Fairly standard first novel, looks more inward than outward, not very clear/focused on in its goals, over reaches, etc. But it is good and like the other meme trilogy author's first works it defined him as an author and it has a quality which he never quite managed to reproduce. The arrogance of youth is not all bad.
The parts were hes a kid are the peak. Expect alot of Christian fearmongering im all for praising the lord but it is a bit excessive in the halfway point
>it is a bit excessive
That was the point. The mental state of Irish Catholicism had to be made perfectly clear so that the significance of Stephen's outgrowing it could be made clear.
>Last and crowning torture of all the tortures of that awful place is the eternity of hell. Eternity! O, dread and dire word. Eternity! What mind of man can understand it? And remember, it is an eternity of pain. Even though the pains of hell were not so terrible as they are, yet they would become infinite, as they are destined to last for ever. But while they are everlasting they are at the same time, as you know, intolerably intense, unbearably extensive. To bear even the sting of an insect for all eternity would be a dreadful torment. What must it be, then, to bear the manifold tortures of hell for ever? For ever! For all eternity! Not for a year or for an age but for ever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness; and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away, and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time the mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would scarcely have begun.
I wonder whether the whiggish understanding of history that liberals have is supposed to be a substitute for punishment and rewards in the afterlife. You know, how there's a "good" side and a "bad" side of history, how depending on one's actions in this life people can either join the heavenly host on the "good" side or be damned to the bottomless abyss of the "bad" side.
I’m gonna give a hot take that’s gonna make IQfy seethe. Portrait and Dubliners were peak Joyce and showed the potential of one of the best writers in the English language but he never lived up to that potential and that INCLUDES Ulysses. He was simply too interested in the smell of her farts.
absolutely filtered, Ulysses is beautiful. The argument that Joyce became too pretentious only works for Finnegans Wake and even then it ignores his absolutely genius play with myth and etymology.
Never said it wasn’t beautiful anon. I said he never lived up to the potential of what could have been. And I mean that as a compliment to just how influential he’s been and STILL didn’t live up to it.
I haven't read it but it's extremely easy to be pretentious while doing that
11 months ago
Anonymous
It sounds like you haven't read Joyce at all. He had a loathing for high-mindedness and self-importance and was always looking to deflate it. Read the Proteus chapter of Ulysses.
11 months ago
Anonymous
I was making a general statement, not one about Joyce. "It pokes fun at itself so it can't be pretentious" is just bullshit on the face of it, that's really common for pretentious art. (Including pretentious art I like.)
I'm currently reading Dubliners, with only The Dead to go. It'll be a while before I get to Ulysses.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>with only The Dead to go.
Damn. Wish I could read that for the first time again.
I think the influence of Ulysses on English lit is enough to say he lived up to his potential and even if he did not he still did better than all but a very small handful.
why is this board so obsessed with age? age is just a number. Some are very mature at 12 while others are still children at 30
Most of the board is either 16 years old (destined for greatness once people stop telling them when to go to bed) or people in the throes of baby's first midlife crisis (I am a normie and was never destined for greatness like I believed when I was 16). Age is about all they can see.
This. A Portrait is technically brilliant. Sections of Ulysses are great. And the book is a great book. But it’s sui generis. It is, in that sense, artistically sterile.
Compare this to the late novels of Henry James. Yes, they have their peculiarities and even artistic crudities. But the method is something a would be novelist can work with and learn from. This is true for the Joyce of A Portrait. The method is very different to James. It’s a very “painterly” method. Dramatic situations and themes are given in the form of little paintings. But you can learn from it.
The scene where Stephen goes for a long walk to his family's house and his little sibling speaks to him in pig latin that they're getting evicted because they're so poor, then all the kids turn on the radio and start singing John McCormack songs is absolute peak fiction across every genre. it's too good
Fairly standard first novel, looks more inward than outward, not very clear/focused on in its goals, over reaches, etc. But it is good and like the other meme trilogy author's first works it defined him as an author and it has a quality which he never quite managed to reproduce. The arrogance of youth is not all bad.
He was 34
Youth is more than literal age, he was very much still young and arrogant as writer. Autistic?
why are you so triggered snowflake?
what makes him a snowflake you moron?
why is this board so obsessed with age? age is just a number. Some are very mature at 12 while others are still children at 30
Pedophile
My dead king!
The parts were hes a kid are the peak. Expect alot of Christian fearmongering im all for praising the lord but it is a bit excessive in the halfway point
He was an Irishman raised in late 19th century Dublin. Like…what the frick did you expect?
So was Yeats
The lecture about hell is scary as frick. Imagine what it would do to an impressionable youth in the Catholic theme park that was Ireland.
>it is a bit excessive
That was the point. The mental state of Irish Catholicism had to be made perfectly clear so that the significance of Stephen's outgrowing it could be made clear.
One of the best speeches on hell in literature
>and the fire will be hot
>and it will burn
>and then times that by a billion
>Last and crowning torture of all the tortures of that awful place is the eternity of hell. Eternity! O, dread and dire word. Eternity! What mind of man can understand it? And remember, it is an eternity of pain. Even though the pains of hell were not so terrible as they are, yet they would become infinite, as they are destined to last for ever. But while they are everlasting they are at the same time, as you know, intolerably intense, unbearably extensive. To bear even the sting of an insect for all eternity would be a dreadful torment. What must it be, then, to bear the manifold tortures of hell for ever? For ever! For all eternity! Not for a year or for an age but for ever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness; and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away, and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time the mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would scarcely have begun.
That Catholic psyop playbook must be thousands of pages long.
I wonder whether the whiggish understanding of history that liberals have is supposed to be a substitute for punishment and rewards in the afterlife. You know, how there's a "good" side and a "bad" side of history, how depending on one's actions in this life people can either join the heavenly host on the "good" side or be damned to the bottomless abyss of the "bad" side.
Probably, with the decline of religion, religious impulses are often sublimated into secular aspects of life like politics.
I’m gonna give a hot take that’s gonna make IQfy seethe. Portrait and Dubliners were peak Joyce and showed the potential of one of the best writers in the English language but he never lived up to that potential and that INCLUDES Ulysses. He was simply too interested in the smell of her farts.
absolutely filtered, Ulysses is beautiful. The argument that Joyce became too pretentious only works for Finnegans Wake and even then it ignores his absolutely genius play with myth and etymology.
>became too pretentious
>AFTER "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"
Never said it wasn’t beautiful anon. I said he never lived up to the potential of what could have been. And I mean that as a compliment to just how influential he’s been and STILL didn’t live up to it.
How is the Wake "pretentious" when it's constantly poking fun at everything, including itself?
I haven't read it but it's extremely easy to be pretentious while doing that
It sounds like you haven't read Joyce at all. He had a loathing for high-mindedness and self-importance and was always looking to deflate it. Read the Proteus chapter of Ulysses.
I was making a general statement, not one about Joyce. "It pokes fun at itself so it can't be pretentious" is just bullshit on the face of it, that's really common for pretentious art. (Including pretentious art I like.)
I'm currently reading Dubliners, with only The Dead to go. It'll be a while before I get to Ulysses.
>with only The Dead to go.
Damn. Wish I could read that for the first time again.
There's literally nothing wrong with your writing being personal and autobiographical.
I think the influence of Ulysses on English lit is enough to say he lived up to his potential and even if he did not he still did better than all but a very small handful.
Most of the board is either 16 years old (destined for greatness once people stop telling them when to go to bed) or people in the throes of baby's first midlife crisis (I am a normie and was never destined for greatness like I believed when I was 16). Age is about all they can see.
>seethe
You should hope.
This. A Portrait is technically brilliant. Sections of Ulysses are great. And the book is a great book. But it’s sui generis. It is, in that sense, artistically sterile.
Compare this to the late novels of Henry James. Yes, they have their peculiarities and even artistic crudities. But the method is something a would be novelist can work with and learn from. This is true for the Joyce of A Portrait. The method is very different to James. It’s a very “painterly” method. Dramatic situations and themes are given in the form of little paintings. But you can learn from it.
>title says portrait
>cover shows a photograph
???
some pretty good autofiction
This is the only book by him I enjoyed. It’s about a lad and his schoolmates. And HELL
A Portrait of the OP as a Young gay
The scene where Stephen goes for a long walk to his family's house and his little sibling speaks to him in pig latin that they're getting evicted because they're so poor, then all the kids turn on the radio and start singing John McCormack songs is absolute peak fiction across every genre. it's too good
boredom
read Dubliners or Ulysses instead
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