Customer Reviews

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners (Barnes & Noble Classics)

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I bought this about 3 years ago from B&N. $6.95 for a volume that included 2 books that would be around $10 each in other editions was an unbeatable price. The volume (like all B&N classics) is sturdier and more durable than all of those $15 paperbacks. It also contains far more annotations and background information than standard editions. However, most of the footnotes are unnecessary at best, and annoying at worst. Anyone well-read enough to understand Joyce's prose shouldn't need half of them. I mean, do we really need a map of some Dublin neighborhood every few pages? Anyway, on to the actual books. The night I bought it, I began "Portrait". I found it to be really difficult (or at least I did 3 years ago, maybe it's time for a rereading), but not near as rewarding as other difficult works (The Sound and the Fury, for example). The novel had its moments, and I appreciated what Joyce was trying to do with language and narration etc., but there was just something about it that bored me through most of it. I let it sit on my shelf for quite a while until just a few days ago my friend(also an English major) told me that he didn't really care for "Portrait", but that he really liked "Dubliners", so I started reading it the next day. I'm about halfway through "Dubliners", and am enjoying it a lot more than "Portrait".

If you're here, you're here because you're looking for the cheapest edition of this book, which means one of two things:

1. You're reading it for a class, or
2. You want to read it for leisure and you're looking for the cheapest edition.

Either way, you probably have some idea of what this book is about. I have only read Dubliners, and will be commenting primarily on that. As one of James Joyce's earliest novels, it is a series of short stories, chronicling life in Dublin.

As a book, it's worth a read. It alternates between dull and interesting, with "The Little Cloud" and "The Dead" (the latter of which is universally renowned as the masterpiece of the work) shine above the rest. If you're a fan of realism, spontaneous prose, or Joyce, then it's for you. It's also good if you've never read Joyce and are looking for a "value pack."

My biggest complaint with this edition is the notes. Many things are footnoted, usually to define a term. Most of these terms don't need definitions, and the sheer quantity of them is distracting. This was the major setback of the edition.

If you want to read Joyce, I'd suggest a more expensive edition with better notes, unless you want a copy that is absurdly cheap. If so, this is for you.

Unfortunately I was at a severe loss to begin to understand James Joyce's writings. I found the style of writing similar to Charles Dickens, but without the story that Dickens would spin. I'm sure there are some very sophisticated people who have read James Joyce and appreciate his works, to bad I can not be among them. I would think at the time he wrote this it must have broken some barrier's, but in today's world sounds just like another repressed Catholic. I do find reading about the Irish of the time interesting, I didn't realize the extent of the political upheaval. I found the sub notes to be distracting, but necessary.