tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post8841113595823848354..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: James tells, James shows - some scene that the newspapers would have characterized as livelyAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-5219674011677101152017-02-13T21:03:58.034-06:002017-02-13T21:03:58.034-06:00I tell you, it is a great advance in literature wh...I tell you, it is a great advance in literature when fiction writers realize that they can <i>summarize</i> dialogue, that they do <i>not</i> have to report every dang word in the name of verisimilitude or whatever they thought they were doing.<br /><br />Not that that matters for "Guy Domville" or <i>The Awkward Age</i>. <br /><br />It is curious that the play-writing disaster is followed by <i>Spoils</i>, <i>Maisie</i>, "The Turn of the Screw," among James's most accessible works, as you say, complex without confusion.<br /><br />The <i>The Sacred Fount</i> sounds like it gets very close to unreadable.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-62512562111428738372017-02-13T13:29:53.854-06:002017-02-13T13:29:53.854-06:00I've dipped deep into your catalog, still rumi...I've dipped deep into your catalog, still ruminating on "The Awkward Age," which led me finally, after so many years, to read "Guy Domville," the cause of a seismic shift in James's writing and his life. And the surprise is that it's even more of a dud than I expected, a hackneyed Restoration-style play without any wit at all. But, considering that "The Spoils of Poynton" and "The Awkward Age" followed it, I expected it to glimmer with the indirect dialogue that characterizes "Age" or the kind of careful plotting that distinguishes "Spoils" (which happens to be one of my favorite James novels). <br /><br />But the play does neither. As so often occurs in James, the males seem more interested in one another than they do in the two women who are the alleged objects of desire, and the plot (such as it is) seems more at home with Dumas than with James. I think it's worth two hours of your time to look up The Complete Plays of Henry James, edited by Leon Edel, and don't omit reading Edel's lengthy introduction. But it is not a source of deeper understanding of either "Spoils" or "The Awkward Age." In fact, I'm scratching my head to understand where "Guy Domville" even fits in the artistic arc of James, given its prominence in his biography.<br /><br />I wonder whether a re-read of "Spoils" after so much more James under your belt might cause you to be a bit kinder to it. Yes, it manages to be a novel about furniture without virtually any description of said pieces (except the harsh judgments of Mrs. Gareth and Miss Vetch), but it's also a way into James's more challenging works without the significant indirection and pronoun confusion that characterizes the Grand Style of the triumvirate or works as confusing as "The Awkward Age" and "The Sacred Fount" (which I actually gave up on when I tried it years ago--time for another trip to the well, so to speak).cwilson284https://www.blogger.com/profile/01095943424268993611noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-88608448460028854562012-05-24T11:30:12.963-05:002012-05-24T11:30:12.963-05:00James is never going to just show us the figure in...James is never going to just show us the figure in the carpet, even though we know it must be there.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-56360744444452937472012-05-24T10:41:30.252-05:002012-05-24T10:41:30.252-05:00That could be the disguise, a thinking, pattern-ma...That could be the disguise, a thinking, pattern-making way of writing that imitates intellect without having the evident meat you'd find in one of his brother's philosophy books, or a book of physics, or, in fiction, Proust. So say that he hides intellect as he hides the furniture, putting down signposts that indicate the presence of intellect without actually <i>giving</i> it to you. <br /><br />He very elaborately, kindly and gently points out whatever-it-is, but whatever-it-is is a thing that nobody can create except him, and then he doesn't create it.Umbagollahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14556344092820711893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-45602650091090765832012-05-21T15:16:08.772-05:002012-05-21T15:16:08.772-05:00Yeah, the emotion is always at the center. But th...Yeah, the emotion is always at the center. But then the long "telling" passages are <i>thinking</i> about emotion, meaning James has to find the logic in the movement of the emotions. The logic is often one of association or intuition - not necessarily very logical logic. Intellect on the subject of emotion, maybe.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-30440006102026142422012-05-21T11:12:53.766-05:002012-05-21T11:12:53.766-05:00Sometimes James reminds me of Eliot....emotion dis...Sometimes James reminds me of Eliot....emotion disguised as intellect.Shelleyhttp://dustbowlpoetry.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-49317089281052977202012-05-18T16:49:18.980-05:002012-05-18T16:49:18.980-05:00Washington Square contains a counter-example for m...<i>Washington Square</i> contains a counter-example for my "argument" in Chapter XIII. After a brief "establishing shot," he short chapter is nothing but dialogue. James even makes do with only a couple of "said"s. The entire chapter is only 628 words, two pages in my Penguin edition.<br /><br />One of the characters is an inveterate ironist, or a smart aleck, so the scene is plenty punchy. The characters are bare and exposed, but in this case they have their own defenses.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-69533777826125904282012-05-18T16:30:17.080-05:002012-05-18T16:30:17.080-05:00I haven't read the plays, but, thinking of the...I haven't read the plays, but, thinking of the dialogue exchanges in his books, I have a suspicion they'd seem unbearably coy and precious, not much more than characters making meaningful silences out loud at one another for two hours -- although they might not be like that at all. <br /><br />The phrases like "Frieda cried with a long wail" always feel to me like bits of elegance, musical beat-making, more than descriptions of any action these characters might actually, really, in their real fictional lives, perform. "I have to put them there," I can imagine him saying, "these people would look too bare and exposed if I didn't."Umbagollahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14556344092820711893noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-9908287399440413982012-05-18T16:26:36.575-05:002012-05-18T16:26:36.575-05:00You wonder, don't you. Maybe I should try The...You wonder, don't you. Maybe I should try <i>The Awkward Age</i>, which I think is almost all dialogue, in order to prove myself wrong, or, though unlikely, right.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-33951854285373593502012-05-18T15:39:51.956-05:002012-05-18T15:39:51.956-05:00No doubt that was why he was such a failure as a p...No doubt that was why he was such a failure as a playwright.obookihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03885121629202810216noreply@blogger.com