Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

I finally finished this book last Wednesday. I've been thinking about what to write ever since then. It should be short and simple: don't waste your precious time reading this book. Yes, I understand that the book was important in changing the structure of the novel and being among the first to experiment with stream-of-consciousness narration. However that makes this book valuable in an historical sense, and thus of value to English Lit grad students, but to a general reader, I don't think there's much here to be concerned with.

Stephen Dedalus is the main character of the book (and a thinly veiled alter ego of James Joyce himself). Born into a decent family, his father spends the family into penury over the years. Stephen goes to a Catholic boarding school run by the Jesuits, but then the family can't afford to send him any longer. So then he goes a day school run by the Christian Brothers. During all this, Stephen's story is surrounded by the Irish national politics of the day (mainly independence from England). And while I'm very interested in the history of Irish nationalism, Joyce makes it unintelligible and uninteresting. Stephen is a very religious boy, but during his adolescence he's led to discover the temptations of the flesh and has his first sexual encounter with a prostitute. He also engages in other "sinful" activities and is shamed by them but he enjoys them too much to give them up. Then he goes on a church retreat and Joyce goes on a rampage. Twelve or so pages describing Hell and the punishments for sinners. At this Stephen reverts to his pious ways. So much so, one of the Jesuits asks him to consider joining the order. Stephen declines and goes off to college. There he learns that beauty is worth pursuing for its own sake. And thus he must leave the religious and political shackles of his homeland to make good in his study of beauty.

That's the story. Basically a coming of age story that could have been told in a hundred or so pages. Instead, expressing contempt for his readers the entire time, Joyce makes the book twice as long as it needs to be. Further, Stephen isn't even a particularly likeable character. He's a shy kid who turns into a stuffy zealot and then into an insufferable prat in college. Ok Stephen, you've read Aquinas and Aristotle, that doesn't mean that you have some tremendously developed philosophy of beauty and aesthetics.

The book could have been greatly improved if someone had introduced Joyce to the period. His sentences, even the ones that aren't stream of consciousness based, tend to run on and on. I'm not saying he needed to be Hemingway or that I don't enjoy a challenge. What I'm saying is, bunches of four and five line sentences are taxing on the reader and take away from plot and character development just so you can show off that you can construct a fancy sentence. Just for fun, I went back to the 9th grade tool of trying to diagram a complex sentence of Joyce's. I assure you that unless you're a 9th grade English teacher who's well versed in diagramming, it can't be done. It's possible it can't even be done then. It's a shame because there are flashes of descriptive brilliance in the novel.

Simply put, I detested this book because I believe the writer didn't care about his readers. He was more interested in gimmickry and showing off his skills with the language. It doesn't make for a good read.