Definitely a disappointment, after the glowing reports I'd gotten from reviews and from friends' recommendations who've read the book. There were some inspiring passages that I really resonated with, like Stephen Dedaelus's conversion experience, eventually disinherited.. or his walk along the coast where he describes the scene in such detail that you know James Joyce is speaking out of personal experience... But if you don't identify with the author at any point, how can you even want to suffer through it? In general, this book is a rambling exercise in pointless intellectual thoughts, which is anticlimactic enough to feel entirely purposeless. What IS the story, anyway? Ok, a boy grows up... and fantasizes about girls and sex a lot. Where's the story there? I've rarely been this hard on a proven "classic" before, but I'll make an exception.

Note to editors: please don't put footnotes in your novels, it's incredible annoying no matter how much you might think it illuminates the text. Repeatedly suggesting that the reader isn't understanding something in a book SO vague that, clearly, NOTHING should be understood, and then only citing irrelevant history, dates & all, behind the song or the building or the person just mentioned, is infuriating. I mean, I take all this trouble to page ALL the way to the back of the book for an explanation that may somehow transform this whole tiresome reading experience for me, and you're giving me a 3-paragraph long HISTORY LESSON? How about making your first and only footnote about the elusive point of this book? ( )

The 1920s Modern Library edition I read - thus the plain green cover shown here - had no ISBN or LC classification, so I've kept the Penguin Classics paperback data. Someone donated the yellowed volume to the library where I work - with excellent penciled-in margin notes, part of a class assignment of yore no doubt.

I read this - or I think I read it - years ago. Maybe I just read parts of it. This time around (2009) most of it seemed new to me. I might as well have not read it at all before. So I've had the interesting experience of, effectively speaking, getting introduced to it after having spent years with Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

The very pleasing result of that is to accept it on its own merits, and not simply as a stepping stone on Joyce's way to those later works. According to Joyce's own aesthetics as explained herein, it is a lyric work, really not to be compared to the epic Ulyssess and the dramatic FW. Unquestionably his "stream of consciousness" technique expanded in scope after the Portrait. But those later developments of the technique wouldn't have fit appropriately into this earlier lyric world.

The book itself, then, considered as it is by itself, is a masterpiece. The power and beauty of the writing, the devastating honesty of the author's self-portrait, the marvels of style as we hear Stephen's language change through the years, the surging presentations of religious excess, the daring temporal jump-cuts, the substitution of hyphens for quotation marks that further interiorizes each page - superb!

Except for my praise, I have nothing new to add to the thousands of reviews written through the decades about this book. I keep the book on my desk. I pick it up regularly, opening it at random to a page, and deriving great pleasure from it. It's so rare to be able to enjoy craftsmanship at this level of inspired excellence. ( )

My first venture into Joyce, making my way to Ulysses. I look forward to continuing. ( )

remarkable: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man relates the mental growth of Stephen Dedalus, who represents the author James Joyce. Very little actually happens in this book. It is almost completely a reference to the changes that occur in Dedalus as he grows from an innocent, somewhat oblivious boy, to the psychologically restless young man all too aware of the forces that buffet the Ireland of his day. It is a remarkable work that should not be missed by the serious reader.

The notes at the end by Seamus Deane do present points of clarification and interest, but for anyone who can't pass on a footnote without reading it (ahem), it does interrupt the flow of the narrative a great deal.

I don't know what to say to people who don't like this book. It took me a few tries to get through it, but I can't think of another book so magical. ( )