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funkyfest 's review for:
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce
Nice story with some very poetic or vivid moments (the end of chapter 2 especially hit me like a ton of bricks) but I can't see myself really reading Ulysses if this is the default style.
It was kind of slow to get through, which has its benefits but at times it felt drawn out or verbose for its sake and not because it developed its themes of characters or, well, anything. I freely admit there's certain passages or reference I won't get due to my lack of understanding Irish history, not to mention Catholic history.
Not to mention the times it was (purposefully?) unclear whether we were in Stephen's imagination or memory vs. what was occurring in reality at the present. In some ways I like this style of telling a story or portraying a person but I'm not a fan of the way Joyce frames these sections nor the fact that they often make me feel like he skipped over something important that should have been there earlier in the book - the story is vignettes, like a novel made out of short stories that strongly connect but lack a true through line. The irony here is that there is a through line, due to the semi-autobiographical nature of the book, but Joyce won't give it to you neatly. I'm sure scholars have figured out why Joyce included the specific sections he did and omitted everything else, but I myself am not smart enough to get it.
Then there's Stephen Daedelus' thesis on what esthetic beauty is. At one point he mentions a beautiful work of art should have it so there's the same emotional distance between the artist as there is to the viewer, and the artist should just be "behind" the work so-to-speak. Why, then, did he publish a novel about his life? Does he consider this a beautiful work? If so, did he change his mind as to what makes something beautiful? In my opinion, you can't write your life, change the names of people, and consider the emotional gravity to have been shifted away from yourself far enough to be close enough to us, the consumers of the artwork. It just isn't possible. I wouldn't doubt that he was aware of this irony and published it anyway. At the end, he and Cranly talk briefly about how people are hypocrites, and that is something to simply accept about human nature. Perhaps he was just accepting of that.
I liked reading it despite it taking a while for its size, but I probably won't read it again.
It was kind of slow to get through, which has its benefits but at times it felt drawn out or verbose for its sake and not because it developed its themes of characters or, well, anything. I freely admit there's certain passages or reference I won't get due to my lack of understanding Irish history, not to mention Catholic history.
Not to mention the times it was (purposefully?) unclear whether we were in Stephen's imagination or memory vs. what was occurring in reality at the present. In some ways I like this style of telling a story or portraying a person but I'm not a fan of the way Joyce frames these sections nor the fact that they often make me feel like he skipped over something important that should have been there earlier in the book - the story is vignettes, like a novel made out of short stories that strongly connect but lack a true through line. The irony here is that there is a through line, due to the semi-autobiographical nature of the book, but Joyce won't give it to you neatly. I'm sure scholars have figured out why Joyce included the specific sections he did and omitted everything else, but I myself am not smart enough to get it.
Then there's Stephen Daedelus' thesis on what esthetic beauty is. At one point he mentions a beautiful work of art should have it so there's the same emotional distance between the artist as there is to the viewer, and the artist should just be "behind" the work so-to-speak. Why, then, did he publish a novel about his life? Does he consider this a beautiful work? If so, did he change his mind as to what makes something beautiful? In my opinion, you can't write your life, change the names of people, and consider the emotional gravity to have been shifted away from yourself far enough to be close enough to us, the consumers of the artwork. It just isn't possible. I wouldn't doubt that he was aware of this irony and published it anyway. At the end, he and Cranly talk briefly about how people are hypocrites, and that is something to simply accept about human nature. Perhaps he was just accepting of that.
I liked reading it despite it taking a while for its size, but I probably won't read it again.