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Here are my favorite reads for the week:
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
I was pleasantly surprised at how accessible this book really is. Granted, Portrait is supposed to be a lot easier than Joyce’s master tomes Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake, but still, I think the general plot and overall themes should be fairly transparent to an experienced reader.
There are a lot of very specific Irish references that I didn’t understand, but the contexts in which they appear help get the necessary points across.
Ok, I will say that there is an entire section of the book, starting right after the sermon and going for most of chapter 4, that is very very difficult. I would read the same sentence over and over again with no clue as to what it said.
But the weird thing is, if I just kept reading, kept pushing through without pausing for rereads, the events of the plot would just materialize. It’s very strange.
Perhaps related to this, another strange phenomenon that I experienced was the sensation of not processing words yet getting meaning anyway. When I read, I’m usually aware that I’m reading words. The words sort of hit my mind like when typewriter arms fly up to strike the queued paper.
But with Portrait, I could read a paragraph and know exactly what happened. Yet if I covered up the paragraph, I couldn’t tell you one single word in it. Even a guess at the or a would be a complete shot in the dark. There’s no way I would bet my life on their existence.
I wonder if this is just me. I noticed this odd sensation all the way through. It’s strange to have a completely different reading experience this late into the game.
It’s not a spoiler to say that this book is presented to you through the main character Stephen Dedalus’s consciousness—meaning that what you read is presented through the prism of his awareness. So when he is a child, we just get sights and sounds as they would be processed by a child. I wonder if James Joyce was so good at presenting through someone’s mind, that he would have gotten me to a mental state beyond conveyance by words? And that’s why I knew but could not read?
I gotta say one more time that this is weird. I can’t figure it out!
Beyond this, I’m sorry to say that the story and character did not move me much. I understand that this book set the standard for much of the modern era’s literature, but for me, reading it now, there doesn’t seem to be much that is inspiring-ly unique to the character or plot.
1001 Books To Read Before You Die list: 84 down.
1% Well Read Challenge: two down, eleven to go.
New Author Challenge: eight completed, seven to go.
There’s not a lot I want to say about this episode. It was downright boring with nothing new offered. Rehashing Mickey Smith? Really?
All the issues brought up and past guilt cards played are old hat by now. I’m not one to say that the well can’t be returned to time and time again, but when you do, it can’t be in a tired way.
I’m no longer liking Amy, and when the Doctor does things like putting his hands over people’s mouths so they can’t talk, I’m not really liking him in those moments either. Imagine him doing that to Donna!
I really hope this show doesn’t turn bad for me. I have nothing else on to watch!