Dublin

In his inimitable, irresistible way, James Joyce immortalized the city of Dublin in Ulysses, Dubliners, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, filling these works with the people he knew, speaking in their own words, and adding many more of his own. Disappointed with the city's provincial outlook and small-town manners, he left it in 1902, at the age of 20 (his famed peers Sean O'Casey and Samuel Beckett soon followed). Later, he said he chose Dublin as the setting for his work because it was a "center of paralysis" where nothing much ever changed. Which only proves that even the greats get it wrong sometimes. Indeed, if Joyce were to return to his once genteel hometown today and take a quasi-Homeric odyssey through the city (as he so famously does in Ulysses), would he even recognize Dublin as his "Dear Dirty Dumpling, foostherfather of fingalls and dotthergills"?

For instance, what would he make of Temple Bar—the city's erstwhile down-at-the-heels neighborhood, now crammed with restaurants and trendy hotels and suffused with a nonstop, international-party atmosphere? Or the old market area of Smithfield, whose Cinderella transformation has changed it into an impressive plaza and winter ice-skating venue? Or of the new Irishness, where every aspect of Celtic culture results in sold-out theaters, from Conor McPherson's Broadway hit, The Seafarer, to Riverdance, the old Irish mass-jig recast as a Las Vegas extravaganza? Plus, the resurrected Joyce might be stirred by the songs of U2, fired up by the sultry acting of Colin Farrell, and moved by the poems of Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney. In short, Irish is cool. As for Ireland's capital, elegant shops and hotels, galleries, art-house cinemas, coffeehouses, and a stunning variety of restaurants have sprung up on almost every street in Dublin, transforming the provincial city that suffocated Joyce into a place almost as cosmopolitan as the Paris to which he fled.

Dublin's popularity has provoked a few of its citizens to protest that the rapid transformation of their heretofore tranquil city has affected its spirit and character. Mundane topics like "house prices" and "the bloody traffic" have found their way into pub conversation. These skeptics (skepticism long being a favorite pastime in the capital city) await the outcome of "Dublin: The Sequel"—can the "new Dublin" get beyond the rage stage without losing its very essence? Their greatest fear is the possibility that the tattered old lady on the Liffey is becoming like everywhere else.

Oh ye of little faith: the rare aul' gem that is Dublin is far from buried. The fundamentals—the Georgian elegance of Merrion Square, the Norman drama of Christ Church Cathedral, the foamy pint at an atmospheric pub—are still on hand to gratify. Most of all, there are the locals themselves: the nod and grin when you catch their eye on the street, the eagerness to hear half your life story before they tell you all of theirs, and their paradoxically dark but warm sense of humor.

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