Rating: 
Summary: one of the best books of the twentieth century
Review: "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is easily one of the greatest books of the twentieth century. Rarely is such a mastery of the English language encountered. James Joyce has an almost uncanny ability to create images and feelings out of words. He manages to describe a place and also the feelings of the main character when he's in that place with teh same set of words.
The story itself is almost inconsequential. As I read it I was so caught up in Stephen's self-destructive spiral that I could never pass any sort of moral judgement. I had to like Stephen because he was so human. His dilemmas and his emotions were so real, and Joyce was able to bring them to life with his words.
As a previous reviewer has said, it is true that to understand certain parts of the book, it helps to have a little background on Irish politics at the turn of the century (or at least know who Parnell is) but a few minutes of internet research will do that for you. As for strange words and slang, the language becomes more elevated as Stephen grows up (a touch of genius, if you ask me) so that's not really much of a problem. Stephen's final break with tradition as he answers the call of Daedalus, his namesake, is magnificent to read. All in all, this book is definitely worth the read.
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: 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: 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: Not easy but well worth the effort
Review: I've seen some reviews that criticize the book for being too stream of consciousness and others for not being s.o.c. enough. The fact is, for the most part it's not s.o.c. at all. (See the Chicago Manual of Style, 10.45-10.47 and note the example they give...Joyce knew how to write s.o.c.). A better word for A Portrait is impressionistic. Joyce is more concerned with giving the reader an impression of Stephen's experience than with emptying the contents of his head. What's confusing is the style mirrors the way Stephen interprets his experiences at the time, according to the level of his mental development. When Stephen is a baby, you get only what comes in through the five senses. When he is a young boy, you get the experience refracted through a prism of many things: his illness (for those who've read Ulysses, here is the beginning of Stephen's hydrophobia - "How cold and slimy the water had been! A fellow had once seen a big rat jump into the scum."), his poor eyesight, the radically mixed signals he's been given about religion and politics (the Christmas meal), his unfair punishment, and maybe most important of all, his father's unusual expressions (growing up with phrases like, "There's more cunning in one of those warts on his bald head than in a pack of jack foxes" how could this kid become anything but a writer?) It is crucial to understand that Stephen's experiences are being given a certain inflection in this way when you come to the middle of the book and the sermon. You have to remember that Stephen has been far from a good Catholic boy. Among other things, he's been visting the brothels! The sermon hits him with a special intensity, so much so that it changes his life forever. Before it he's completely absorbed in the physical: food, sex, etc. After it he becomes just as absorbed in the spiritual/aesthetic world. It's the sermon that really puts him on the track to becoming an artist. One reviewer called the sermon overwrought. Well, of course it's overwrought. That's the whole point. Read it with your sense of humor turned on and keep in mind that you're getting the sermon the way you get everything else in the book: through Stephen. After Stephen decides he doesn't want to be a priest, the idea of becoming an artist really starts to take hold. And when he sees the girl on the beach, his life is set for good. That scene has to be one of the most beautiful in all of literature. After that, Stephen develops his theory of esthetics with the help of Aristotle and Aquinas and we find ourselves moving from one conversation to another not unlike in Plato (each conversation with the appropriate inflection of college boy pomposity). In the end, Stephen asks his "father" to support him as he goes into the real world to create something. I like to think that this is an echo of the very first line in the book. The father, in one of many senses, is the moocow story. The story gave birth to Stephen's imagination and now it's the son's turn to create. This is such a rich and beautiful book. I suppose it's possible for people to "get it" and still not like it, but I really think if you read and re-read, and maybe do a little research, the book will open up to you the way it did to me.
Rating:
Summary: Language Parallels
Review: James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical story of Stephen Daedelus as he grows from a young child to a young adult. Virtually every word Joyce uses is deliberate. The novel is not one that a person can read and understand without completely focusing on what Joyce is saying.
Joyce uniquely uses language to portray the young Daedelus as he grows and matures. The language is very simple in the beginning, following a stream of consciousness format that portrays Stephen's young age and undeveloped thought process. As he grows in all aspects of his being - physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and mental - the language reflects his growing complexity. Joyce also uses language to show the changes in Stephen's relationships with others - especially his family - that result from his growth. Throughout the novel, Stephen goes through various periods and levels of alienation. During his early years in boarding school, Stephen feels distant from the other boys and counts the days until he can return home. However, after a heated discussion over Christmas dinner with his family, he feels as though they are somewhat remote. He cannot figure out which adult to side with over the political issues concerning the Catholic Church and the Irish State. Thus, his young mind experiences its first feelings of alienation from his family. These feelings mark the first instance of a desire to break from traditional viewpoints, and the point at which the language begins to change.
Gradually, this emotional separation becomes more pronounced as he starts to notice his father's imperfections, such as his excessive spending habits and the tasteless company he chooses to keep. By looking down on his father's actions, Stephen widens the distance between himself and his father. Thus, he loses his childhood naiveté and sees his father as an imperfect human being. Joyce reflects this change in the language by replacing childish phrases with more experienced reflections.
As the novel progresses, the language Joyce uses becomes even more complex in structure and content. This illustrates Stephen's progression as his ideas and views of life become more his own. As Stephen's family sinks into the slums materially and socially because of his father's excessive spending, Stephen develops the courage to break away from them and stand independent with his own ideals and views.
His emotional separation from his family finally leads to his physical separation from the familial and social environment he was raised in. He embarks from Ireland, leaving everything he opposes: his family, the Catholic Church, Irish Patriotism, and his old self. The language of the novel follows Stephen's internal progression as he moves from simplistic and undefined views, to his eloquent and personal theories about art and life. It is at this point of resolution that Joyce shifts his language from a distant point of view to the first person narration of journal entries - only after Stephen finds his own independent voice.
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