tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post4600343592191150660..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: scrutinising with ingenious indirectness - Henry James sounds like Henry JamesAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-82508609514048055032015-03-25T21:40:05.641-05:002015-03-25T21:40:05.641-05:00Convinced! Not exactly. But the cross-dressing th...Convinced! Not exactly. But the cross-dressing theme is in the text. I forgot that you can switch genders in this game.<br /><br />It is likely that I do not recognize James's tone well. Style and subject, yes; tone, no.<br /><br />It does not seem to me that the description of the man is so unusual or different than that of the women, or that the descriptions of the objects are so lavish. You mean the Huysmans chapter of <i>Dorian Gray</i>? Nowhere close. Maybe I am looking at the wrong passages.<br /><br />The phrase "The Master" will never be written by me except, let's say, ironically.<br /><br />Well done.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-8241386909628467202015-03-25T19:31:29.492-05:002015-03-25T19:31:29.492-05:00Because I was not familiar with that story, I deci...Because I was not familiar with that story, I decided to read it. I think it is very, very Jamesian, but in tone, not in story line. <br /><br />The main character, of course, is the sister, Viola, and I think this is an excellent version of a Hawthorne story as seen through the eyes of a gay man's sensibility. Dickens, while reading Eliot's "Scenes of Clerical Life" was able to discern that the author was likely a woman. Dickens, the quintessential "eye" of 19th century fiction, would have read this story and almost certainly would have declared its author a woman (I know I'm getting dangerously close to gender politics, but I oversimplify to make a point). <br /><br />The narrator's attention to detail, those objects and behaviors described, lack any real sense of masculine awareness as it would have been expressed at the time, as if James were channeling Wharton or even Jane Austen. The men's characters and feelings are almost throwaways, and their attitudes toward their wives feel hardly uxorious (except perhaps Lloyd's feelings near the moment of Perdita's death). The person most carefully described is Lloyd, and his physical beauty is described more as a woman might than certainly as a man like Hawthorne or Dickens might have (We shall give Melville a wide berth here, for special reasons best dealt with at another time). Thackeray might have been capable of describing male beauty, but he would have given more than equal time to female beauty, which James does not do here, choosing instead to expend his lavish language on the brocades and jewels (a Wildean aesthetic, don't you think?)<br /><br />So this story drips gayness to me and, if Viola is a stand-in for a male thinking that he can dress himself in the semblance of a woman to gain a man, he will be thwarted with instant death from the truth that he will never fit in that dress. Isn't that gay self-hatred another Jamesian trait?<br /><br />With those observations (granted, I haven't spent a great deal of time ruminating on my thoughts) could you not have guessed this story as Jamesian, if not by the Master himself? It's straightforward syntax certainly betrays it as early in his writing, far before The Grand Style overtook plot, character, and setting in his hierarchy of artistic goals, but I think its more James than it is anyone else's work.<br /><br />Did I convince you?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00014242874264804584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-50928189041104652782015-03-25T13:24:49.940-05:002015-03-25T13:24:49.940-05:00It is such a good goal, in theory.
I know that my...It is such a good goal, <i>in theory</i>.<br /><br />I know that my own stamina for James is limited, even for the lighter stuff I will be writing about this week.<br /><br />Your last line - maybe that is what confused me about "A Romance of Certain Old Clothes." A man marries a woman; she dies; he marries her sister (deceased sister is now perhaps a ghost). The "hero is homosexual" game does not work. How is this Henry James? Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-788163882839391372015-03-25T11:45:48.407-05:002015-03-25T11:45:48.407-05:00I bought the Library of America five-volume set of...I bought the Library of America five-volume set of James's short stories sometime around 2005 with the SPECIFIC goal that I would read them in order when I retired. Well, I retired in April 2008 and it hasn't happened yet. I've dipped in a few times to re-read certain favorites ("Turn of the Screw," "Figure in the Carpet," etc.) but the number of books I've purchased since then makes the goal almost ludicrous at this point, plus, I don't think I have the stamina to stay with James for more than 4,000 pages without a mid-Victorian break of some kind. (And, by the way, as you know, you can almost always pretend that the main male character in James is gay and find a way to make that work).Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00014242874264804584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-47625477633243342002015-03-25T09:21:55.479-05:002015-03-25T09:21:55.479-05:00Yes, that's good. Easier to hear the individu...Yes, that's good. Easier to hear the individual instruments, so to speak, in the shorter works.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-38248164631249067902015-03-25T09:16:27.237-05:002015-03-25T09:16:27.237-05:00Or . . . "chamber music" v. "sympho...Or . . . "chamber music" v. "symphony"R.T.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13220814349193561823noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-29671587481499843282015-03-25T09:09:58.601-05:002015-03-25T09:09:58.601-05:00There is a lot of variety in James, far more than ...There is a lot of variety in James, far more than I once thought. Sticking to his shorter works is reasonable.<br /><br />The shorter works were more constrained by their origins as magazine writing. They are more "pop," if that does not sound too ridiculous. The long novels are more "rock."Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-67193653782529463032015-03-25T08:49:32.928-05:002015-03-25T08:49:32.928-05:00My experiences with novels by James have been frus...My experiences with novels by James have been frustrating and disappointing; however, I embrace and enjoy (if that is the right word) many of his shorter works. I think that says more about me than James. R.T.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13220814349193561823noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-56897257759087131082015-03-25T08:16:52.012-05:002015-03-25T08:16:52.012-05:00Roger, that is a very interesting connection. Jame...Roger, that is a very interesting connection. James obviously finds the figure not just useful but meaningful.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-37894930278961474662015-03-24T17:45:28.296-05:002015-03-24T17:45:28.296-05:00"And this sickly, sexless man in love with a ..."And this sickly, sexless man in love with a healthy, vigorous woman is going to reappear many times in James"<br />A sickly, sexless man made so by the Civil War, which James himself did not take part in because of an unspecified "obscure hurt", but which left his brother Wilkie a cripple and his brother Bob an alcoholic.<br />There's a lot more of James's essence there.Roger Allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11012987757094423896noreply@blogger.com