Tiny Money Land

JUST FINISHED: Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man by James Joyce. Or "base camp" on the climb to Ulysses.

Almost universally hailed as a major achievement at the time, Portrait seeks to trace the youth, upbringing, and (especially) internal life of Stephen Dedalus in 1890s Ireland. As very little is spelled out in concrete terms, it is a book that pays back your attention, with much of the story being in the periphery. We literally begin with Stephen's earliest memory and as his experience grows, the narration of his thoughts grow suitably more complex. We get fragments, vignettes, longer episodes, which may not mean much by themselves, but like a pointilist painting, we get a remarkable picture when we zoom out for the wide view.

I'm inclined to agree with the critics who see a definite form in these incidents. Stephen seems to be a very familiar adolescent (and, these days, adult) type, swept up by epiphanies which change everything in a flash, then gradually rolling down the other side of the mountain into disillusionment. That the bulk of the action takes places in Dedalus' head casts the rhythm of his thoughts in a sharper focus, and that it all takes place in the shadow of the Irish Catholic church only feeds the fire.

You could easily see the point of view on the church and its schools as the flipside of early George Carln routines ("I started out Irish Catholic; now I'm an American"), only in earnest instead of in jest. This is understandable, since Carlin's material came from the perspective of an adult who got out of the system in one piece; since Stephen is a work-in-progress, he doesn't have that option, making the same topics into bottomless wells of despair. The incident of the religious retreat, with the priest talking on the topic of Hell in unrelenting detail, turns up the heat on young Dedalus' imagination to the point where he feels like he's in the pit with the damned. The unspoken background of Carlin's "They were pushing for pain, while we were pulling for pleasure"? It does give you something to think about the next time you push play on Class Clown...and I'll bet that Stephen never took lightly going to Hell on a "meat rap."

Of course, this is taking the book strictly at face value, which some commentators say could be a mistake, but it all paints a vivid picture, possibly moreso than a "straight" narrative could. While it was a bit confusing in places, I found Portrait to be thoroughly involving.

Portrait, like most of Joyce, is in the public domain, so if you're not up to putting down a few bucks for it, you can get the text from Gutenberg. There's also more than a few web pages which tie into the book, and Brandon Kershner's page contains a glossary of less familiar words, as well as a summary of critical reaction over the years. It might also be worth some time to have a look at Stephen Hero, a partially destroyed first draft version of the story, but I'm not commenting on it sight unseen.