Customer Reviews

James Joyce: Dubliners, a Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, Chamber Music

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What makes Joyce's work so important in the Modern prose movement is his radical use of the experience of ordinary, intelligent, hands-on people, and his open expectation that such people can think for themselves. The typical prose product of Joyce's era was an endless stock of stylishly refined, and excruciatingly moralistic, thinking and feeling codified in middle-class society to comfort their need to see themselves as a superior, educated, progressive elite. The new Middle class leadership, that replaced the nobility following the French and American Revolutions, was wary of the rising collective power of the 'lower orders', and they used a developing market for prose to cow the still barely literate masses into seeing themselves as inferior and not quite up to the complex operations needed to make civil institutional life function. Joyce, and his fellow 'originals' made literature of the clever, practical thinking of ordinary people in their getting on with the humor, tragedies and grit of everyday life. The social context of the end of the 19th century is difficult to imagine today, but the refreshing mental effort required to read Joyce still has lost none of its stimulative potency. In the actual prose, the thing to look for is the very demanding range of association his writing requires, and also notice how much is expected of the reader to follow along and fill in the gaps left for imagination. It's extremely rewarding to read a text by an author who assumes his reader can, and might want to take an active, intelligent role in the making of art. Not everyone comes to literature to work, but some will, and, with Joyce, they'll find more than a little satisfaction. After a first read of Joyce, it helps to read some commentary from supplementary sources, then make a second pass. I re-read Joyce every five years or so, and I find that as my experience grows I see more of what was (and is) at stake. I encourage any curious person to take the Joyce challenge. 'Dubliners' and 'Portrait' are wonderful journeys by themselves, even if the reader stops there, and doesn't venture on to 'Ulysses', or 'Finnegan's Wake.' The inexperience of the observer's viewpoint is an essential element in what makes what he sees a source of wonderment, so inviting to his uninitiated curiosity, not yet complicated by the layering strategies of social experience-- this is true both for 'Dubliners' and 'Portrait.' In 'Dubliners', the story "The Dead" was made into a film by John Huston. The film's quite good, but, and especially for the conversation between the man and his wife in their hotel room at the end, don't trust any images, just read the words.

When I read Joyce's "The Dead" as a senior in high school, it took watching the movie and several class hours of discussion before I was finally able to see meaning in the novel. Now, having read "A Portrait of the Artist," I am convinced that not only is Joyce's style unique, to say the least he is a veritable cubist of contemporary literature.

"Portrait of the Artist" chronicles the coming of age of Stephen Dedalus, a young man in turn-of-the-century Ireland. Joyce opens the book with Stephen as a small child, writing in language befitting of one little older than a toddler. The language matures as Stephen does, however, and soon Joyce has the reader jumping from interesting descriptions of girls on beaches to cataclysmically boring (and LONG!) soliloquies of Stephen's philosophical, emotional, and physical wanderings. Amid tyrannical priests, playground bullies, apathetic parents, and the occasional friend, Stephen is forced to grow up with almost no guidance or example. The progression of Stephen and the novel is eclectic. At times Joyce tosses out sudden bursts of simplicity, signified by a hidden smattering of pivotal epiphanies that ultimately lead up to the climax/close of the book and Stephen's decision to shrug off the limitations of men and become an artist. At others, the only logical thought that follows an idea is ". . .what?" It seems as though Joyce is deliberately trying to confuse the reader, so that they can get an idea of the phases Stephen is going through. An effective, but very frustrating, tool to draw the reader into the plot.

Joyce's style of writing, depending on the reader's frame of mind (or state thereof), can be extremely thought provoking, or just provoking. Joyce expresses Stephen not physically, but rather the reader grows to know him through his thoughts and sometimes, his surroundings. This indirect approach to a very complex individual through abstract description and seemingly meaningless mental tangents is tedious and often frustrating--it seems as though, rather than bring Stephen to the reader, Joyce is dragging the reader to Stephen through a quagmire of politics, philosophy, sex, art, and religion. It is left up to the readers to decide which elements will clarify Stephen's direction for them(and hence the direction of the book),and which will only muddy the waters further.

I feel safe in labeling James Joyce the Picasso of twentieth century literature. "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is one of the strangest and most thought-provoking books I have ever read. The disjointed sentence structure and abstract methods of description he employs are a great detriment to any initial enjoyment of the work. It takes too long to stop after every paragraph and decipher what Joyce is conveying to really like reading it the first time. A second and even third reading is advisable to truly understand the proverbial 'moral of the story.' Some feel that Joyce is the Einstein of the literary world, and he certainly deserves the distinction of being a revolutionary. Whether or not revolution is genius, however, is left to the discretion of his future readers.

I unfortunately found the stories lifeless. There was no spark or wonder to the characters or surroundings.