tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post6189124480126229578..comments2024-03-29T03:04:00.853-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: The expensive vagueness of The Wings of the Dove - It almost destroyed me, thinking it all outAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-34532896708698138072017-05-05T11:30:18.242-05:002017-05-05T11:30:18.242-05:00"Never do the thing" - that is hilarious..."Never do the thing" - that is hilarious.<br /><br />The next tie I read the book and write about it - this is a hypothetical - I will keep track of all the places where James simply <i>does the thing</i>, where he tells the story, for example by having people talk directly about the plot. It will not be that long of a list of passages.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-69841599421440264952017-05-05T11:21:14.296-05:002017-05-05T11:21:14.296-05:00Also Woolf - I picked up her Writer's Diary to...Also Woolf - I picked up her Writer's Diary to browse for something different and happened across her entry right upon finishing <i>The Wings of the Dove</i>: "his manipulation becomes so elaborate towards the end that instead of feeling the artist you merely feel the man who is posing the subject," and perhaps best, "This, you seem to hear him saying, is the way to do it. . . . Never do the thing, and it will be all the more impressive."Rohan Maitzenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12111722115617352412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-51250888793663952112017-05-05T09:09:02.120-05:002017-05-05T09:09:02.120-05:00Wow, I have not read nearly that much about any of...Wow, I have not read nearly that much about any of these people. The William James book that came out the same year as <i>Wings</i>, <i>The Varieties of Religious Experience</i> is closer to what I might call a "model of clarity," so a clash of purpose seems logical here. What are you trying to <i>do</i>, Henry?<br /><br />William probably, generally, had <i>not</i> had to read his brother's sentences twice. Even I had not, before <i>The Ambassadors</i>.<br /><br />When I am having the greatest trouble with a sentence in <i>Wings</i>, aside from the dialogue, it is because of the pronouns, and sometimes I do have to go back a paragraph to find them. <br /><br />A <i>few</i> paragraphs, though! I fear I would still miss that antecedent. It is generally an abstraction of some kind, often a gerund phrase.<br /><br />"It but forward the bold idea that he could really <i>be</i> misled..." (5.3) Wait, what "it." "It"'s right there, the end of previous sentence: "her presumptuous little hint to him that she was as good as himself." All of that gets immediately compressed into "It." But I have to go back and look at it again to, I don't know, fix the concept more firmly. If I went back several paragraphs and zoomed I would just lose it again.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-15085486418801546712017-05-05T08:01:46.118-05:002017-05-05T08:01:46.118-05:00I've always thought William came off rather ba...I've always thought William came off rather badly in relation to Henry. Before I became interested in him for his own sake, read some of his books and a biography of him, William was only known to me obliquely, through biographies of Henry like Edel's and Novick's, and he comes across carping, bullying, compensating, and ungenerous... Imagine, as you put it, "forty years of experience reading the complete works of Henry James," and then still objecting to having to read a sentence twice to understand it! Personally, this is one of the prominent reasons that I cherish Henry James; not despite the aggravations of his sentences, but because of them. <br /><br />Also sometimes (have you found this to be the case?) to understand a James sentence it's more useful to back up a few paragraphs and read very fast than to zoom into it and analyze slowly clause by clause. The thread only makes sense in the tapestry.Robert Mintohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18054300455796074988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-67015879623445400422017-05-04T22:27:16.874-05:002017-05-04T22:27:16.874-05:00Oh, sure, I'm trying to crank out another Henr...Oh, sure, I'm trying to crank out another Henry James post and you give me <i>that</i>. Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-41469630404660001892017-05-04T22:24:38.203-05:002017-05-04T22:24:38.203-05:00Woolf on HJ: There they stand, the many books, pro...Woolf on HJ: There they stand, the many books, products of “an inexhaustible sensibility,” all with the final seal upon them of artistic form, which, as it imposes its stamp, sets apart the object thus consecrated and makes it no longer part of ourselves. In this impersonality the maker himself desired to share —“to take it,” as he said, “wholly, exclusively with the pen (the style, the genius) and absolutely not at all with the person,” to be “the mask without the face,” the alien in our midst, the worker who when his work is done turns even from that and reserves his confidence for the solitary hour, like that at midnight when, alone on the threshold of creation, Henry James speaks aloud to himself “and the prospect clears and flushes, and my poor blest old genius pats me so admirably and lovingly on the back that I turn, I screw round, and bend my lips to passionately, in my gratitude, kiss its hands.” So that is why, perhaps, as life swings and clangs, booms and reverberates, we have the sense of an altar of service, of sacrifice, to which, as we pass out, we bend the knee.Marly Youmanshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-32762701756700434552017-05-04T22:17:17.526-05:002017-05-04T22:17:17.526-05:00Yes, they're both right.
It is interesting to...Yes, they're both right.<br /><br />It is interesting to read Henry James's laments that he has - that he <i>knows</i> he has - killed his income from serialization with his new style. (And he was right, he had). But what choice does he have, he says, this is the right way to write this novel.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-49377629510601863792017-05-04T22:10:06.775-05:002017-05-04T22:10:06.775-05:00I have a sympathy with Henry's inevitable way-...I have a sympathy with Henry's inevitable way--with the idea that some ways are inevitable. (And also with William, shaking his head in several different kinds of astonishment.)Marly Youmanshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-71981800185136255562017-05-04T08:59:28.994-05:002017-05-04T08:59:28.994-05:00And William isn't sure - "I don't kno...And William isn't sure - "I don't know whether it's fatal and inevitable." Henry replies it is, "inevitable for me."<br /><br />So true.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-86822681360882689182017-05-04T08:15:01.286-05:002017-05-04T08:15:01.286-05:00I like the "fatal and inevitable" sugges...I like the "fatal and inevitable" suggestion in that letter. Marly Youmanshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.com