James Joyce's "Ivy Day in the Committee Room"

Manuscript of Joyce's "The Dead"

Sitting in the Rainbow Club and watching the old men the other end of the bar reenact the exploits of Jackie Robinson, Grant Wiggins in A Lesson Before Dying begins to think about his experiences in college while also keeping in mind Jefferson sits in a jail cell downtown awaiting his execution. Specifically, Grant begins to muse about a little Irishman who lectured at his university (originally Southern in the early drafts). The man spoke about other Irishmen such as William Butler Yeats, Sean O’Casey, and JamesJoyce. Grant remembers that he sat and listened to the man as “he told us how some Irishmen would weep this day at the mention of the name Parnell” (89). Moving on from Charles Stewart Parnell, “the little white man” discussed James Joyce’s “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” from Dubliners, saying that “[r]egardless of race, regardless of class, that story was universal” (89).

After procuring an anthology with the story in it from a white university library (originally LSU) with the help of a sympathetic professor, Grant began to read the story, looking for the universality that the lecturer spoke about. He did not see that universal message until years later when he “began to listen, to listen closely to how [my people] talked about their heroes, how they talked about the dead and about how great the dead had once been” (90). Grant started to listen and to look at the heroes that the people in his community admired. He sees the old men at the bar idolizing Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis just as the men in Joyce’s “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” idolize Parnell. Grant thinks about a boy in Florida who cried for Joe Louis to save him and wonders if Jefferson will call on Jackie Robinson.

First page of
The Short Biography of Miss Jane Pittman

This passage, within the context of the novel, gives background into Grant’s position and mindset as a teacher returning to the quarters to educate the children. While this is important, it does much more than illuminate Grant’s character. Grant’s experiences call to mind Gaines’ reason for writing. Speaking with Jerome Tarshis in 1974, Gaines said, “I can read Joyce; I’d read Dubliners before I’d read the novels. ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’ I think is one of the greatest short stories that I’ve ever read. It’s the most universal of his work; it’s the kind of thing I’d like to do, the barber shop type of thing: you get together and everybody talks” (77). The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman began this way. In the original draft, people gather around and discuss Miss Jane and her life after her burial. Told from multiple points of view, the story becomes like the men reminiscing about Parnell.

For an essay that examines Gaines and Joyce together, see Spangler, Matthew. “Of Snow and Dust: The Presence of James Joyce in Ernest Gaines’s ‘A Lesson Before Dying.’” South Atlantic Review 67:1, 2002. 104-128. Print.

Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson Before Dying. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print.

Tarshis, James. “The Other 300 Years: A Conversation with Ernest J. Gaines, Author of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.” Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Ed. John Lowe. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995. 72-79. Print.