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James Joyce - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Big Book List)

 I could write forever about this book, as I assume many have. Joyce is a significant personage to undertake it seems, and I have not dealt with Joyce properly in my time in the my life of letters and I am glad that this project put this book squarely in my path. I tried reading this book a long time ago for the same sense of duty to classic literature that similarly gives its inspiration and lifeblood to this project as well. I couldn't get very far into the book at all, and left it undone. I probably resorted to reading Dubliners instead because it was a much more approachable text than either Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake. I hadn't realized how similar my life has been, strictly in a personal sense to that of Joyce's. I have had many, many jobs as he struggled with employment early in his life. 

He also contemplated joining the priesthood as I spent several years in seminary as well. It seems that after some time, Joyce rejected his faith outright which is not true for me but the separation from the life I once lived is the same. Stephen Dedalous mentions at one point to a peer, as they are reflecting on his time in preparation for a priestly life that he was a different person then and that was one of the truest lines I have ever read in fiction.

It may have been after this book, but it is almost a trope of the beginning of any self-respecting Irish author's book starts with their unusually harsh childhood. Joyce's childhood reveries do more than simply relate a difficult start, but the curious way that a child's mind would capture it. Writing from the perspective of a child must have been a great breakthrough of fiction at the time but this book is so influential that without having read the book thoroughly, I could retell you the beats of the story without the knowledge of it. Being shoved in the square ditch with the slimy water is so perfectly grotesque a detail for a child to remember, the one that someone saw a rat swim in once. It is almost funny if it wasn't so discomfiting. 

At one point there is a entire chapter part long sermon that as I was listening to this book as an audiobook, I thought to myself, is this section still going on. It is probably the length of a protestant sermon, Catholic homilies at least nowadays do not seem to go on this long. Things may have been different then. I am not deigning to give this classic book notes, but this sermoned seemed long and that is coming from a person who has written sermons before. 

I loved this book. It is clear why it is remembered, and if Ulysses or Finigan's Wake approach this level fo quality of thought and expression, then I have a great deal to look forward to in this project. There are moments from this text that will live on with me for some time, and for that I am eternally grateful. This may seem like it is a well-worn story, that of the seminarian who lost his faith, but I have not encountered it much in very good literature, and am glad for the tell of it here. 

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