There's a reason why Stephen wasn't the main character in "Ulysses." While his hypersensitivity, acute intellectualism and quasi-pretentious ideas about the aesthetics of poetry and Shakespeare are attractive from a distance, his callow arrogance and sarcasm are ultimately off-putting. Leopold Bloom, for me, is the greatest character in 20th century literature because his age has brought him qualities that the post-adolescent Stephen can only ponder or mock: humility, inquisitiveness and a love for his wife that can withstand the challenges of Blazes Boylan.
I don't mean to disparage "A Portrait" by claiming its worth lies primarily in its position as a precursor to "Ulysses," but it really is dwarfed by that book and Joyce's masterpiece, "Finnegans Wake." Here, the prose experiments are clumsy and frustrating: take, for example, the romantic drivel about birds, dew and Eileen in chapters four and five; while Joyce might have intended this second-rate Yeats impersonation to demonstrate how Stephen's naivete is struggling with new ideas, it's fairly embarrassing nonetheless. The journal entries are kind of cool as a taste of what would soon come in "Ulysses," but they come off a bit dry.
I found Stephen much more likeable before his decision to repent in the third chapter. Before, he had to struggle with the conflict in his soul between the pleasures of the brothel and eternal damnation. This was also before he became stubbornly confident in his own self-righteousness, and I can believe that the feelings he describes are painfully real. Afterwards, he briefly becomes a priggish repentant, and then the climax of the novel comes when he throws off the yoke of the priesthood and embraces the sight of Eileen stroking the sea-water "hither and thither" (a delicious reminder of the much more appealing ALP in the "Wake").
Eileen is now kept in the distance as Stephen prattles endlessly about Aristotle and Aquinas, his precious individuality and his oncoming exile. His friends are intelligent but boorish and scornful. By the end of the novel, Stephen is ready to embark on his artistic journey, but I couldn't help noticing how cynical his final journal entries sounded.
Joyce is the master novelist of the past century, and even his mediocre work is woven with the threads that would continue in his two final novels. "A Portrait..." remains a fascinating though curiously empty tale of a young man growing detached from his senses and beliefs.

A Portrait of an Artist was a surprise to me. I read it as a school assignment but I actually
enjoyed it a little. It was a thought provoking book and was very well written. James Joyce's'
fictional but semi- autobiographical novel was very creative. It was written in a style that I have
never read before. It wasn't first person or third person, but it also wasn't quite a third person
omniscient. It was a new style to me but James Joyce made it work.
It is a novel about a boy, Stephen Dedalus and his struggles to grow up, break away from
the confining restrictions of church, family, and country (patriotism), and to ultimately find
himself as an individual and artist. Most of these struggles are very similar to things that all of us
have gone through(with exception of becoming an artist). I think many of the problems he faced
were a little amplified, and that helped show what kind of person Stephen was. He was very
thoughtful and he tried, like many of us to fit into many places that he didn't naturally fit.
All through the book Stephen changes schools and is never accepted by the other kids at
the school. Eventually he decides to stand up for himself by talking to the school master after
being punished unfairly. He is rewarded for his bravery and begins to be accepted by his peers.
But he still doesn't quite fit in.
The thing that stuck out most to me was the jesuit priests and how they preached about
hell and damnation. I thought it was an extreme way to try and control the way the kids act. It
seemed as though they were trying to scare them into being good instead of having them do it for
the right reasons. Ultimately scaring people into something rarely works. If you want them to do
something they have to do it for the right reasons or they will not continue to do it in the future.
One of the most interesting things for me was seeing the way Joyce used the imagery, he
is so good with words. I enjoy reading the vivid descriptions he uses and find myself forming a
mental picture much easier than I do when reading other books. One thing I disliked about this
book was the lack of plot. I t was difficult to find a story line to follow. While the creative style,
imagery and wording of the book interested me I did find it hard at times to continue reading
because there was nothing that made me want to continue to the next chapter. Nothing that
caught my attention and made me want to find out what happens next.
Overall I would recommend this book because of it's creative style and great word usage.
I think if you read this book through and give it a chance, then you will be satisfied. With this
book you do have to read all the way to the end or it will seem like a waste of your time.

"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is James Joyce's autobiographical novel, first appeared in book form in 1916. After over 80 years it is still read and studied all over the world highlighting the place it has received in literature. It portrays the early and teenage life of Stephen Dedalus. This is the same character who later appears in 'Ulysses' (1922) as a matured adult.

Joyce walks us through the life of Stephen Dedalus in five stages written in a third-person narrative. Anyone interested in Joyce's intellectual, spiritual and physical journey of life should read this great classic which is the prelude to 'Ulysses', one of the best novels ever written in the 20th centaury.

As Ezra Pound correctly predicted 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' would "remain a permanent part of English literature" for centuries similar to the place 'Ulysses' has reached in literature.

Ulysses is great fun. It takes a bit more work to read than most books, just as it takes a bit more work to play tennis than it does to play catch. You shouldn't feel compelled to put the work in, any more than you should feel compelled to learn an unusually difficult sport. But people who do put the work in and who have a good time doing it shouldn't be made to feel guilty about it either. It's a pleasure to follow the interweaving lines of the Sirens chapter, for instance, and anyone who does it will see that the chapter is alive in a way that almost nothing else is in literature. Joyce is a terrific comic writer and a terrific creator of vivid, complicated characters. But he requires the reader to put in some extra effort to enjoy how good he is, and I can't blame anyone who gives up after a few pages and refuses to go any further. On the other hand, I've noticed that people who don't like Joyce's approach seem to want to attack people who do. This is silly. Again, it's like hating people for playing basketball just because you prefer skateboarding. Both the Joyce lovers and the Joyce haters should lighten up a bit.

There is not a book out there that is more frustrating than James Joyce's Ulysses...unless, of course, it is Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. The problem lies in the fact that this novel is such an amazing piece of art that the reader can feel like Joyce forgot all about him. It is almost impossible to read by oneself with it's seemingly garbled maze of words and phrases and madness. However, this is what makes it such a joy to read. Imagine that an author decided to do away with any and all rules concerning fiction and to write a book that was it's own entity, showing you what it wanted to show you, telling you what it wanted to tell you and acting like its own character. This is what Joyce has accomplished with Ulysses. I was fortunate enough to read this book in a class, four months of nothing but Ulysses, and I have to warn would be readers that I don't think I would have made it through without expert guidance. I would advise anyone wishing to tackle this literary giant to gather some book loving friends, and a guidebook or two for Ulysses, and to take it very slowly. Read a chapter a week and then meet up with you group to discuss and puzzle out what you have just read. I am willing to bet that your weekly conversations will be a greater work of art than any book out there, and I think that Joyce would have liked that, would have enjoyed sparking debates and conversation, its probably the main reason why anyone creates anything; for it to be enjoyed and shared. The story line is simple, you have two main characters, Stephen Dedalus, the brilliant but alienated loner. You have Leopold Bloom, a simple man who is as alienated as Stephen, but not for his mind, for his cultural background and meek manner. The entire book takes place over the course of one day in Dublin, and after the first three chapters the entire book simply follows Bloom around during a day when he knows that his wife is having a romantic meeting with her lover. It is hard to sum up such a giant book in a few sentences like this, but basically Bloom is trying to set his life back on track, trying to reconcile himself with his wife's betrayal, and trying to reach out to Stephen who he feels could use a loving family. Of course, you could read this book and not find any of what I am saying in there, but the beauty of Ulysses is that I would love to hear what it is that you found in this novel as much as I would love sharing what I found.

It's great fun to observe the rancorous--at times vicious--debate this book has engendered among and between its admirers and detractors. Whatever else might be said of "Ulysses," it's clear that everyone who has read it (and even those who have not) has an opinion about it. But for those who are leery of beginning a book of this size and complexity without some guarantee that it is as "GREAT" as its admirers proclaim it to be, I offer these words of advice: take it slowly, don't get overly bogged down by the unorthodox style, and make a diligent effort to understand what Joyce is trying to say. It's easy to treat his ramblings as the workings of a drunk or inscrutable genius, and to "force" one's way through the book without getting anything out of it. I read "Ulysses" for the first time last summer, without annotations and with only a brief on-line summary of each chapter as my guide, and I'm sure I missed an awful lot. But I loved "Ulysses" nonetheless. The inventive style, the devious puns, the poetic prose--all of it amounts to a reading experience that will reward the patient and persistent with a tremendous intellectual and aesthetic (if not emotional) payoff. While it is not my favorite book of all time, I agree with those who say it's the most important novel of the twentieth-century. It so completely altered the literary landscape of its day that, 80 years after its publication, its effects are still being felt (but not always acknowledged) in the works of contemporary writers.

If you want to read this book only because you've been told it was "great" or to tell others you read it (and thus sound "intelligent"), pick up the Cliffs Notes and save yourself some time. If you honestly want to understand *why* this book is frequently cited as the best of the twentieth century, dig in. I plan to revisit "Ulysses" myself in the not-so-distant future.

The Wake is reviewed by so many people who haven't read it!

1. How can anyone familiar with Joseph Campbell's "Wings of Art" or "Skeleton Key", or even John Bishop's "Joyce's Book of the Dark", suggest that the Wake is not great art?

The greatest novelist of the 20th century did not spend 17 of his most creative years on a prank. Joyce had a flair for foreign languages, regarded Catholicism as "a beautiful lie", had at his disposal the collective wisdom of East and West, was EXTREMELY well read, gifted in music, delighted in wordplay, extensively researched the psychology of sleep, and was notoriously autobiographical in his literary productions...

Joyce describes a night's dream in both biographical (Freudian) and archetypal (Jungian) terms: brother against brother conflict, inevitable haunting guilt ("this municipal sin business"), raging lust percolating through "the fury and the mire of human veins", chrysalis-like psychological dependence on (temporal and ecclesiastical) authority, ultimate redemption through love, inevitable death...These situations characterize both human history and tomorrow morning's news.

And so, the Wake is OUR dream: each of us is the poor harried protagonist Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, subjected to the cold patrician ridicule of the Four Customers and Twelve Jurymen and burdened by guilt and the misplaced faith of our personal and collective innocence.

Those with little patience for Joyce's presentation are not willing to reassess what a book should convey or else lack a herculean desire for wordplay. In defence of detractors, knowledge of at least one foreign language probably helps, as does general knowledge of comparative religion and mythology, Vico's historical cycles, Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, alchemy, Biblical tales, childrens' games, the history of English literature, etc...

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to approaching the Wake is that many readers come in bad faith, unwilling to believe that an order is there, hidden in the obscure labyrinth of protean wordplay.

If you want to turn the lead of the Wake into gold, then you must be a modern-day alchemist. And do not expect to complete the Great Work without much meditation and effort.

OK, first of all, I can't help but notice that in many of the negative reviews of Finnegans Wake the reviewer admitted to "not getting past the first page" or some such thing. I think that anybody trying to read this book needs to realize that it's not nearly as difficult as it seems on first impression. You need to approach it with an open mind, though. Don't expect it to follow any familiar rules, and don't feel lost when it doesn't. People who couldn't get past the first few pages probably let their biases of what a novel "should be" interfere with their enjoyment of the book.

Example: I just started reading FW for the first time, and I'm about halfway through it. So far I've enjoyed it thoroughly. I'm also a 17 year old senior in high school. I don't have the background to understand many of Joyce's allusions, I only speak two (English and Spanish) of the sixty languages he uses. But I still understand enough to know that I like what I'm reading. And even when I don't understand, it doesn't matter - simply the sound of the language is enjoyable. "As we there are where are we are we there from tomtittot to teetootomtotalitarian. Tea tea too oo." What the hell does that mean? Who knows! But it doesn't matter, it rocks!

The point is that with an open mind and occasional extra research, I've gotten something out of Finnegans Wake. I know I haven't even scratched the surface, but it just goes to show that as inaccessible as this book may seem, there is something in it for everyone.

I've just reached the end ... or is it the beginning? It's taken me six months, with Anthony Burgess' 'Here Comes Everybody' providing a basic and unsatisfactory commentary on this nightmare of a book. I can't really recommend anybody to read this unless you know exactly what you're letting yourself in for ... unlike Ulysses, which I believe everybody should attempt at some point in their lives. So why have I given it 5 stars? Because it simply had to be written.

Without the Wake, twentieth century fiction would have been simply an extension of the nineteenth century. This book is what sets us apart. Don't believe the people who tell you it's a joke - a genius like Joyce doesn't spend 15 years, resign himself to penury when a "Ulysses Lite" could have made him a rich man, and ultimately ruin his eyesight all for nothing more than the literary equivalent of a whoopee cushion. There are deep things here, it's just that they're buried so deep that it's mostly not worth the effort of mining them. But again, I've given it 5 stars because this book is like a nail bomb in a library (shhhhh!) - it destroyed everyone's perception of what could ever constitute literature. If the Wake can be created, anything is possible. The Wake gave the green light to everyone's wildest imaginings and bizarre method of telling it - after all, whatever you write it won't be as difficult or as slow or as mad or as painful as this work.

Don't let anybody tell you that there is an easy way into this book. Whichever way you approach it, however many primers and explanations you read, nothing will prepare you for 650 pages of dense dream-imagery written in polyglottal puns through which you grasp at anything that makes the slightest sense (and I mean slightest). The basic story of a publican dreaming over the repercussions of being caught urinating in a public park by two soldiers and then being accused of indecent exposure is by the by and of little import, because it is so thoroughly buried beneath hundreds of layers of Irish, oedipal and religious history, myth and gossip and the minutiae of everyday life transfigured by dream, that it would be easy to miss (and if you did, it wouldn't be a problem anyway - this is hardly narrative-driven). There are moments of comedy, but they're few and far between. The publican becomes the man-myth-mountain Finnegan, who represents Ireland, his forgiving and defending wife becomes Anna Livia Plurabella, the river Liffy and mother nature herself - reading the book is a battle that's impossible to win and you ultimately simply surrender yourself to the flow, the cycle of life which, like water taken from the sea to clouds to rain to rivers to sea to clouds .... takes you from the end to flow back to the beginning without even a full stop to halt things. I wondered whether it would make more sense the second time round, then decided that I didn't really care to find out.

So, be glad that you don't have to read this book, but you should all definitely celebrate that it was written.