tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post996338345106194427..comments2024-03-29T03:04:00.853-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: You were so full of signification! - more James, "The Patagonia" and "The Real Thing"Amateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-59435048823417624292016-06-13T14:51:46.320-05:002016-06-13T14:51:46.320-05:00TAOG, big fan of your blog here. Thank you for the...TAOG, big fan of your blog here. Thank you for the joy and insight your posts have given me over the years. Cleanthesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15363416290397892659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-42906255987967989652016-06-13T09:12:01.058-05:002016-06-13T09:12:01.058-05:00The visual side of James now looks to me like part...The visual side of James now looks to me like part of his periodization. He got more interested in it in the mid-1880s but it did not do what he wanted or he got more interested in psychology or whatever. So you get the floating consciousnesses who could be anywhere.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-10208986482916239662016-06-13T05:57:26.559-05:002016-06-13T05:57:26.559-05:00I have just caught up on, and have greatly enjoyed...I have just caught up on, and have greatly enjoyed, your series of posts on James. If I don’t say too much about these posts, it’s because I don’t really have much to add. The contrasts you point out between “Portrait of a Lady” and “The Bostonians” seem particularly interesting (these two are usually regarded as the major works of his “middle period” – when he was still, according to Leavis, James II, and before he turned into the “Old Pretender”). In “Portrait”, the major characters stand out distinctly from the less important characters, but in “The Bostonians”, from what you say, these less important characters are given a life and vitality of their own through wonderful satirical jibes: one wouldn’t have guessed from “A Portrait” that James was so accomplished a humourist. These satirical jibes remind me of Veneerings’ circle in Dickens’ “Our Mutual Friend” – a novel which James claimed to loathe, but which, I think, left its mark. (Georgina Podsnap, particularly, the young innocent who becomes a pawn in the adults’ power games, could easily have come out of a James novel: she is, indeed, a forerunner of Gilbert Osmond’s daughter Pansy.)<br /><br />I can never quite work out to what extent James was a visual writer. In “A Portrait”, he would, rather dutifully, it seemed to me, describe a setting before going on to narrate a scene; but once that scene had started, I often lost track of whether it was set in a room in a villa, or on the terrace, or out in the countryside somewhere. The interactions of the characters were more important, and took precedence. From the passages you quote from “The Bostonians” (it’s been too long since my last reading for me to remember the details), the visual elements are given greater weight. But in the last novels, they seem virtually to disappear altogether. James’ interest in the visuals, in the settings, seems to come and go throughout his work. And yet, as is apparent from, say, “The Aspern Papers” or the Venice chapters of “The Wings of the Dove”, he could project strongly a sense of place as an when he felt he needed to.<br /><br />A curious writer, whom I admire greatly (there’s no novelist I admire more), but whom I have never quite come to love.<br />The Argumentative Old Githttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09583407462940146876noreply@blogger.com