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
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the novel as a work of genius may concede that the work does not always exhibit this genius throughout. "A Portrait" won Joyce a reputation for his literary skills, as well as a patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, the business manager of "The Egoist". In 1917 H. G. Wells wrote that "one believes in Stephen Dedalus as one believes in few characters in fiction," while warning readers of Joyce's "cloacal obsession," his insistence on the portrayal of bodily functions that Victorian morality had banished from print. A film version adapted for the screen by Judith Rascoe and directed by Joseph Strick