Inaugural Post

Currently Reading:
The Aspern Papers Henry James
The Footnote: A Curious History Anthony Grafton

Just Finished: Portnoy's Complaint Phillip Roth
Singular Pleasures Harry Matthews

Perhaps it was watching two hours of MTV in order to appease my little sister or the birds singing their saccharine song outside my window but Henry James's prose is absolutely insufferable right now. The introduction to the novel has Thomas Hardy describing Henry's writing as "a ponderously warm manner of saying nothing in infinite sentences." In premature conclusion drawn from the three pages I was able to force my way through, James seems more a literary artist than a mail-order catalog addition to the American literary canon. He is more concerned with the art of language:

"I had taken Mrs. Prest into my confidence; without her in truth I should have made but little advance, for the fruitful idea in the while business dropped from her friendly lips. It was she who found the short cut andloosed the Gordian knot."

Gordian knots and ripe ideas falling from fruitful lips are all very nice images but they weigh down the narrative; James must use an entire page to simply explain that Mrs. Prest's ideas were better than the narrator's. Because of James's artistry, the writing even becomes unnecessarily euphemistic at times with the elder Ms. Bordereau being "of venerable age" and her niece being "of minor antiquity."

But this is not a condemnation. It just means that I'll have to readjust my expectations of the text. This story is not strictly narrative driven as most stories tend to be. Its primary engine is James's emphasis on his art form, so I probably should "experience" the book rather than read it.