The greatest Christmas story of all
Forget Scrooge and Tiny Tim -- James Joyce's "The Dead," with its distinctively Irish blend of music and tragedy, is the ultimate yuletide tale. And why isn't John Huston's marvelous film version available on DVD?

The greatest of all Christmas stories, James Joyce's "The Dead," the last story in "Dubliners," was written in little over a month as Joyce forged the uncreated conscience of his race from an apartment in Trieste, Italy. John Huston's 1988 film was made in roughly the same amount of time (in 33 days, actually). Much of it, including all the interiors, was shot in a warehouse in Valencia, Calif. Joyce was just 25 when he wrote the story, and Huston 80 when he filmed it, but the intentions of the self-imposed Irish exile and the American émigré who adopted Ireland were not dissimilar. Both the youthful writer and the aging filmmaker were coming to terms with their ambivalence toward both their families and Ireland; both gave themselves over to moments of reverie about home, family and the Christmas holiday (though, actually, the story is set on Jan. 6, 1904, on the Feast of the Epiphany -- the last of the 12 days of Christmas) that aren't to be found anywhere else in their work. Joyce's great works, the quintessential modernist novel "Ulysses" and the unclassifiable stream-of-unconsciousness narrative "Finnegans Wake," were still ahead of him. Huston's great films, including "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," all lay far in the past.

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The Dead
by James Joyce

Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat, than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest. It was well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also. But Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought of that and had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies' dressing-room. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come. It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan's annual dance. Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of Julia's choir, any of Kate's pupils that were grown up enough, and even some of Mary Jane's pupils too. Never once had it fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off in splendid style, as long as anyone could remember: ever since Kate and Julia, after the death of their brother Pat, had left the house in Stoney Batter and taken Mary Jane, their only niece, to live with them in the dark, gaunt house on Usher's Island, the upper part of which they had rented from Mr Fulham, the corn-factor on the ground floor. That was a good thirty years ago if it was a day. Mary Jane, who was then a little girl in short clothes, was now the main prop of the household, for she had the organ in Haddington Road. She had been through the Academy and gave a pupils' concert every year in the upper room of the Ancient Concert Rooms. Many of her pupils belonged to the better-class families on the Kingstown and Dalkey line. Old as they were, her aunts also did their share. Julia, though she was quite grey, was still the leading soprano in Adam and Eve's, and Kate, being too feeble to go about much, gave music lessons to beginners on the old square piano in the back room. Lily, the caretaker's daughter, did housemaid's work for them. Though their life was modest, they believed in eating well; the best of everything: diamond-bone sirloins, three-shilling tea and the best bottled stout. But Lily seldom made a mistake in the orders, so that she got on well with her three mistresses. They were fussy, that was all. But the only thing they would not stand was back answers.

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