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A review by athousandgreatbooks
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
5.0
Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist, has a pious Catholic upbringing but he revolts against it as he matures and ultimately breaks away to become an artist. As such he also severs his ties with his family, his culture, his country Ireland (as Joyce also did) and decides to carve his own way as an artist, free from institutional bondage.
The story is semi-autobiographical in nature wherein Stephen essentially works as Joyce's alter ego. Though Stephen, like Joyce, departs from his Catholic upbringing he doesn't necessarily have an atheistic worldview.
Rather his rejection of the institutions, especially the Irish Catholic Church, is a departure from the current form and structure they're in the state of which is incompatible with his search for identity.
Perhaps the most striking, and much appreciated, element of the book is its narration. It changes and assumes his idiolect as Stephen matures.
We start simple - Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo... His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face. He was baby tuckoo...
And advance as he advances in years - A feverish quickening of his pulses followed, and a din of meaningless words drove his reasoned thoughts hither and thither confusedly. His lungs dilated and sank as if he were inhaling a warm moist unsustaining air and he smelt again the moist warm air which hung in the bath in Clongowoes above the sluggish turf-colored water.
Stephen's own voice is seamlessly woven into the narration that makes reading the story an intimate experience. Of course, since this is Joyce, some degree of stream-of-consciousness wanders its way in. But it never stalls the story, and at 300-odd pages Portrait is a quick read.
This is not your usual coming-of-age story for its literary and technical genius far exceeds that pigeonhole. It is rather a highly personal reflection of an artist in search of his true identity, unmarred by the puritanical traditions and mores. It is also a precursor to Ulysses in which Stephen returns as a character
The story is semi-autobiographical in nature wherein Stephen essentially works as Joyce's alter ego. Though Stephen, like Joyce, departs from his Catholic upbringing he doesn't necessarily have an atheistic worldview.
Rather his rejection of the institutions, especially the Irish Catholic Church, is a departure from the current form and structure they're in the state of which is incompatible with his search for identity.
Perhaps the most striking, and much appreciated, element of the book is its narration. It changes and assumes his idiolect as Stephen matures.
We start simple - Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo... His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face. He was baby tuckoo...
And advance as he advances in years - A feverish quickening of his pulses followed, and a din of meaningless words drove his reasoned thoughts hither and thither confusedly. His lungs dilated and sank as if he were inhaling a warm moist unsustaining air and he smelt again the moist warm air which hung in the bath in Clongowoes above the sluggish turf-colored water.
Stephen's own voice is seamlessly woven into the narration that makes reading the story an intimate experience. Of course, since this is Joyce, some degree of stream-of-consciousness wanders its way in. But it never stalls the story, and at 300-odd pages Portrait is a quick read.
This is not your usual coming-of-age story for its literary and technical genius far exceeds that pigeonhole. It is rather a highly personal reflection of an artist in search of his true identity, unmarred by the puritanical traditions and mores. It is also a precursor to Ulysses in which Stephen returns as a character