Rating: 
Summary: The substance is in the self analysis
Review: A previous reviewer states that this book doesn't focus on substance, and that the substance (for him) is in the story. While I don't disrespect this view, it does seem unnecessarily limiting for oneself as a reader.
In my opinion this is an innovative book because it focuses on internal response rather than external action--the internal is the substance of Portrait. Of course being innovative doesn't make it good--it's the fact that it does this introspection very well, completely, and unapologetically that makes the book a successful endeavor. One of my favorite moments is the first full paragraph of 254, which starts "A louse crawled over the nape of his neck...".
I can understand that to some, this endless recording of introverted response might seem self-indulgent in its excess, but I think that the length and dramatic language is needed to express the depth that is inside, not just little Stevie Dedalus, but all of us.
Isn't this one of the prime purposes of art? To force us to look at ourselves in a way that we haven't before? Of course, if we don't give the piece of art a fair chance, it can never succeed.
Unlike other reviewers--I'm not reviewing based on whether or not I agree with the main character's conclusions (and therefore James's conclusions), but on whether or not the artist achieved his aims.
Incomprehensible? It's only incomprehensible if you expect to read a clear and informative essay. That's not the purpose, it's to convey the innermost thoughts of one individual--and these thoughts/feelings/responses are not always perfectly clear--in fact, they rarely are, in any of us.
Why a 4 instead of a 5? Because Portrait feels more to me like a series of stories that only happen to occur chronologically, rather than a bonified novel. I don't feel like I've gone from point A to B when I'm done. Maybe this aspect is unavoidable given the true goal of the book, as I've interpreted it, but I'm just being honest.
Rating: 
Summary: An autobiographic novel
Review: Although the hero of James Joyce's novel is called Stephen Dedalus, the events and characters depicted in it parallel the author's own experiences. In his early childhood, at the very beginning of the 20th century, Stephen was sent to Clongowes, a Jesuit boarding school near Dublin. He disliked the place because his classmates bullied him, because he was taught religion in a dogmatic way and because he was flogged unjustly by his prefect of studies. After that he spent a summer with his uncle Charles in Dublin. Stephen was then sent to Belvedere college, which he disliked as much as Clongowes. The spirit of quarrelsome comradeship couldn't turn him away from his habits of quiet obedience. He mistrusted the agitation and doubted the sincerity of such comradeship, which he felt was an awful anticipation of adulthood.
Stephen was by then aware that he didn't belong. He also felt more and more estranged from his father after having accompanied him once to Cork and witnessed his drinking habits, a journey which ended in Stephen's first experience in love making - a sordid one.
More disappointment followed as Stephen went to university, thus becoming a disillusioned young man - a disillusionment caused by academicism, love and sex, his parents, religion and perhaps also his own country, Ireland...
Rating: 
Summary: The best edition of "A Portrait"
Review: Depending on one's taste and level of concentration, James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is either tedious flop or a wonderful cornerstone of world literature. (I believe the latter.) I won't go into a discussion of "A Portrait" here because if you are looking at this particular Viking Critical edition, you've already committed yourself to reading it. The value of this edition lies in the critical essays and notes at the end. The notes will help the reader along, as they explain some of the terms and/or conditions that are particular to Joyce's Ireland. The essays are, each and every one, valuable tools. Whether it's an examination of Joyce's life, the creation of "A Portrait", the influences it would have, etc., every essay is a heavy-weight that enchances an understanding of the book. (At least it did for me.) If you're seriously considering reading "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" this is the edition to use.
Rating:
Summary: A day of dappled seaborne clouds.
Review: Do you wish to be an author of a book some day? Do you want to make a movie or a script for one? If so, do you want it to be popular, that people will like it? Lots of people. Well, in the past, and not so distant really, before most things were businesses and entertainment, there was this thing called, 'art'. Hard to say what this thing was and is, but this book is an example and Joyce is a maker, an artist. What is interesting about this work is it is art and sort of shows what it is to be an artist at the same time. I think it is for young people. As I say I am not sure what art is, but it seems to be appreciated more by people after the artist dies then when he was living. But I do not think most artist mind, much, since they probably write for themselves and not so people would like it. But maybe you will, who knows?
Rating:
Summary: Joyce's Mastery of Literature and the English Language
Review: I began this book not knowing much of what to expect from it. I generally like classic novels, but I also like to have a clearly-framed plot and several well-developed characters. "Portrait of the Artist" has none of this, and as that started to become apparent as I read, I was worried that I would not even want to finish the book. Instead, I finished it in a couple nights, and I now consider it one of the best books I've ever read. What's most amazing is that the idea to this book is so simple. It's about a boy (this one, Steven Dedalus, happens to be Irish), growing up and struggling to discover his niche in his surroundings. A theme so totally simple and done so many times before and since. But the author is what makes all the difference here. The eloquence of Joyce's language and his beautiful descriptions are hard to believe came from one mind. I feel some authors get so caught up in their vocabularies and metaphors that they lose the ability to connect the object of their descriptions to the reader. This is never a problem with Joyce. His development of Steven Dedalus, from boy into young adult, progresses perfectly from the start to its inspiring peak at the book's close. The Modern Library ranked this as their #3 book of the 20th Century (Joyce's "Ulysses" was #1). While putting a rank to the best books of a 100 year period is somewhat ridiculous to me, I don't know if I could name 2 books that I've read from that time frame that are better. And that is what surprised me most about this book.
Rating:
Summary: "Portrait" holds you in its hypnotic trance
Review: I have never encountered a character quite like Stephen Dedalus. He is sad, happy, complex, strange, unlikable, but always fascinating. Stephen is the main character in Joyce's "Portrait of an Artist", which is a semi-autobiographical tale of Joyce's alter ego. The story is told entirely in third person, although most of the time you swear it is being told in the first.
The story is not as important as the form, or as the emotion. These elements are precisely what makes "Portrait" so good. As far as plot goes, it is not concrete, yet that goes perfectly along with the flow of the story. `Portrait" opens boldly and brilliantly, charting Stephen's incoherent thought processes as a youth. Sentences wildly strung together, uneven, yet right on target on how a mind so young might work. The second part of the story is dark, menacing, and wandering. Almost like a nightmare with words. This goes along well with the emotional turmoil of Stephen's soul as he enters into sin. The third part of the story is controversial, ad it probes the positives and negatives of religion quite well. Stephen begins to turn his soul over to God at this point, mainly because of fear. The fourth part deals with Stephen's "awakening" as he breaks free of religion and starts to discover what he truly wants. The final part of the story is mostly scenes of dialogue, and is the most philosophical part of the book and the most structured. Here he is an intellectual, artistic poet and thinker. He still leaves his future wide open, yet has finally reached the point in his life that he feels will take him where he needs to go.
Supposedly, "Portrait" has loads of symbolism. The book explores a variety of issues from Romanticism to Religion. I doubt if readers of this book are going to pick it all out with a single reading. I didn't. I wonder if the readers will care about that, or will just do as I did, and focus on how original the material all is. Even not knowing what was going on at times, I was drawn in by the story's hypnotic hold it had on me. I was riveted by the artistic use of words, similes and metaphors conjugated together to form an often confusing, yet always captivating story, or even a poem if you like. This book is more of a feeling than a story, and even though the book becomes a bit more structured as it progresses, it never loses its dreamlike war on words that keeps you locked it its trance.
Even though I am giving "Portrait" a perfect rating, I don't think it is one of the greatest novels of all time. I wished I could have got just a bit more out of it. Possibly my view could change if I would just examine deeper into it. I doubt it thought. Like all enthralling dreams, one can't look too deep, but rather is mesmerized by the whole experience.
Grade: A
Rating:
Summary: A Complex Read, Yet Excellent
Review: Joyce's portrayal of turn of the century Ireland with all of its complex social and political problems is an excellent backdrop for this story, and he vividly describes Stephen Dedalus' role in a complex story. First, I enjoy Joyce's writing style and his ability to develop Stephen's character. It is easy to relate to Stephen's development of thoughts.
I enjoyed how Joyce starts the story with Stephen as a boy, because this shows his vulnerability and dependence upon his parents for his political, religious, and social views. His interaction among the boys at Clongowes brought back my own memories from elementary school and my own interactions with students. He wants to be accepted by his peers, and Joyce shows this by his embarrassments and fears in taking a stand. Stephen is small in stature and in his confidence, but his triumph when he talks to the rector is an excellent scene because it shows Stephen developing his own independent thoughts and being able to stand up for them.
I enjoy Joyce's vivid descriptions because they include the physical realm as well as Stephen's thoughts. This is shown throughout the book - one scene in particular is when Stephen goes to Belvedere College and he has an encounter with Heron, Boland, and Nash. The four are walking on a country road, discussing their favorite authors, when Stephen states that his is Lord Byron. The boys laugh, claiming that Tennyson is the obvious choice. They pin him down and try to get him to revoke the statement, and he refuse to do so. I admire Stephen's strength in his own opinions, this example shows that he has developed his own ideas and will stand for them. Joyce's imagery makes the scenes, including Stephen's emotions, come alive. He writes, "At last after a fury of plunges he wrenched himself free. His tormentors set off towards Jones's Road, laughing and jeering at him, while he, half blinded with tears, stumbled on, clenching his fists madly and sobbing" (57). Stephen's emotions come alive; I can relate to the hot, angry tears he feels.
I also appreciate Joyce's writings concerning the political and religious situation in Ireland. Somewhat unaware of the problems surging in Ireland at this time, Joyce describes indirectly these problems, which fills in the reader as to the political, religious, and social context behind Stephen's life and development. One scene which made these problems clear to me was the Christmas dinner squabble between Dante and Mr. Dedalus. Stephen quietly sits back and soaks in his relatives' opinions in amazement at the scene. This scene is one of those that is when a child realizes that life has problems and the world is not in order, as he hopes. I recognize this mark of change in Stephen's confidence in his family and country.
Stephen's development is one of the greatest aspects of this book. Joyce causes Stephen's thoughts to evolve - he starts with childlike, unconnected thoughts to more complex, opinionated ones. His own desires and opinions are made known as he matures, and his own unrest becomes increasingly apparent. Furthermore, the style of this book is complex - one must read between the lines and have some kind of concept of Irish conflicts and culture in order to truly understand the full meaning behind this book. It is sometimes hard to follow Joyce's jumpy style - there is no full plot structure. This is not the best book if you are looking for a fast, easy romance novel, but it is rewarding in that it causes one to think about its themes and Stephen's development of the independence of his own soul.
Rating:
Summary: Stephen Hero
Review: Portrait of the artist is a vitally important novel for anyone interested in writing, writers, genius, repression, Catholicism, intellectualism versus dogmatism, the life and mind of James Joyce and novels as an art form. The writing style mutates and develops throughout the story, reflecting the different ages of Stephen Dedalus, from the baby talk and visceral imagery of his parents, governess Dante and Uncle Charles in his early childhood, through his schooldays as he wrestles with his intellect, his faith, his sexual awakening and his guilt to the advanced articulate and experimental style he invokes in his late adolescence, including an experimental journal at the end of the novel.
The themes in Portrait of the Artist cover the whole spectrum of growing up, but the principal drama surrounds the intellectual development of Stephen. He is a formidable mind, a free thinker. But his faith impells him throughout towards the narrow minded dogmatism of the Catholic Church. At times, the church holds the upper hand, as Stephen is terrified into confessing his sins with prostitutes in the face of Father Arnall's legendary, sensual, brutal 'Hellfire' sermon on the fate of sinners who don't repent before god. But Stephen wrestles with such demons, and grows, and fights, and ultimately prevails. He sees the image of the rotting cabbages in in the kitchen gardens and considers the disordered symbolism of this as more appealing to his natural essence than the neat tidiness of the shrine to Mary.
Stephen realises he must leave this claustrophobic restrictive life behind. The end of the novel chronicles his last days in Dublin before leaving Ireland. His conversation with Cranley forces home the realisation that Stephen is growing up, his childhood is behind him, and, most importantly, he is prepared to err and make mistakes, even if this means damnation. He is able, as he says 'To discover the mode of life or art whereby your spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom'.
Stephen, with all his passionate intellectual talent, is ready to hit the world, and the forces such as Father Arnall who seem ready to stamp on such independence with vitriolic counter ideological pamphleteering cannot stop him. Thank God for that. The original title of the book, Stephen Hero, is apt indeed.
Rating:
Summary: Young genius takes flight
Review: Portrait of the Artist is Joyce's Kunstleroman about the growth of sensibility in a young genius. The novel is luminous and because it is early Joyce, it's accessible as the writing style is straight ahead narrative modified to reflect the writer's age in various stages of his youth. It is easy to witness the writer's sensibility heighten as he matures: his sense of protest, his growing perspective of his life, church and nation. Proust and Joyce wrote at about the same time but met only once briefly in an awkward exchange and Joyce lived for years in self-imposed creative exile in Paris. In the later chapters there are stylistic similarities between early Joyce and Proust, whose style and narrative voice are consistent throughout the 4300 pages of La Recherche du Temps Perdu. However, Joyce's narrative technique changed radically as he grew as a novelist from Portrait to Ulysses and finally to Finnegan's Wake. In Joyce's willingness to experiment unfettered by style, voice, syntax, genre and diction he changed the English language: he left it better than he found it. Chapters 4 and 5 are brilliant and take flight like Daedalus, the inventive hawkman. If you seek an entry point into Joyce's work, this relatively simple, straightforward novel is your window. "To speak of these things and to try to undestand their nature and, having understood it, to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and colour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we have come to understand -- that is art." I can't encourage you more strongly to explore Joyce -- he was the most luminous genius who ever wrote a novel.
Rating:
Summary: On the Nature of Beauty and Life
Review: The perennial work of the great master of the 20th century, James Joyce, beginning his revolution in the form of how a story is told. The book shows us the adventure in growing to think for oneself, avoiding the snares of the culture one is raised in, discovering the very nature of beauty and it's relationship to the meaning of life. It gives a rememberance of sin and experience as well as the purpose of art not to provide an escape from life, but as a means for the honest expression of it.
Some people will never like this book and think it too ponderous, but for those of us who love this book, we hold it all the more dearly in our hearts.
|
