A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man-James Joyce

So I'm trying out the book review thing.  This is for a number of reasons, but the main one is because I have spare time and I love to read.  My thoughts, of which I have many, usually come from books.  And, believe it or not, I have an opinion about the books and authors I read.  Thought I'd share.  Thats what blogging is right? Sharing? Caring? Anyway...

James Joyce.  For some reason I always thought he was a she.  Not like a pen name or anything, but because the last name Joyce seems feminine to me, I just skipped right over the James.  So I picked up the book on an old bookshelf, saw lots of notes scribbled inside (thanks Lelah) and decided that yes, I now have the time to read a classic.  And it's not that long, so why not give it a shot?

Mind equals blown, ladies- and gentle-bloggers.  How did I not know about Joyce?  He's coarse and cryptic, his words slip and slide across the page and through the mind of the reader, but he is so incredibly savvy with the English language, it astounds me.

Here is a book about his infamous character, Stephen Dadelus, growing up and discovering himself. He goes to Irish prep school as a younger boy-confused and bossed around by priests-, then as a teen among fellow Irish teens-still confused and slowly turning into a priest-and then as a college man by the end-confused in an enlightened sense and renouncing all he's ever known (sounds like college). "Portrait" is the story of a young, self-conflicted, mildly depressed, incredibly smart soul growing up in the early part of our last century.  Ireland is painted in grey and blue hues, the deep green of the countryside usually overshadowed by an impending cloud bank reflecting across a morose pond, all of which mirrors the mood of our young protagonist.  Dedalus is said to be an image of Joyce himself, and so as I read I felt as if I were connecting with the author, always a great pleasure.

Some interesting writers techniques: Joyce combines words.  He throws them side by side and they are brilliant: "cricketcap" "drinkingbout""gasflames."  It goes on but I can't find any more examples at the present.  From a writer's perspective, it is always loveley to see an author make up his own language.  Joyce does this with specific attention to detail, and all of his combinations seem to have always made sense, as if they were supposed to be that way in the first place.

Another technique: Stream of thought.  This book is so hard to read (objectively speaking) because of it's haphazard storytelling.  Sometimes you are an omnipotent reader, sometimes inside Stephen's head as if this were always his world.  And sometimes, thanks to Joyce, you are just floating on a drift of words.  He seems to want to write, simple as that is.  He loves words and wants to put them down, the way he sees his homeland and his people, and so there are vast passages that have little to do with anything plot or character or even book related.  This, I feel, is refreshing.  I write like this too sometimes, and because I have now seen Joyce do it, I feel that there is some precedent for my reigning bouts of confused word play to skip across the page of a novel as well.

A quote, read it aloud: "It broke from him like a wail of despair from a hell of sufferers and died in a wail of furious entreaty, a cry for an iniquitous abandonment, a cry which was but the echo of an obscene scrawl which he had read on the oozing wall of a urinal."

We see Joyce employing a great amount of repetition, something I try and avoid, but he does it with diligence and therefore builds recurring moments or revelations that follow us as we read.  He also blends all of his lavish wordplay with simple, understood physical description, such as the wall in a urinal.  I guess people were doing that then, too.

The last part of this book I want to comment on: the religion.  Being as interested as I am in this subject, "Portrait" was a goldmine of information and delectable imagery.  A large section of the book occurs when Dedalus attends school to become an Catholic priest, and in doing so we hear the vast array of description given to young impressionable men in that time period.  Hell is weaved through our mind, the repentance of sin and the feeling of unlivable guilt.  He tells it all with such passion that it reminded me how religion is alive and well, good or bad, and that everyone should know a little more about it.

Overall, this book opened my eyes.  Joyce caressed me with his words and left me actually wanting to read Ulysses, and so I recommend this to all who dare.

p.s. this is my first book review, and I have read a book and a half since reading Portrait, so spare me the lack of examples.