Is this any good? I never see it being mentioned in here. I just finished Dubliners and I'm not sure if I read this or skip it and read Ulysses.
Its pretty important to understanding Ulysses better.
>>7604312
Really? I feel like I see it mentioned here all the time and that almost every time it's mentioned it's because someone has something good to say about it.
It's unbearably Irish.
just started it today op. it's very readable, you could knock it out in a 1-3 days if you want to.
>>7604343
The main character of A portrait appears in Ulysses, so if you give half a fuck.
>>7604319
>>7604343
>>7604393
>>7604555
Thanks for the insights. I decided I'm going to read it.
its great albeit a bit boring at times.
I love it. Enjoyed it much more than Ulysses personally, though I'm sure that's mostly on me for being a pleb.
The personality of the artist, at first a cry or a cadence or a mood and then a fluid and lambent narrative, finally refines itself out of existence, impersonalizes itself, so to speak. The esthetic image in the dramatic form is life purified in and reprojected from the human imagination. The mystery of esthetic like that of material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.
—Trying to refine them also out of existence, said Lynch.
here you go, the only worthwhile line in the entirety of the novel. now you can read Ulysses, as well as appreciate what he was trying to do in Dubliners.
>>7604938
Fuck no.
Portrait is great. And reading them in order shows the evolution of his prose, culminating in finnegans wake.
>>7604312
I didn't like it that much. At difference of Dubliners or Ulysses, I find Portrait to have many lows throughout the book.
Some moments were amazing, but others were incredibly boring.
I still have to hear a convincing reason to the praise most people give to it - say for example, "Portrait is one of the best books of the past century". Very well may be many of them, but for the most part, at least here, a place with a considerable number of snobs, most of the praise it receives is because
>muh joyce
rather than because of any literary qualities in comparison with the many books of the last century.
Portrait turns 100 this year
>>7604864
make sure you get to the second chapter. the prose gets super nice in chapter two. chapter one was nostalgic and fun but whoah man, gets way better.
>>7606192
I, too, believe Joyce is one of the few greats you should definitely read in order.
Chapter three is the best part. Me and my friends got really high and I told them the gritty way the priest describes the length of eternity in the hellfire speech and we all had crises.
>reading Dubliners
>second story
>uh this day I didn't go to school and some pedo talked to me
what am I missing here? I found the story funny, the prose nice, but I miss the point. Same thing with the story about the race and the french guys and the hungarian
Is it just supposed to be scenes from Dublin?
>>7608072
each story culminates in epiphany. don't stop, they build up to the last story which is sublime.
If you grew up anywhere in the poor to lower middle class income range, this book is probably going to be surprisingly impactfultfw you see the parts you hate about yourself in college aged Stephen
>>7604312
For what it's worth - I enjoyed it more than Ulysses
>>7604319
2nding this. Also, make sure you start with the God damn Greeks.
>>7604312
>I never see it being mentioned in here
true in the past half a year
>>7608293
>tfw
I see it too much. Can't help myself. I think a lot of people who read joyce really relate to Stephen, whether in an arrogant or uncomfortable way.
>>7609465
If I ever get high with a group of people, I'm going to be sure to bring finnegans wake.
>>7609492
>If I ever get high
Or you could not and continue along the high road.
>>7609492
you won't impress anybody and somebody will tear the pages out for a roach
portrait is joyce's worst book, which still places it somewhere in the vicinity of top 200 books ever DESU.
>>7609533
I liked it more than Dubliners but maybe I'm a pleb.
>>7608072
It's a book of everyday disappointment Think of it as an answer to romanticism. In every story in Dubliners idealism loses to reality in an epiphany of disappointment.
>>7609604
Portrait is a foray into the kind of stylistic innovations that would be perfected, or at least significantly improved upon, in Ulysses. As a standalone work it has flaws, but they tend to get overlooked and the book overrated as a result of the subject matter; specifically, a book about an aspiring writer/artist and his turmoil/suffering does wonders when the readership on this board has a lot of overlap and similarities with the main character.
Dubliners does what it sets out to do basically perfectly, but has a very banal subject matter and lacks the stylistic flare in Ulysses, which leads to it being underrated by most casual readers.
>>7609923
What i'm trying to say is Stephen Dedalus, were he real and alive today, would be a /lit/ shitposter.
What books do I have to read before Joyce ? Homer?
Dubliners = The reason you started browsing 4chan.
Portrait = Your despair in being on 4chan and enjoying nothing, but seeing no way forward.
Ulysses = Your interests outside of 4chan rekindled by a new friend, and your pleasure in shitposting found, while browsing patrician boards daily.
>>7609953
odyssey, divine comedy, hamlet are the big 3
>>7609953
You can read Dubliners and Portrait without much beforehand, but before tackling Ulysses, if you haven't tackled Joyce before with a basic appreciation of the essential greeks (and possibly the Bible), then you're fucked.
>>7604555
Appears? Did you read Ulysses?
>>7604312
It's genius.
Contains my second favourite scene in all of literature.
>>7609927
Buck Mulligan would probably like /lit/
>>7610647
That scene being?
And what's your favorite scene in all of literature?
>>7610453
Stephen Dedalus, hello?
>>7609953
The Greeks (Refer to the Greeks chart, go through the whole chart)
The Bible
Summa Theologica
Dubliners
Portrait
Fucking cracker of a book if you are into literature more per say then just decent stories and plot
The guy asking before about a few of the stories, a few of the stories you can deeply analyze such as the dead, while a few others are best enjoyed by giving you a general sentiment of life as a middle class Dubliner
The story about the race was quite good, the fellow inquiring before, the man has an epiphany, the epiphany being, DONT KNOW HOW TO SPOLIER SO QUIT READING IF YOU MUST, that his friends are dicks, rich toffs and aren't true friends
>>7611644
Fuck, thought we were talking about Dubliners. I'm also curious if it is any good, I have I siting on my table as we speak
I would rec it. It's a fun quick read.
I read it for the first time recently, my first forray into Joyce and I loved every second of it. Some people are saying it has "boring" parts or just outright bad parts, but with no evidence. Which parts of the book are you guys talking about?
>>7612680
For starters, the whole third chapter
>>7612698
And what about it was boring? I thought the depictions of hell were endearing and frightful. Maybe my being brought up in Catholic School and actually having retreats (not nearly as melancholy and hellfire-induced as Portrait) helped me to identify with the scene and Stephen's feelings during it.
Not to jump to any conclusion, but do you generally dislike religion and maybe imposed your own feelings onto the scene? Or did you just think it was redundant in the sense that Dante already did it?
I absolutely loved it. Read it when I was sixteen. Picked it up for 50 cents and it's my favourite physical book I own.
