Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog "the atmosphere of schoolboy smut and practical jokes and poetry is evoked with lingering accuracy but with nothing more". Critic Jacob Korg later commented that "taken as a group, [the stories] seem to trace the child's emergence from his domain of imagination and secret pleasures into an adult world where he observes suffering, pathos, and dignity". The book has been described as showing Thomas' "waggish humor at its best, his exuberance & verbal magic in spectacular display". Apart from "Under Milk Wood", the book is "probably the most famous Dylan Thomas book published during his lifetime... certainly the most loved
The Portrait (Gogol short story) to shreds. His madness eventually manifests itself into a physical illness, and Chartkov dies, haunted to the end by memories of the horrible portrait. The second half of “The Portrait” opens several years after the events of Part I, at an art auction is held at an old nobleman's house at which the sinister portrait is put up for sale. In the midst of the bids, a young man appears who claims he has “perhaps more right to this portrait than anyone else.” He promptly begins telling the audience his story. His father was an artist who worked in Kolomna,