow Eves, Maria had to laugh and say she didn’t want any ring or man either; and when she laughed her grey-green nose nearly met the tip of her chin. Then Ginger Mooney lifted up her mug of tea and proposed Maria’s health while all the other women clattered with their mugs on the table, and said she was sorry she hadn’t a sup of porter to drink it in. And Maria laughed again till the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin and till her body nearly shook itself asunder because she knew that Mooney meant well though, of course, she had the notions of a common woman.” (97)

The “and’s” and “then’s” do what they should: connect and speed up the pace of the action. Sure, this entire scene could be played out with Lizzie Fleming, Ginger Mooney, Maria, and several other working women speaking, banging mugs, laughing, joking … but we’d lose something if Joyce had chosen to write it that way. We would not have had the same rhythm of an already introduced element of repetition in her “nose nearly met the tip of her chin.” It also may have seemed out of place to include the comment “she knew that Mooney meant well though, of course, she had the notions of a common woman.” And, as in the previous examples, Joyce does not want to waste time or space. This works and works well.

A similar thing could have been done in the situation in which Maria interacts with the “colonel-looking gentleman” on the tram. A larger scene could have been rendered .. but Maria simply needs to 1) have a means of getting to Joe’s and 2) have an opportunity to lose the plumcake. Getting involving in an intricate conversation (and there probably was not one to have in the first place besides what might appear to be called marking-time banter: “What’s in the bag?” “Nice evening we’re having” .. who knows…) so why focus on that when it’s not necessary. And again, that paragraphs concluding comment might feel out of place in one filled with dialogue because we would have left Maria’s inner world and entered the world of the tram and the gentleman: “she thought how easy it was to know a gentleman even though he has a drop taken” (99). I have no idea how to integrate such an internal, character revealing thought in a scene where we have to deal with what another person (the colonel) says and the dialogue that follows. Maybe it can’t be done .. or at least done as well as it is presented by Joyce here.

The remaining section of the story (Maria at Joe’s) could also be done in dialogue. The sentence “Everybody said: O, here’s Maria! when she came to Joe’s house” could have been done like entrances are handled in “Ivy Day”. But wouldn’t a sentence like “‘O, here’s Maria,’ everyone said as she entered the room,” be terrible? They’re incomparable for some reason I find difficulty in expressing besides that one sounds fuller, truer, and more fitting the feeling of the scene. In the following paragraphs Joyce uses (as he has before) many “and’s”, “then’s”, “But Joe said”, “but then’s” to talk about what others are talking about and move that discussion along rapidly. I’m not certain if student writers could get away with this style without being told that we were marking time or being simplistic or merely connecting events without a fuller sense of the situation. But, Joyce gets all that in without the clutter that can come from making prose complicated and inefficient.

Joyce concludes “Clay” with a song from a Balfe opera. Often, student writers are criticized for including facts that others might not be familiar with or seem esoteric. Songs are perfect examples. Often I’ve tried to include lines from a song or have read short stories in which songs form an important connection between the character and the story. But we’re told, “What if the reader doesn’t know the song, how are they supposed to know what you’re trying to express?” Maybe Joyce doesn’t care … maybe Joyce feels his audience will know the song (or the street name, the shop, the Irish slang). So, when Joyce includes: “After that Mrs Donnelly played Miss Cloud’s reel for the children…” (101) the reader could have any of the following responses: he could know the song and integrate that into the scene, he could not know the song, but feel that it must be fitting, he could accept it as a precise detail of Irish life, or (I guess) disregard it. I’d never disregard anything in Joyce, but one could … because you can disregard the title and still have the feeling of a family listening to music. And maybe that’s how Joyce’s other esoteric, specific to Dublin details to which modern readers do not have access (without notes to the text) — we know they are rich details, we know they fit, we know they exist in a real world that, if we could be transported in time, could see, hear, smell, touch and interact with.

But, then what are we to make of Maria’s “mistake” in repeating the second stanza of Dream that I Dwelt? Could an average reader have picked up the mistake that everyone in the room seems to have noticed, but does not talk about? Joyce tells us she makes a mistake. Now we have a real problem when we try to adhere to the standard techniques/practices we are taught in writing classes. We are told, one, not to include something esoteric, such as a song; two, show the actions and reactions of the players, don’t simply tell us what they thought. Would we then have had to depict a scene in which the Donnelly family convinces Maria to sing, and then include doubly the lyrics of the second stanza? And then describe the puzzled faces, or hushed murmur of the family noticing the mistake but not saying anything. And that’s the whole point: how do you describe the action of nothing actively? Do you focus on the silence of the room or perhaps Joe’s face or an object in the room? Would that drawn an uncomfortable attention to something other than the mistake … and would the idea of the mistake be intelligible? We might take something thought of esoteric and push it beyond the bounds of comprehension — we would be utterly confused at what is going on. But, they way Joyce tells this story, we are perfectly held, perfectly touched, and perfectly led between the largest of details to the tiniest, Joe having to ask his wife “where the corkscrew was.”

Efficiently, realistically, and with perfect connection Joyce carries us through the characters and the Dublin world without letting us lose sight of the details that could have been lost if “Clay” was written any other way.