Why did I love this book?
Joyce’s novel is the first of four literary works that helped me to envision myself as a writer. I read it in 11th grade.
The opening of the novel startles the reader because it uses language to depict the point of view of a baby’s first conscious thoughts, listening to a parent calling him by a nickname:
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face. He was baby tuckoo.
Joyce showed me that a written description like this wasn’t just trying to be a mirror of the world. A style of writing could also convey meaning and feeling. That was a revelation.
6 authors picked A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
A masterpiece of modern fiction, James Joyce's semiautobiographical first novel follows Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive and creative youth who rebels against his family, his education, and his country by committing himself to the artist's life.
"I will not serve," vows Dedalus, "that in which I no longer believe...and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can." Likening himself to God, Dedalus notes that the artist "remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails." Joyce's rendering of the impressions of…