Stephen Hero
Stephen Hero is a posthumously published autobiographical novel by Irish author James Joyce. It is the early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Its published form reflects only a portion of the manuscript: the first 518 pages have disappeared; 383 pages remain.
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What Hacker News says
- They probably wanted to publish the work but couldn't do it, so they left it up to chance. If one really wants to destroy their work, they throw it into the fire like James Joyce did with Stephen Hero, or what became Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Fortunately his wife Nora was quick enough to save it, helped by his sister. I tried to read it but only made it to chapter three.
- Stephen's theories aren't Joyce's theories, and the style in which Joyce writes is never Joyce's voice, in the sense that writers today are always prattling on about 'finding their voice' (the styles of Dubliners, Portrait, Ulysses, and the Wake accomplish very different things).
The tragedy of Portrait is that so many people read it as if it were simple autobiography. It isn't. Stephen is based on the young Joyce, yes, and in the original draft and notes (mostly destroyed, published as Stephen Hero) there's a saccharine sincerity that fits your sense of the book a little better.
But that's not the finished Portrait. In Portrait Joyce makes fun of himself. He's critical of his youthful exuberance. It's a hilarious book for anyone who's ever taken themselves too seriously, which, I think, is all of us.
