A portrait of the artist as a young man

I couldn't finish it, no matter how hard I tried. Therefore, I won't rate it. I just couldn't finish it or get my bearings with what the point was. I caught myself re-reading the same pages over and over again and finally gave up. Just glad it was short and I didn't start off with something like "Dubliners" as my first foray into James Joyce's work. And considering this one's considered a stepping stone to THAT one... yeah, I think I'm not reading any more of his stuff.

Not my cup of tea, but could be yours. Feel free to take this with a grain of salt.

2.5/5

Enjoyed 'A Mother' and 'The Dead,' not much else.

I feel like it's a good book, but I just couldn't finish it. I don't know what it was, it's just the whole book felt annoying to read through. Nothing really happens and stuff is described well, which is like every other Murakami book, but in this case, it just felt like work.

The more I live, the more I feel that everything we do comes down to either trying to return to the womb or crudely constructing an artificial copy.

meh. It started off very interesting and reached its peak during the "hell lecture". Then just... flop. Joyce must have been a real joyless, sanctimonious prick as a young man. No thanks.

The rough original draft to "Portrait of the artist" and in my view much, much better.