No small portion of my annoyance with Joyce’s Portrait of The Artist As a Young Man is some of the repetitious use of words that are common perhaps to time and place, but would be much more readily accepted even almost a century later if they were not overused by Joyce:
Was that a sin for Fater Arnall to be in a wax or was he allowed to get into a wax when the boys were idle because that made them study better or was he only letting on to be in a wax? (p. 48)
Happily I’m through this first section of the novel and it appears that in the next Stephen will be out of school. There has been some tension–quite a bit of it–regarding religion and politices that has taken place in a conversation at the family dinner table, and I suspect that this is Joyce’s laying of groundwork for deeper exploration in the story.
Joyce’s style of switching back and forth between place and time in this period of Stephen’s life is nicely done, and the transition is made mainly through Stephen’s frame of mind that opens up an avenue to a relative event. Once you get used to it, it works very well, not only to delve into backstory and circumstance but to move the pace of the story along while foreshadowing what we feel Stephen may be facing in his future.
I’m still not a great fan of James Joyce, but I’m determined to get through this.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
This may sound corny and if you do it just here and there with difficult passages, it may help – but read it aloud, and particularly with a lilt; not necessarily pretending to be Irish, but just enough to remember that Joyce’s English is quite lyrical. It’s the rhythm that those repetitions produce and that, I believe is the key to enjoying the novel (one of my favorites, I might ad)
Ah, first you unlocked the secret to Faulkner and now to Joyce to keep me reading. Thank you; I’m sure your helpful hints will keep me turning knobs and opening new doors!