Reviews - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

2.23k reviews for:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

James Joyce

3.43 AVERAGE

oryx's review against another edition

4.0

challenging reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

wikiweaponn's review against another edition

4.0

This was pretty dense and disjointed, a bit hard to follow completely. While I had to go back after the fact and read a synopsis to piece it all together, there were a lot of individual sections I really enjoyed reading: In particular a Catholic sermon on hell and the nature of sin, and the definition of Beauty.

Story wise, insomuch as there as any kind of story, this was pretty weak for me, but its literary value is unparalleled.

jamie_toomai's review against another edition

5.0

Somehow James Joyce knows what goes on in my head. He not only knows what I've thought and felt, he knows how I will react to his writing. I don't know how he knows, but he does. Here's the problem: if he's so brilliant, why doesn't he offer any solutions? Ah, see -- he's smart enough to see that he doesn't have any solutions.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is tedious in places. (Did the sermons on Hell have to be so long?*) There are parts that I couldn't penetrate because Joyce lived in a different time and place than me. But for the most part it is shocking how accurate a reflection of my own soul I see in Joyce's fictional alter-ego Stephan Dedalus.

I can't give Portrait four stars as that is suppose to mean "I really liked it." I'm not certain that I did really like it. On the other hand, five stars is meant to mean "it was amazing," which is certainly true.

Oh, and back to my original question of how Joyce can see what I'm thinking. Maybe it's because he had a lumpy pillow, and so do I.

Footnotes

*Actually--yes, yes they did.

chargoe's review against another edition

3.0

took me quite a while and was honestly difficult t read on an endurance level. respect it though.

johann_jacob's review against another edition

4.5

challenging reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

ciercio's review against another edition

god awful, Joyce's inexplicable worst

theyoungveronica's review against another edition

5.0

In the final analysis, I am ambivalent about this novel. I was deeply unimpressed with the first part of the book. By the last 80 pages, I was completely enchanted. I loved the independent mindset set forth in this book, and the adoption of religious terminology to describe the process of artistic creation at "the altar of the world."

Absolution through art—this is a book about the assertive power of human will to redefine the individual, outside of cultural or political boundaries. Authenticity is also central: the protagonist fears making "false homage to a symbol." Joyce claims "truth is beheld by the intellect which is appeased by the most satisfying relations of the intelligible."

My eventual love for this novel thus came from its bold affirmation of the artist as a visionary.