A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Paperback/James Joyce

A masterpiece of modern fiction, James Joyce's semiautobiographical first novel follows Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive and creative youth who rebels against his family, his education, and his country by committing himself to the artist's life. ``I will not serve,`` vows Dedalus, ``that in which I no longer believe...and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can.`` Likening himself to God, Dedalus notes that the artist ``remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.`` Joyce's rendering of the impressions of childhood broke ground in the use of language. ``He took on the almost infinite English language,`` Jorge Luis Borges said once. ``He wrote in a language invented by himself....Joyce brought a new music to English.`` A bold literary experiment, this classic has had a huge and lasting influence on the contemporary novel. With an Introduction by Langdon Hammer