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Nov 09, 2010

Sparrow rated it:

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...

42 comments like (26 people liked it)

Nov 12, 2011

Bonnie rated it:

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.

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Sep 16, 2011

Paul rated it:

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)

****************

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...

9 comments like (13 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Nathan rated it:

Shut up James, you had me at 'moo-cow.'

1 comment like (42 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

steve ross rated it:

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...

0 comments like (20 people liked it)

Jan 28, 2008

John rated it:

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...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Patrick rated it:

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.

0 comments like (14 people liked it)

May 26, 2008

Jonathan rated it:

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...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

May 19, 2008

Pierce rated it:

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...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Sep 22, 2007

Núria rated it:

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...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 11, 2010

Penny rated it:

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...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Jeffrey rated it:

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...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 05, 2011

Jeremy added it

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...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 31, 2007

marg rated it:

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...

6 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 15, 2007

Bart rated it:

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...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2012

Harmonybites rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 28, 2011

Drew rated it:

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...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Nov 28, 2010

Brinda rated it:

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...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 17, 2010

Joselito rated it:

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...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Mar 03, 2008

Ryan rated it:

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...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Feb 11, 2008

Pa rated it:

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...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

cindy rated it:

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...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 04, 2008

Jesse rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 09, 2011

Ryan added it

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...

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Aug 06, 2011

Ioan added it

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...

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Aug 05, 2011

Jared added it

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...

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Jul 09, 2009

Wightknyte11 rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 10, 2012

Ted rated it:

First off, I have too many shelves, so Joyce must sit on the "lit-british" shelf, spinning him in his grave no doubt.

I read the book first in college (not for a course), then a second time a couple years ago. The 40+ year gap provided an interesting test as to what would seem familiar and what wouldn't. I barely recognized the earlier parts of the novel, more recollection (not very detailed) as I progressed. Finally I reached the end, and was shocked as I read the last t More...

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Nov 26, 2011

Litflick rated it:

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...

0 comments like

Nov 15, 2011

Kevin rated it:

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...

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