EZRA POUND
James Joyce seems to predicate his coming of age stories around Dublin. It was a city he loved and hated. Deeply embedded in his stories, is the idea that we are human beings whose lives are determined as much by the things we choose not to do (inaction) as by the things we choose to do (action). Joyce firmly believed that the story if this city was also about its people. The idea being that people were somehow stuck in Dublin by a sense of obligation, calling, loyalty, and identity. He believed that all of these things were undermined and infused with a healthy sense of paralysis. He firmly believed that his stories, specifically the ones in Dubliners, were stories about "...the moral history of his country."
In keeping with this notion:
Ezra Pound wrote that you could erase the local names, a few specifically local allusions, and a few historic events of the past, and substitute other names allusions, and events, and these stories could be retold of any town. Is Pound right?
