Rating: 
Summary: Start of a journey...
Review: Every once in a while, when I happen to mention Joyce to one of my friends, I tend to get these kind of reactions: "booooring", "hard", "overpriced" "he's an idiot"
Well, every medal has two sides.
These oppinions are produced more often then not, with some kind of general recolection of thoughts that critics and publics gave to Joyce's "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake"... complexity, and intelectuallnes of the "mere" book often has that kind of impact on general public.
But, be not afraid (even though I know that You do not consider yourself as a "general public"). This book is something different.
Joyce is in his early stages of hi litterarie work, just starting to experiment with the chain of tought technique, and the result is absoultely brilliant... what we have received is the most beautiful and compelling autobiography, one has written in the entire history of litterature. In a voice of Stephen Dedalus (character around whom, together with Leonard Bloom, Ulysses is built) Joyce presents his early childhood thoughts, Joyce preensets development of character that refusses as the time progresses any kind of bonding with govermenet, education, church or any other kind of institution while at the same time building his own, inside universe where things happen at his command, and by his direction.
Language is sometimes hard, and you'll catch yourself re-reading some passages with tendencie of better grasping his message, his tought, but 3/4 of the work is written in the most beutiful english you can imagine...
I strongly reccomend this book...
Rating:
Summary: to all those who rated this book below 4 stars.
Review: This book is absolutely incredible from a literary standpoint. How can you not give it four or five stars? Yes, its slow and you may not like it, but it is simply too good to not respect. Its like giving Bach or Mozart 2 stars. The writing style is revolutionary, the imagery is layered so thick you could read this book 20 times and not pick everything up, and the flow of the story reveals the deepest changes of Dedalus' soul. I have read many books that I have enjoyed more, but I have only read a few (Lolita, Brave New World, Hamlet) that are more influential and important than A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man.
Rating: 
Summary: thought provoking
Review: Portrait...defines a new turn in the century of fiction writing. From the cold, heartless times of Ireland, here is a tale of growing up that offers a critical insight into the heart of an eight year old.Joyce's style is inimical,imperfect yet charming. he paints the human world of emotional bonding in the most natural way on a child hearted canvas. A great contrast from Ulysees, Portrait...is definitely a read that would make you sit up and wonder about the simplest of life's truths
Rating: 
Summary: A Difficult Life
Review: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce is an autobiography novel about a Catholic boy named Stephen Dedalus going to college and his life. Stephen Dedalus goes to Clongowes Wood College in Ireland. At school, Wells is a bully who makes fun of Stephen and pushes him into a pool, so he got sick. Charles Parnell died in the novel. Father Dolan punishes Stephen by hitting his hand with a patty bat for making an excuse that he lost his glasses on purpose. Stephen was brave enough to complain to the rector saying that he shouldn't have been punished by Father Dolan. The rector said he would talk to Father Dolan and fix this situation. Stephen's classmates carried him up because he told the rector what happened and everyone thinks he's a hero.
One summer in Blackrock, Dublin, Stephen spends time with Uncle Charles and his father and they told him stories about their family history. Stephen's family has financial problems, so they moved to Dublin and Stephen transferred to Belvedere College. He begins to act in the play and plays the part of being a teacher. He receives a money award and treats his family to a nice dinner. He brought gifts to please his family and try to accept his family. Stephen has a crush on Emma by he never expresses his feelings toward her. Stephen expresses his feelings in a poem to Emma. He has his first sexual experience with a prostitute and then he feels sinful. He feels sinful that he couldn't confess to a priest about his sinful thoughts. He got accepted to the university and he feels happy because he made new friends and he felt free. Stephen confesses his sins to his friend Cranly and Cranly wants Stephen to interact more with his family about his problems. At the end, Stephen writes in his journal about his life. The part that I liked is when Stephen went to the university because it was the part where he really started to mature and felt comfortable with his new friends. The bad part is when he felt sinful, he didn't confess to a priest at his school. The book was easy to read, but some words were difficult to understand. This book is about a boy going through life and obstacles to achieve his goals in writing, acting, and becoming an artist. I would recommend this to teenagers in high school and college students. If you're interested in this book and want to know more information about it, you should read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Simply Awful
Review: James Joyce is the most over-rated author in the history of literature. Anyone who claims to like him is pretentious and a liar. If you disagree, you are deceiving yourself. With the exception of a few short scenes, it is impossible that anyone could derive any satisfaction from reading "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." Disregard all reviews below giving this book anything more than 1 star. It is quite possibly the worst psuedo-intellectual piece of garbage I have ever read. There was absolutely no tension, no plot, no good characters, and the writing was awful. It is worse than Henry James. For example, toward the novel's end Joyce took tens of pages paraphrasing the aesthetic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas through the voice of Portrait's main character, Stephen Dedalus. If I wanted to learn about St. Aquinas's aesthetic philosophy, I would read Aquinas, not a painful and misplaced rendering of it by Joyce. If you want to read a good coming of age novel about youth, idealism, naivitee, sexual frustration, religious conflict, and yes, ART, read Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham, which has an excellent story, excellent characters, and is excellently written. Avoid this drivel at all costs.
Rating:
Summary: Dreadful book
Review: Apart from a few long sections, I found this book generally uninteresting and badly written. I don't know why it is held out to people as being a great book. It isn't.
Rating:
Summary: It's Literature
Review: As a literary piece this book is geniuos. The ideas conveyed through out this work are as thoughtful and mind boggling as it gets. I admit my mental capacity was not strong enough to be able to interpret every word and I feel there was a lack of overall story line. I found the structure of ones character to be intriguing but did not catch on the national pride and representation of Ireland in this book.
I enjoyed Dubliners much more but what is my opinion worth? Its still a classic masterpiece.
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely fluid, unbelievably incomprehensible prose
Review: Considered perhaps the finest example of 20th century literature, this is the enormously frustrating, mind-numbingly convoluted, semi-autobiographical expression of one man's spiritual and intellectual awakening. I feared this book for years, and rightfully so. While the prose is immensely fluid - so much so that you barely notice the fact that you've easily read several paragraphs without understanding a word of it - the substance will prove more of a challenge than most intelligent readers are looking for. Unless one devotes an enormous amount of mental energy to close examination of this text, a basic understanding of the plot and message is the most the average reader will come away with. Alas, I opted for the easy way out, and as such, I'm sure there is plenty in this novel that eludes me. Joyce creates the character of Stephen Dedalus to describe his own experience as a boy growing into manhood. Joyce first examines Stephen's youth, giving careful attention to his family life and upbringing as powerful defining forces in his life. He then focuses on Stephen's spiritual development during his years at a strict religious boys' school. The latter part of the book explores Stephen's embarking on adulthood, as he presides over a battle inside himself between religious faith and intellectual pursuit. It is in this phase of his life that the artist, the writer, emerges victorious. How this all happens, however, is a cloudy, murky mess, unless you bothered to re-read passages several times and consult secondary sources that might offer insights into the book. While the writing is beautiful, it is also choppy. And while the substance may very well be brilliant, it is often too obscure to be appreciated. Surely that was Joyce's intention. This novel was meant to explore uncharted territory in form and structure, and Joyce has certainly done that. I will say this much - it wasn't as difficult as I had feared. Despite its inherent challenges, this book is a quick read and is by no means unpleasant. It's simply unsatisfying to invest time and energy in a book, and then come away with only a partial understanding of it.
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Read "Artist's" Manual
Review: James Joyce's A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN has been credited variously as the harbinger of the modern novel, the first novel to employ stream-of-consciousness writing, and as the most notable of the Künstlerroman genre--novels in which the principle character develops an artistic temperament in defiant opposition to all forces suppressant to creativity. In the case of young Stephen Daedelus--the budding "artist" of A PORTRAIT--Religion, Country and Nationalism are the labyrinthine obstacles to creative freedom. This semi-autobiographical novel is a specular example of an artist finding his way in the world -- and it's a book I implore you read! Especially for all you writers out there! Other recent Amazon purchases I recommend: The Ginger Man, The Losers' Club by Richard Perez
Rating:
Summary: Demonstrates why Joyce is so highly thought of
Review: This is my first Joyce book to read. I had high expectations. It was difficult to get a feel for his writing initially, but I finally got into the rythm of it and it started to flow. The book does not have much action; it is introspection and dialogue and remembrances that all run together. It is unique and exhilirating to read, but is not a page turner as many top-rated books of today are. It reads more like a memoir than a novel, and according to accounts I read, it is a story similar to Joyce's own. I was able to relate to the tension between living a secular versus a religious life. I think for serious readers, this book has to be on the must-read list.
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