So, I’ll be the first to admit it: writing involves just a tad more than crafting one perfect sentence, yet, having said that, I have major “sentence envy” in regard to James Joyce’s flawless ending to his long short story, his novella, The Dead. My copy reads, “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 of the living and the dead” (196, ed. Seamus Deane, 1992).

I happen to have Seamus Deane’s Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. Widely admired in its time, Deane’s anthology has since been roundly criticized for its decided preference for male authors. I admit I have not read it yet; I beg forgiveness. I have been in university for most of my adult life and, only now, have I had time to delve into some of the many books I’ve intended to read, had I only time.

But, back to my topic: the brilliance of James Joyce. I first read Joyce’s collection, Dubliners, a few years before I studied abroad and earned a Master of Philosophy in Irish Writing from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, TCD, for short. To this day, it remains, in my mind, the perfect short story collection. Its brilliance is masked in carefully observed details culminating in the now-legendary, The Dead. Hollywood made a fine film of the story, yet nothing touches the aching, indescribable beauty of the original written word.

I do not have penis envy, but I certainly, with certain authors, have sentence envy.