Look Homeward, Angel seems to occupy a middle ground between Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses: it lacks many, though not all, of the defects of the former; and has many, though not all, of the virtues of the latter…. No, I don’t know quite what I mean by this…
Maybe the defect of POTA I have in mind is that it assumes Joyce’s personal history is important which, by the time of Ulysses, has become a more universal interest in the particulars of ordinary experience. Similarly, Wolfe seems to get bogged down at times in trying factually and compendiously to relate the details of his childhood, which comes at the expense of pith.
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