portrait! artist!

Caution: If you read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man while half-asleep, you may very well have dreams about it. In my experience. :P

Buuut, yes, I'm reading this book for English class, and I like it very much. I've been looking forward to it all semester, especially when we spent three months stuck in Hamlet (I now do not want to look at Hamlet for a very, very long time). I've never read James Joyce before, but I always had the suspicion that I would like him because everyone else always said that he wrote very strangely. And I was right, I do like his odd style. He wrote the way thoughts are thought: not neat and in a straight line but jumpy and cylical and whichway but more fun because they're like that.

I like his style because it's how I try to write stories sometimes. Not a set trajectory or arc of plot but a roaming about and turning things in on themselves. Weird to realize I've been trying to write like Joyce while never having read Joyce.

But, for Portrait specifically, I like the first chapter and am now in the third chapter. In the second chapter Stephen was dreadfully pretentious but I still like the book because it seems like just the character was being pretentious, not the author. The way Stephen does things sometimes, or says or thinks things, just seems like it is open for criticism and eye-rolling, not meant to be taken absolutely seriously. Hopefully.