SOURCE: “The Many Mirrors: Joyce's Techniques,” in Paradoxical Resolutions: American Fiction Since James Joyce, University of Illinois Press, 1982, pp. 34–50.

In the following excerpt, Werner explores the influence of James Joyce's narrative technique on Banks's Searching for Survivors.

Dublin(er)'s Joyce: Ernest Gaines, Flannery O'connor, Russell Banks

Although [James] Joyce did not invent the epiphany, he effectively “patented” it. Stephen Dedalus' theory of the epiphany as “a sudden spiritual manifestation whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself” capitalizes upon the developmental work of several predecessors. Anton Chekov's short stories often rely on seemingly innocuous details which, when viewed from the right perspective, yield unexpected spiritual insights. Though University College Dublin professor Gerard Manley Hopkins remained largely unknown until the publication of his poetry in 1918, his inscapes anticipate Joyce's epiphanies. Nonetheless, Dubliners remains the first book of short...