Portrait Of The Artist

[poliphilo]

I'm treading on eggshells here because I know some of you love it, but I'm halfway through Portrait Of The Artist As a Young Man and I'm disappointed. Does it get all modernist and raw in the second half or what?

It's overflowing with catholic priests, so where's the child abuse?

Thus far it's a typically genteel, middlebrow literary memoir. Stephen Dedalus is so fuckin' sensitive I want to fuckin' shoot him. David Copperfield is edgier than this.

Joyce writes like the late Victorian aesthete he is.  The prose purls along between flowery meads. This guy  a Lord of language? Really? 

I guess I was expecting it to be the literary equivalent of Picasso's Desmoiselles d'Avignon- and it ain't.

Comments

[frumiousb.livejournal.com]

I guess I was expecting it to be the literary equivalent of Picasso's Desmoiselles d'Avignon- and it ain't.

No-- for that you'll need parts of Ulysses.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, I guess Ulysses is next.

I read it- or parts of it- several decades ago and reckon it's time I tried again.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

It was an A-level text for me, and completely put me off Joyce: I hated it. Too long ago to remember why, exactly - but even at that age I had no sympathy for Stephen Dedalus...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not alone.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Stephen Dedalus is so fuckin' sensitive I want to fuckin' shoot him.

Okay: Laughing Out Loud.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Joyce is supposed to be this great modernist author- and this is not a modernist text. Maybe if I'd come at it with different expectations I'd be liking it better.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

Oh, I HATED Portrait. Had to read it for uni, I think. The only part I liked was somewhere near the beginning, where there was a three-page fire and brimstone sermon that really amused me.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"The Dead" is such an amazingly brilliant short story. I was expecting Portrait to take things a stage further, but instead we're going backwards.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It seems I've had the wrong idea about Joyce. I've been thinking he was this modernist god and really he's just an eccentric Victorian uncle.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Prompted by your comment I've just been reading pomes penyeach.

Oh my God, but they're bad!

Worse than the worst stuff in the Georgian anthologies.

They sort of confirm what I've been feeling about Joyce's sensitivity to language- that actually he didn't possess any.

Re: "I wrote Chamber Music as a protest against myself"

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you for these. They are awesome....

I can't get over how Victorian Joyce is. He's much more Victorian than all those early 20th century writers who get pigeonholed as "traditionalists"- like Wells, Shaw, Kipling, even Chesterton. I feel like I've been sold a pup.

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

I also found Portrait rather underwhelming. Its charms are entirely elusive. If you want the literary equivalent of Picasso's Desmoiselles d'Avignon, you might wish to crack open Finnegan's Wake...
...and if you actually finish it, or understand more than .10% of it, you will be entitled to bragging rights at cocktail parties.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Finnegan's Wake is sitting on the shelf. I've looked at it- and my eyes skated off the surface after a minute or two. I guess I'll eventually try to get to grips with it.

[paroxysma.livejournal.com]

So in other words...you don't recommend it?
...I was planning to read it at some point.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No harm in reading it. It's not difficult and it's fairly short. In it's own way, it's a fine piece of work. I was just expecting it to be bolder, braver and more experimental than it in fact is.