From a book categorized as Fiction / Classics and 329 pages follows a description and a number of hidden haikus found in the book:
Set in Joyce's native Ireland, the story follows life of a young man Stephen and his transformation from child to artist. In five chapters, we are taken through Stephen's early childhood in Ireland and confinement at boarding school, his dalliances with theatre and hiring prostitutes, his retreat from sensory excess into religious devotion, his retreat from religious devotion into aesthetic, ascetic excess, and, ultimately, his retreat from Ireland and fellowship in favour of destiny. A major example of the K nstlerroman in English literature, a heavily autobiographical coming-of-age novel depicting the childhood and adolescence of protagonist Stephen Dedalus and his gradual growth into artistic self-consciousness. Some hints of the techniques Joyce frequently employed in later works, such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings, are evident throughout this novel. It is a nearly complete rewrite of the abandoned novel Stephen Hero. The manuscript was rescued by Joyce's sister when he attempted to burn the original in a fit of rage during an argument with his wife.What was it like to be an isolated Irish boy during the closing years of the nineteenth century? What was it like to kiss back then? What did that mean, to kiss? You put your face up like that to say good night and then his mother put her face down. That was to kiss. His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss. Why did people do that with their two faces?
That had the queer smell.
His mother had a nicer
smell than his father.
Old servants in old
dress were in the ironing-room
above the staircase.
There were red holly
and green ivy round the old
portraits on the walls.
--WOE BE TO THE MAN
BY WHOM THE SCANDAL COMETH!
said Mrs Riordan.
How could a woman
be a tower of ivory
or a house of gold?
What is your name, boy?
--Fleming, sir. --Hoho, Fleming!
An idler of course.
He stood up and passed
out among them in the file.
He had to decide.
That's no way to send
for one of the senior boys.
In a bake, indeed!
There had been no mass
for the dead in the chapel
and no procession.
He leaned back weakly
in his desk. He had not died.
God had spared him still.
Four boys left the room;
and he heard others passing
down the corridor.
Sorry! O sorry!
The slide clicked back and his heart
bounded in his breast.
--How long is it since
your last confession, my child?
--A long time, father.
--With yourself, my child?
--And... with others. --With women,
my child? --Yes, father.
--The affair doesn't
interest me in the least, said
Stephen wearily.
--Let us take woman,
said Stephen. --Let us take her!
said Lynch fervently.
--I can see, he said,
that you are about to make
obvious remarks.