THE PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, by James Joyce Considering the fact that the Portrait is a writing of a sort that the early reviewers had not encountered before it is understandable that Joyce was not praised by the critics while alive. Recognising the literary greatness of this novel seemed an almost impossible task at the time of its publishing. In a reader's report for the publisher Duckworth & Company, one of …showed first 75 words of 780 total…

…showed last 75 words of 780 total…the first chapter of Ulysses. He does not become an artist at all. Surprisingly, in the end he loses his individual traits and becomes an intellectual in general. Moreover, in Finnegan's Wake, he goes a step further becoming an "everybody", a representative of the entire humankind, thus ending the story of every twentieth century person: the struggle for their individuality, the disappointment in the value of that individuality which finally leads to their renouncing it.