Rating: 
Summary: Great disappointment
Review: I had high hopes for this book since I feel like a young artists surrounded by bland conformity, but I was wrong.This book was torture to read.Only Nanthaniel Hawthorne is more boring.I don't particularly care to read 5 or more long pages about how much God loves him.Great!Thats beautiful!God loves you!Do you have to elaborate until you get repititious.Joyce does this more times in this book.He speaks of something for pages long, but fails to offer anything new after the first page.Just writing with fantastic vocabulary and repitition. Very little in this book has any real wisdom.Sure Joyce has miracolous desciptions of quasi-psychotic visions and I believe that is all he's got.Two-thirds of this book are a waste of ink and the other third that has substance isn't impressive.I'm glad I finished it so I can move on.
Rating:
Summary: Enough Already
Review: James Joyce does something that I cannot ever forgive him for---he makes me dislike reading. It's not that I am scared or overwhelmed by difficult fiction. I love William Faulkner, and puzzling through his books is usually part of the fun in reading him. However, the difference between Joyce and Faulkner is that Faulkner always seems to have a burning desire to impart some meaning to his reader, whereas Joyce doesn't seem to care one way or another whether his nonsense writing ever makes sense to anyone. As far as his novels go, "Portrait of the Artist" is the most accessible, but that's not saying much seeing as its competition is the idiotic "Finnegan's Wake" and the Great Book of the 20th Century, "Ulysses." This is one case where I really do feel scholars have equated incomprehensible writing with great literature. I won't be foolish enough to deny Joyce's influence on modern writing---and I'm quite willing to admit that perhaps I'm not a sophisticated enough reader to appreciate him---but I've had dental work that has been more enjoyable to sit through than his books.
Rating: 
Summary: A Wonderful Book, and the Second Best Introduction to Joyce
Review: "Portrait" is arguably Joyce's best work, truly a masterpiece from the greatest writer of the 20th century if not ever. Even if you are not a writer (I'm an engineer), after reading Joyce you will want to write--albeit sadly not as well as Joyce, but you will want to write nonetheless. As for the rare bad review that you may see on this forum, well, there's no accounting for taste! More seriously, it can be a tough read and people often get more out of it the second time through (for fellow members of the Television Generation, we call that "replay value"). So give the heretics who scored it two or three stars a few years for their tastes to mature, and we'll see what they say when they read it again. When I first read Joyce, I did not catch many of the nuances of Portrait, so I understand how some may find this a challenging book. Hence, I highly recommend buying a copy of the "The Dubliners"--the Dover Thrift edition costs $1.50, though it has no notations. (Also, if you are a busy person, a taste of Joyce may help motivate you.) Dubliners is a collection of short (4-10 page) stories that, beyond being excellent in themselves, will help you get acclimated to Joyce. And for a little more than a buck, you can afford to throw it in to some order to get a nice preview of Joyce before spending the time to read Portrait. (Not that Portrait takes a long time--it's just over 200 pages.)
Rating: 
Summary: A tough read, but more than worth it
Review: I'm always up for a good challenge, whether it be in books, music or movies, and from what I've heard Joyce is about as challenging as they come in the literary world. However, since it seemed like "Ulysses" or "Finnegan's Wake" would be a bit much to start with, I found myself reading "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" as an introduction to his work. And although I found this book about as easy to get into as Princeton, it was about as rewarding as well. "Portrait" is certainly anything but a light read. Joyce's meandering narrative and serpentine prose can be confusing to say the least, and on more than one occasion I had to read a sentence about five times in order to figure out what I had just read. For all its verbosity, though, "Portrait" is an essential read because the story of Stephen Dedalus carries so much resonance. I'm about the same age as Stephen was in this story, and I can relate pretty easily to his search for answers. Growing up in Ireland around the turn of the twentieth century, Stephen faces existential questions that should ring true for a young person coming from any culture at any time. He tries to find satisfaction by giving in to his lust, and when that doesn't work he goes all the way to the other end of the spectrum in seeking fulfillment through religious devotion. In the end, however, neither of these extremes provides Stephen with the answers he's looking for. Stephen's story demonstrates one unfortunate fact of life: when you're seeking meaning, there are no easy answers. Ultimately, as Stephen tells his friend Cranly, he decides that his solution is to "express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can," even if it means making mistakes or being spurned by society. In "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," Joyce outlines some important ideas that have since become prominent in literature, notably noncomformity, self-expression, coming of age, and the nature of religious belief. This book may not have been perfectly written, but since Joyce was aiming so high it's easy to overlook any imperfections in his style. "Portrait" was written with plenty of intelligence and soul, so it's easy to see why it's still read after all these years.
Rating:
Summary: Painfully Long Philosophical Meandering
Review: "Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down the road." Such an engaging beginning! Such a crushingly dull book! James Joyce was something of a philosopher who chose to crouch his thoughts in novel form. As such, this book is more or less a long series of ongoing inner monologues (and occasionally dialogues) on life, the Church, family, and a few other topics. Plot is nonexistant, or in those rare cases where it peeks through it's brushed aside and covered by long discussions on religion, or dad, or (yawn). I could find no incentive to keep reading, except to claim that I'd finished it so I could truly lambast it with authority. From time to time you'll meet madmen who claim to really like Joyce and his prose style. They're either lying or insane. By the end of the novel I was gasping for breath and praying for it to end. I don't know how I dragged myself through it. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is one of those books that some people are forced to read by sadistic teachers; everyone else should avoid it, unless they have a serious masochism streak and a penchant for dry, dry literature.
Rating:
Summary: Lyrically Mesmerizing
Review: Most everyone who takes their literature seriously (most, mind you) will agree that this is a cornerstone to all that is metaphoric, lyrical and insanely intelligent.? Without giving away the plot, etc., I can simply encourage you to wade through the beginning 25 pages or so and then observe Joyce's development as a promising poet and literary architect. There is much skepticism about whether or not the entire account is accurate, but who the heck cares?- or for that matter, who could recollect their entire youth with such vivid detail? This book is well-worth your time to read regardless of your religious affiliation (Joyce was raised an Irish-Roman Catholic) and I would dissuade anyone who might question the book's integrity due to the time and place in which the story occurs- because, as you'll realize, the heart of the content lies in the protagonist's conscious mind.
Rating:
Summary: Great art will never be popular, and popular art ...
Review: Great art will never be popular and popular art will never be great. This is not an easy book to read. That is what makes it so great. I read it in high school and missed almost everything that was there. I recently reread it as a 48 year old and saw much more. I picked up a copy of an English professor's insights and was stunned by how much I had missed. Like most great writers Joyce was extremely subtle and will last by being read for hundreds of years by a small percentage of the population, but he will last--unlike popular novels that exist for 1 to 50 years and then die due to lack of depth. And like most great writers a one time reading won't get your there. Plus reading it with a "guidebook" written by an English professor or even with Spark Notes will get you onehundred times more out of it than reading it without help. If you like pop fiction that you read once and throw away and everything is obvious and hits you on the head like a two by four this is NOT the book for you. If you like great works that require analysis and multiple readings and have tremendous but subtle depth than this is one of the true classics that introduced the modern twentieth century style of novels. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man introduced revolutionary ideas in writing which have been copied by almost every twentieth century author popular or not. Many of the popular novels that people read would not exist without this highly original work by Joyce. But definately read it with a professor's guidebook--otherwise you will only get one percent of what is there and conclude that it is totally boring.
Rating:
Summary: Fly Away, Dedalus!
Review: In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce succeeds in presenting to the reader his true feelings about art. Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist in the work, struggles against himself to find the true purpose of his life. Throughout the novel, Stephen encounters many hardships: prostitutes, heresy, gluttony, pride. In his struggle, Stephen decides his feelings about God, women, and family. Joyce describes Stephen's education throughout school and college; Stephen has many changes of heart throughout this semi-autobiographical novel, and, as Stephen's attitude changes, Joyce's writing style changes. Overall, A Portrait stands as a literary masterpiece and should be read before reading Joyce's greatest novel, Ulysses.
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Author of the Century.
Review: James Joyce had a life worthy of study and it is parlayed in this novel with passion and art combined, in equal measure. It drives down the path of a young man's struggle to find truth in religeon, which does not excist beyond metaphorical reasoning. When the protagonist realises this, he defrocks his faith in christianity and searches for answers else where. It is difficult for the reader in our era to understand the pressures that must have been placed on a young man growing up in a catholic shcool and to dissolve his interest in religeon, but it shows the strength that Joyce had for his convictions and desires. A brilliant read telling a story with an amalgam of fiction and non-it truely is delivered in a wonderful and original fashion. For any reader who is not affraid to question life and whom enjoys the greatest writer of prose of all time.
Rating:
Summary: "Our end is the acquisition of knowledge."
Review: That Joyce quote from Portrait sums up not only my philosophy, but that of Steven Dedalus, Joyce's enigmatic protagonist as well. We see Steven through the eyes of the 3rd person narrator in this provocative, semi-autobiographical coming of age tale set in Ireland. Joyce delves deep into many of life's questions that we all wonder about, mostly subconsciously. It is an allegorical tale of art and morality and a choice to be made between the two. Steven's strict Catholic school is the focus early on as Steven is faced with temptations and faces the aftermath of his transgressions. Steven then moves on to the university and evolves into an adult. At this point I became enthralled with the depth of the prose and finally bought into why this book came so highly acclaimed. The drunken conversations among Steven and Cranly & his college buds stimulates the mind as they delve deep into God's existence and how to achieve the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number of people. Don't be discouraged by a slow start - Joyce packs his most potent punch in Chapter 3 and on. Cheers.
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