A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

I felt like my brain was dying while reading this book. I enjoyed stream of consciousness in Faulkner and found if challenging, but here it was just frustrating, slow-moving, and boring. The only interesting part was evaluating Stephen's journey from sin, to faith, then back to disbelief. I believe it's a story too often repeated, and it was interesting to get a new perspective. ( )

Took years to read. Was interesting to look back at earlier parts of book and see how style developed/changed as Stephen aged. The diary ending was a bit of a letdown, but was at least brief. Admired his candor. Wish I had read of his internal religious struggles when I was younger. Could not help but think of my mother, whose death seems so recent, when Stephen talked of his.

In Portrait, James Joyce dramatises incidents and periods from his own childhood and adolescence, and I don’t really know what to feel about this book. Parts of this were brilliant: the writing, the rhythm, the selection of words and images. This book is excellent at expressing the unscratchable ache that is growing pains: the death of a child’s naïve belief in Justice when unfair punishment is handed out; the intensity of adolescent frustrations, both sexual and religious; and the search for fundamental meaning in life.

On the other hand, well, there were numerous occasions where I felt like rolling my eyes at the text, because I’ve read too many books about sensitive, intelligent, precious little main characters who struggle mightily against their schoolboy tormentors and an understimulating environment. I know that I can’t really hold that against this book -- the century of intervening literature that makes this kind of story feel so trite is not this book’s fault. But still: the story feels so trite in many places.

This book left me feeling very ambiguous. For example: a very large section of this book is taken up by a series of fire-and-brimstone sermons delivered by a Jesuit hell-bent on frightening children into good old Catholic obedience through extensive and lascivious descriptions of torture. I can appreciate what Joyce was going for here, and it’s well done indeed: I can really taste the hunger for power, the emotional manipulation, the all-encompassing prison that this kind of mentality wants to enforce. But these sermons take up 12% of the text. 12%! That is way, way too long, and spoils the effect. Then there are later bits, where the main character expounds his views on beauty and art which serve as a replacement for his earlier religiosity, and which are intellectually impressive, but they are shoehorned in in the clumsiest of ways. Again, the effect is spoiled.

Both of these -- the fire-and-brimstone, and the intellectualizing theories -- overstay their welcome and tip the balance from “Impressive, well done” into “Man, Joyce really loves hearing himself talk”. And self-important smugness is a sin I find hard to forgive. So yeah. Three stars? ( )

Great Irish brogue, not enough singing
Review of the Audible Studios 2019 audiobook edition narrated by Colin Farrell

This was a thoroughly excellent narration performance by actor Colin Farrell, so the 4 rating is only on a relative scale to Jim Norton's 2005 narration for Naxos Audiobooks at [book:A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|7591]. Farrell only occasionally attempts a slight sing-song lilt to song lyrics quoted in the text, whereas Norton gives full throated voice to all of them. It makes for a more fully entertaining narration experience. You can hear samples of both just by trying the voice samples of the opening page (whether on Audible for both or on Naxos for the Norton at https://www.naxosaudiobooks.com/portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man-a-unabridg... ( )

An autobiographical novel, it is very conventional compared to where he was going for the rest of his life. He chooses his framework characters, the male parts of the Daedalus family, and thyeir relationships to the growing Stephen. ( )