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A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man
This Norton Critical Edition is based on Hans Gabler s acclaimed text and is accompanied by his introduction and textual notes. John Paul Riquelme provides detailed explanatory annotations. Backgrounds and Contexts is thematically organized to provide readers with a clear picture of the novel s historical, cultural, and literary inspirations. Topics include Political Natio...more
Paperback, 490 pages
Published
November 19th 2006
by W. W. Norton & Company
(first published 1916)
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Sparrow
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Zach Braff
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Mat and Patrick Kearney
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This book is a very dry, written version of the Dead Poet’s Society without Robin Williams. I was already grateful to Whoopi Goldberg this week for her reasonable comments about the most recent Sarah Palin ridiculousness, so I feel kind of bitter at having to be grateful for the other half of that daring duo. I had sworn them as my nemeses – minor nemeses, yes, of nowhere near the caliber of Charlie Kaufman, David Lynch, or Harold Bloom, but nemeses nonetheless. Now, I find myself thinking, “...more
Unlike Ulysses, which I have tried to read too many times to count (the furthest I made it was halfway), I have read Portrait twice: once in my twenties, and again a few years ago. Although I found the religious sections a bit tedious, I was pleased to discover that my appreciation for the rest of Joyce's portrayal has increased considerably over the years.
CELEBRITY DEATH MATCH : STEPHEN DEDALUS VS. HOLDEN CAULFIELD
(Note : this is not part of the current ongoing Celebrity Death Match series organised by Manny but I thought I would revive it as a companion piece)
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BUCK MULLIGAN : Come on, kinch, you fearful jesuit. I’ve got a tenner on this so I have so get in that square ring and batter this lollybogger senseless.
STEPHEN : Pro quibus tibi offérimus, vel qui tibi ófferunt hoc sacri...more
(Note : this is not part of the current ongoing Celebrity Death Match series organised by Manny but I thought I would revive it as a companion piece)
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BUCK MULLIGAN : Come on, kinch, you fearful jesuit. I’ve got a tenner on this so I have so get in that square ring and batter this lollybogger senseless.
STEPHEN : Pro quibus tibi offérimus, vel qui tibi ófferunt hoc sacri...more
Shut up James, you had me at 'moo-cow.'
Joyce is brilliant. And he knows it. And he loathes it.
Forget the complexity of his prose (see Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake for the really outlandish bits). Forget his literary stature. Forget his Ireland and his guilt and his Christ. Portrait provides the reader with a character with such depth and realism that I almost can’t stop crapping my pants thinking about it. His approach in crafting Stephen Dedalus (and, thus, himself) is profound, and Joyce would be legend by this inventio...more
Forget the complexity of his prose (see Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake for the really outlandish bits). Forget his literary stature. Forget his Ireland and his guilt and his Christ. Portrait provides the reader with a character with such depth and realism that I almost can’t stop crapping my pants thinking about it. His approach in crafting Stephen Dedalus (and, thus, himself) is profound, and Joyce would be legend by this inventio...more
An semi-autobiographic novel, featuring a fictionalized character as Joyce's alter-ego, it traces his formative childhood years that led him ambivalently away from a vocation in the clergy and into that of literature.
There are sections which appealed to me (a priestly sermon on the damnation of ones soul into hell is particularly vivid), but by and large the plot line was too disjointed for me to engage with. Uncertain of exactly where I had been or what path the novel was tak...more
There are sections which appealed to me (a priestly sermon on the damnation of ones soul into hell is particularly vivid), but by and large the plot line was too disjointed for me to engage with. Uncertain of exactly where I had been or what path the novel was tak...more
Patrick Hadley
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Recommends it for:
lapsed Catholics, people with souls
The greatest book ever written? Possibly. If you can't relate to this book, then you probably can't remember most of your life. Joyce writes the most true, most beautifully written, and most universal coming-of-age story known to man.
I was surprised by this book. I picked it up with the typical summer voracity of a book-lover, expecting to devour it quickly. True enough, it's not a very long read at all, but I were may places in the text where I simply had to stop and didn't want to read any further because I wanted to stay in the particular mood Joyce had just created, or think more fully about some of the ideas he presents through his character Stephen Dedalus.
The book is pretty much what the title suggests, mo...more
The book is pretty much what the title suggests, mo...more
I have been feeling appreciative of Dublin lately, so I figured it was a good time to read this book.
I finished it last Friday, sprawled out in the evening sun in Stephen's Green while I killed an hour before a gig and a pint. A suitable place to end it. It is a fine read. It's a strange and wonderful experience to read passages describing the local road on which I've traveled to my grandmother's in Meath most every Sunday forever. In later years he walks the streets from Trinity to ...more
I finished it last Friday, sprawled out in the evening sun in Stephen's Green while I killed an hour before a gig and a pint. A suitable place to end it. It is a fine read. It's a strange and wonderful experience to read passages describing the local road on which I've traveled to my grandmother's in Meath most every Sunday forever. In later years he walks the streets from Trinity to ...more
Juro que no sé ni como he sido capaz de acabar este libro. Ha sido una experiencia altamente traumática y no me puedo explicar cómo he llegado a sobrevivir hasta el final. Normalmente yo acabo abandonando los libros que no me gustan, pero con éste iba leyendo y leyendo, aunque no tenía ni idea de por qué lo hacía. Creo que ha sido básicamente una cuestión de orgullo, porque una cosa es que Joyce me derrote con un megaladrillo como el 'Ulises' pero otra que me derrote con un librito de 300 página...more
I am three quarters of the way through this book, and I've just decided to bail out.
I have Irish Catholic heritage, so the early part of the book was mildly interesting because I could relate to the quasi-gnosticism of the priests in the boys' school.
Later on I stuck with it because I kept thinking that, eventually, there had to be some flesh-and-blood characters that I'd care about, some relationships between people (or even some realistic conversations), a tiny bit of...more
I have Irish Catholic heritage, so the early part of the book was mildly interesting because I could relate to the quasi-gnosticism of the priests in the boys' school.
Later on I stuck with it because I kept thinking that, eventually, there had to be some flesh-and-blood characters that I'd care about, some relationships between people (or even some realistic conversations), a tiny bit of...more
Jeffrey
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I read this book as high school senior, which I think is a fitting time. This book, quite suprisingly, made me look at and love literature in a way that I hadn't before largely because I connected with Dedalus in way I hadn't connected with any other literary character, not even Holden. Dedalus and I were both going through points of transition in our lives and we both were searching for some meaning, which meant, for us, that we would have to leave a world that was at once comfortable and pa...more
At first it's elusive as hell, but once Stephen starts to develop mentally, it goes through some very well rendered (if fairly standard) buldinsroman tropes. Especially the little creative epiphanies he has along the way, which feel vital and at times, even beautiful almost a century later. There is a lot of mucking about with nascent catholic guilt, and the various kinds of guilt that arise from blindly accepting, fighting and eventually rejecting said catholic guilt. I felt like there might al...more
Had to read this for the workshop I'm in (well, I actually switched out of that one because the prof was the most unqualified active time waster i have ever encountered and my colleague and i basically ran to another workshop screaming - anyway- had to read joyce for nothing!) and I must say I enjoyed this about as much as The Road - ie, a constant nagging sense that I am SUPPOSED to like this but I just don't. First of all, he was quite the post modernist, and I spent so much time scratching m...more
Bart
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Recommends it for:
Crazy Irishmen with mathematical brains
My inability to enjoy James Joyce found no reprieve in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I'm afraid.
There are moments when this book is wonderful; the sermons about Hell evince Joyce's extreme talent. But the rest of the time, on 2/3 of the pages, one cannot help but wonder the exact purpose of Joyce's exercise. It does not seem to want to be about entertainment, anyway.
It is unfortunate to write, but I do begin to wonder about all but a handful of persons who sa...more
There are moments when this book is wonderful; the sermons about Hell evince Joyce's extreme talent. But the rest of the time, on 2/3 of the pages, one cannot help but wonder the exact purpose of Joyce's exercise. It does not seem to want to be about entertainment, anyway.
It is unfortunate to write, but I do begin to wonder about all but a handful of persons who sa...more
James Joyce's Ulysses from what I can gather is Ground Zero for all I detest in modern literature: the stream of consciousness technique with its confusing nonsequitors, the lack of quotation marks, and often crudeness. On the other hand, I do remember very much liking his short story collection, Dubliners. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is midway between Dubliners and Ulysses. In fact, I read it because I decided I wanted to give Ulysses a fair chance and was told reading Portrait firs...more
I had started Ulysses three times in college but never got past page 75 before giving up. That was my background with James Joyce. Like TS Eliot and others of the great modernist writers, I only knew Joyce as being a great writer beyond my own comprehension. Then I found A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man at my local used bookstore in the dollar bin and decided to give it a try. I was unsure what to expect as I started the first page (moocows, baby tuckoos, and tralala lalas), but I gra...more
More poem than novel, Portrait was one of those books that after reading certain sentences, you feel like laughing and crying at the same time because it just feels so true. Joyce is doing things with language that I did not think were possible, taking risks and twists and turns that all but turn the words into pictures.
It took me a good 100 pages to get into this one - novels that chronicle the life of the narrator or the main character, I never appreciate the first stages as much ...more
It took me a good 100 pages to get into this one - novels that chronicle the life of the narrator or the main character, I never appreciate the first stages as much ...more
This was originally published in 1916, so there were words and expressions here which were really old and difficult to understand for people used to the English of the 21st century. Especially since what's in this book is Irish English, while what I grew up with was American English. Describing a statement given by a character in the book, the narrator, for example, stated:
"Its drawl was an echo of the quays of Dublin given back by a bleak decaying seaport, its energy an echo of...more
"Its drawl was an echo of the quays of Dublin given back by a bleak decaying seaport, its energy an echo of...more
Ryan
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Recommends it for:
Dante fans and philosophy nuts
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James Joyce’s, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, compares to the great Charles Dickens, reading it takes time to unwind. It starts the narration young then grows older with painstaking philosophical questions leading to amends in life theology, and ends in cleaver short wit and I felt like being a big fish in a small pond. It is full of good quotes.
There are some laughs in the book. Even ‘shit for brains’ has ideas. Do you know a dean of studies at a university that functi...more
There are some laughs in the book. Even ‘shit for brains’ has ideas. Do you know a dean of studies at a university that functi...more
When was the last time you read a book that you could barely understand half of what the author says yet you're completely overawed and riveted by his story and his gift? This happened when I read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce's second most famous novel and the Modern Library’s third greatest English language novel of the 20th century. No doubt, A Portrait is a difficult read but nonetheless a thoroughly satisfactory one—at least intellectually. My normal reading speed is 35-...more
Somewhere in the early development of my literary sensibilities, and right after I read Dubliners, I got this crazy idea in my head that I was going to read everything that James Joyce had ever written. There are only 4 major books, after all, so how hard could it be? So I decided to move on to Portrait. The beginning part went smoothly. However, when I got to that long section in the middle full of nonstop religious references and Mary the morning star and on and on and on... and on, I was so p...more
A great book. Kinda a difficult read, though. You gotta be willing to read it more than once. Some good imagery of goat monsters with poop hanging from their hairy asses...
James "The Modernist Marvel" Joyce. It took me a long time to appreciate Joyce. It took growing up, reading, re-reading, and reflecting. I'll be honest, in high school symoblism and motifs in The Dubliners didn't do it for me. Ulysses was like the product of literary mad scientist bent on destroying the young fragile mind. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man was a tad dull. Looking back on it thought I've come to recognize Joyce's outstanding control over the English language. ...more
I had not really read all that much Joyce before I embarked on this comparatively small journey to Ulysses's pages (though importantly not temporal setting) which does enough to daunt and damn the plain reader before getting to the first page.
The thing is with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is that I had isolated myself from any of the criticism on the work itself except for the note that it was semi-autobiographical. I had been told that Joyce was unparalleled in the Twentieth for his ...more
The thing is with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is that I had isolated myself from any of the criticism on the work itself except for the note that it was semi-autobiographical. I had been told that Joyce was unparalleled in the Twentieth for his ...more
Now I'm not gay, but I think I'm in love with an Irishman. Joyce's semi-autobiographical narrative of a loose version of himself on an religious, emotional, sensual, and philosophical odyssey of self-discovery and originality is one of the few times I found myself having an organic emotional response to the material. It may be because I could relate so well to Stephen Dedalus as a human being. His intense thought processes, his sensitivity and sensual awareness to the world around him, and his l...more
The whole time I was reading this, I kept thinking of a Pearls Before Swine comic. It isn't relevant at all, but Rat was running for president. The dialogue between him and a reporter went:
Reporter: Sir, again, you've made your feelings quite clear on France, but where do you stand on other issues? For example, are you pro-choice?
Rat: Ohhhhh no no no no no noooooo....not at all....
Reporter: And why is that?
Rat: Because in high school, they made us read "Ulysses" and it was the most ...more
Reporter: Sir, again, you've made your feelings quite clear on France, but where do you stand on other issues? For example, are you pro-choice?
Rat: Ohhhhh no no no no no noooooo....not at all....
Reporter: And why is that?
Rat: Because in high school, they made us read "Ulysses" and it was the most ...more
I loved how Joyce explores the Artist's relationship with Religion, Science and Art itself!
___________________________________________________________________
“Wolsey died in Leicester Abbey
Where the abbots buried him.
Canker is a disease of plants,
Cancer one of animals.”
This little ditty is from ‘Doctor Cornwell’s Spelling Book’; a book which, as its title suggests, is there for young children to learn their s...more
___________________________________________________________________
“Wolsey died in Leicester Abbey
Where the abbots buried him.
Canker is a disease of plants,
Cancer one of animals.”
This little ditty is from ‘Doctor Cornwell’s Spelling Book’; a book which, as its title suggests, is there for young children to learn their s...more
I thought this book was ok, but wasn't wildly impressed by it. It was a struggle to get into it. It’s by an Irish author and was first published in 1916, and there are so many colloquial phrases included that really slow down the flow of the story. The copy I had included a few hundred footnotes to add explanations of what the word meant at the time. To a degree this added some interesting aspects to the story as it gave some insight as to what conversations sounded like in a different time ...more
On June 15, 1917, a U.S. marshal and 12 New York City policemen entered the Lower East Side offices of the radical magazine Mother Earth and placed its editor under arrest. The U.S. was mobilizing to enter World War I, and the famous anarchist Emma Goldman had been charged with conspiracy to obstruct the draft in violation of the Selective Service Act passed earlier that year. She brought with her to the jailhouse, according to Vivian Gornick, only two things: "a small toilet case" a...more
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James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish novelist, noted for his experimental use of language in such works as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). Joyce's technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue; he used a complex ...more
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James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish novelist, noted for his experimental use of language in such works as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). Joyce's technical innovations in the art of the novel include an extensive use of interior monologue; he used a complex ...more
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“His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.”
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“I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.”
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updated Jan 27, 2011 03:45pm
Nov 10, 2011 07:39am