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kraelwake's review against another edition
5.0
"You are different. You are a man; you will get over it. You have all kinds of consolation. You were born—you were trained, to changes."
Madame de Cintre to Newman
If any novel highlights the differences between old world European culture and American culture, The American by Henry James is it. Mr. Newman, a millionaire who worked his way from nothing to millions, arrives in France with all the easy American confidence and determination in the world, with the goal of marrying the most superior and ideal wife he can find. He finds, or believes he finds his ideal in a young beautiful widow from the old aristocratic Bellegarde family, Claire de Cintre. He is surprised to find that as a "commercial man" he is unacceptable to such an old distinguished family. Through much confidence in himself, and through almost audacious disregard for their cultural ideas of propriety, he wins Mademoiselle de Cintre and her family to consideration of him. Her family promises not to hinder his pursuit of her, and she eventually accepts him. However, after presenting Newman to their society, the Bellegardes decide that they cannot so soon part with their old ways, and decide against letting Claire marry Newman. Newman's struggle against the Bellegardes seems to be his first and only "let down" and every fiber in his being rages against this refusal.
It's a fascinating struggle between the traditions, prejudices, and culture of the old world, and the new. Interestingly, The American has many highly comedic moments, and an even-handed amount of drama, but it is also a frustratingly tragic love story.
Madame de Cintre to Newman
If any novel highlights the differences between old world European culture and American culture, The American by Henry James is it. Mr. Newman, a millionaire who worked his way from nothing to millions, arrives in France with all the easy American confidence and determination in the world, with the goal of marrying the most superior and ideal wife he can find. He finds, or believes he finds his ideal in a young beautiful widow from the old aristocratic Bellegarde family, Claire de Cintre. He is surprised to find that as a "commercial man" he is unacceptable to such an old distinguished family. Through much confidence in himself, and through almost audacious disregard for their cultural ideas of propriety, he wins Mademoiselle de Cintre and her family to consideration of him. Her family promises not to hinder his pursuit of her, and she eventually accepts him. However, after presenting Newman to their society, the Bellegardes decide that they cannot so soon part with their old ways, and decide against letting Claire marry Newman. Newman's struggle against the Bellegardes seems to be his first and only "let down" and every fiber in his being rages against this refusal.
It's a fascinating struggle between the traditions, prejudices, and culture of the old world, and the new. Interestingly, The American has many highly comedic moments, and an even-handed amount of drama, but it is also a frustratingly tragic love story.
raye_sneq's review against another edition
4.0
Yikes! Bit of a rollercoaster this one, some awkward tonal shifts and a strange kind of story. Absorbing, arguably unsatisfying, ultimately gloomy. I'll probably never forget it but I also might well never read it again. The hero is a character I can't help liking, and the emotional truths of his experiences are discomfiting. The writing is rich and lively, and the atmosphere often a little strange. Part of me wants to steal the bones of the story and rewrite it so that Newman and Valentin end up together, that would be a lot more cheerful!
jeremymorrison's review against another edition
3.0
Christopher Newman, American businessman, who has made money out of money, suddenly loses the passion for business and heads to Europe to experience life. There the young American falls in love with Claire, a Marquise from an old French family. The colliding of cultures leads to the tension in the book.
lindseyhall44's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Murder, and Classism
editrix's review against another edition
This practically screamed “I was published as a serial!” (so many long stretches in which nothing of consequence happened), and a lot of the characters were problematic in ways they perhaps weren’t intended to be (our hero is interested in obtaining a wife as a prize, and we’re supposed to think that’s fine?), but I wasn’t too annoyed to enjoy the melodrama of the journey, and it always feels refreshing to read something I might have studied in college. I highly recommend reading the intro and afterword for important context and insight.
moosegurl2's review against another edition
3.0
"The gentleman on the divan was a powerful specimen of an American. But he was not only a fine American; he was in the first place, physically, a fine man."
moosegurl's review against another edition
3.0
"The gentleman on the divan was a powerful specimen of an American. But he was not only a fine American; he was in the first place, physically, a fine man."
catbraganza's review against another edition
5.0
Another one of my favorites. I am a big fan of Henry James and this is my favorite of his works.
lee_foust's review against another edition
4.0
In my project of reading all of Henry James's novels in chronological order, here's installment four.
James's second officially avowed novel, The American is certainly a lot longer, and you'd assume more important for its bulk, than those leading up to it and its immediate predecessor, Roderick Hudson. In an overall critical way I feel about the same about this novel as I did about Hudson, James' first avowed attempt at the great American novel: it's a mighty solid read, but also a tad flawed around the edges. Here that flaw is an unwelcome close brush with melodrama in act two, which threw me; but the ship is righted and act three certainly finds James in the very subtle and adult league of George Eliot, my standard for the best of Victorian fiction. James does add something to the modern novel here, though: a fresh take on resignation and healing that edges him ever closer to modernism, even as he remains mired in some of the trappings of nineteenth-century realism, the obnoxious omniscient narrator and long passages of pure exposition. (Side note, speaking of Eliot, I think I find James flawed when he veers towards the cutesy Dickensian style, the silly character/caricature or the melodramatic plot twist.
When this novel presents scenes and dialogue it's at its best--the opening I must say grabbed me right away--and really shows why we still read James today. Occasionally during the expositional passages it felt more like a slog, still the novel went pretty fast for being nearly 500 pages. I breezed through it.
In terms of meaning, I was surprised by the outlines of the plot. Since James's more famous novels focus on the young female American heiress and her romance with a charming but duplicitous European suitor (which is supposed to dramatically depict the naive vivacity of the USA versus the scheming cynicism of a fading old world) I actually found this plot a tad more convincing as a metaphor for US-European relations. Even if the novel makes the mistake (which I will second in a moment in the next paragraph) of confusing social class with race--probably the most common mistake humans make besides assuming that accident and thunderstorms prove there is a god or that the stars actually influence our destinies and actions.)
Here we have the very brash but awfully good-natured American businessman courting a French grand dame and it's her family that takes the role of corrupt threat of impediment (not to spoil act three), cynicism, and downright evil in the form of a family skeleton. Oh, it stays well within the bounds of realism and verisimilar characters and events--if perhaps a tad melodramatic, as I said above for a moment when the plot comes to a head--but the deep truth of a certain honest American approach to coupling and most social affairs (such as business, marriage, and public reputation), which is not at all present in the European way of doing and thinking about such things, is well taken. This American thirty year resident in Italy felt it deeply. (The fact that many of these formally noble social tropes have sunk down to the European working class clearly signals a certain stage of capitalism and the triumph of bourgeois television to diffuse its ideas of comportment.)
The subplot of "our hero," as the novel annoyingly calls him several times, Christopher Newman, (note the Dickensian surname--oh, brother) and his friendship with his beloved's slightly wayward brother, says it more clearly. Europeans often live and die by certain overblown mannerist concepts of deportment such as honor, duty, reputation, etc., which we Americans can only shake out heads at. So much fuss for chimeras it seems to us. As if life we're hard enough already with all of this silly made up formality to go through. (Although I admit it's awfully amusing, sometimes, to watch, if one isn't directly involved or a victim of such nonsense.)
Like many solid realistic novels of its century as well as some modernist masterpieces, the whole thing boils down to Heraclitus again and character manifesting its own destiny in the form of plot and conflict resolution. I liked that very much.
Technically next up would be The Europeans in which James reverses the terms and describes another European brother and sister duo coming the the USA to make their fortune and see if love and marriage to a foreigner is possible. I'm going to skip it as I read it just two years ago. It's a rather more lighthearted affair--and its lack of gravitas is also signaled by it's much shorter length. Instead I will read the tale that James wrote about this same time and which made him famous "Daisy Miller." It's practically novel length anyway.
James's second officially avowed novel, The American is certainly a lot longer, and you'd assume more important for its bulk, than those leading up to it and its immediate predecessor, Roderick Hudson. In an overall critical way I feel about the same about this novel as I did about Hudson, James' first avowed attempt at the great American novel: it's a mighty solid read, but also a tad flawed around the edges. Here that flaw is an unwelcome close brush with melodrama in act two, which threw me; but the ship is righted and act three certainly finds James in the very subtle and adult league of George Eliot, my standard for the best of Victorian fiction. James does add something to the modern novel here, though: a fresh take on resignation and healing that edges him ever closer to modernism, even as he remains mired in some of the trappings of nineteenth-century realism, the obnoxious omniscient narrator and long passages of pure exposition. (Side note, speaking of Eliot, I think I find James flawed when he veers towards the cutesy Dickensian style, the silly character/caricature or the melodramatic plot twist.
When this novel presents scenes and dialogue it's at its best--the opening I must say grabbed me right away--and really shows why we still read James today. Occasionally during the expositional passages it felt more like a slog, still the novel went pretty fast for being nearly 500 pages. I breezed through it.
In terms of meaning, I was surprised by the outlines of the plot. Since James's more famous novels focus on the young female American heiress and her romance with a charming but duplicitous European suitor (which is supposed to dramatically depict the naive vivacity of the USA versus the scheming cynicism of a fading old world) I actually found this plot a tad more convincing as a metaphor for US-European relations. Even if the novel makes the mistake (which I will second in a moment in the next paragraph) of confusing social class with race--probably the most common mistake humans make besides assuming that accident and thunderstorms prove there is a god or that the stars actually influence our destinies and actions.)
Here we have the very brash but awfully good-natured American businessman courting a French grand dame and it's her family that takes the role of corrupt threat of impediment (not to spoil act three), cynicism, and downright evil in the form of a family skeleton. Oh, it stays well within the bounds of realism and verisimilar characters and events--if perhaps a tad melodramatic, as I said above for a moment when the plot comes to a head--but the deep truth of a certain honest American approach to coupling and most social affairs (such as business, marriage, and public reputation), which is not at all present in the European way of doing and thinking about such things, is well taken. This American thirty year resident in Italy felt it deeply. (The fact that many of these formally noble social tropes have sunk down to the European working class clearly signals a certain stage of capitalism and the triumph of bourgeois television to diffuse its ideas of comportment.)
The subplot of "our hero," as the novel annoyingly calls him several times, Christopher Newman, (note the Dickensian surname--oh, brother) and his friendship with his beloved's slightly wayward brother, says it more clearly. Europeans often live and die by certain overblown mannerist concepts of deportment such as honor, duty, reputation, etc., which we Americans can only shake out heads at. So much fuss for chimeras it seems to us. As if life we're hard enough already with all of this silly made up formality to go through. (Although I admit it's awfully amusing, sometimes, to watch, if one isn't directly involved or a victim of such nonsense.)
Like many solid realistic novels of its century as well as some modernist masterpieces, the whole thing boils down to Heraclitus again and character manifesting its own destiny in the form of plot and conflict resolution. I liked that very much.
Technically next up would be The Europeans in which James reverses the terms and describes another European brother and sister duo coming the the USA to make their fortune and see if love and marriage to a foreigner is possible. I'm going to skip it as I read it just two years ago. It's a rather more lighthearted affair--and its lack of gravitas is also signaled by it's much shorter length. Instead I will read the tale that James wrote about this same time and which made him famous "Daisy Miller." It's practically novel length anyway.
leganto's review against another edition
5.0
This novel is effectively the international version of the same conversation that is The Great Gatsby. However, instead of discussing the distinction between old money and new money, this novel wrestles with the clash between the self-made wealth of the USA and the aristocracy of Europe.
I could gush over this novel, really. It has so much going on. The elitism of the nobility. The double-standard of a man's trying to "marry up" vs. the conduct of a "loose woman" working her way up the social ladder via hypergamy. The nobility of the "democratic" common man trumping the titular nobility of a corrupt, arrogant, wicked higher class. A commentary on the purpose of wealth. The finer points of appreciation for artwork vs. "Is there a hot chick in the painting?" And the list could go on and on!
Bravo!
I could gush over this novel, really. It has so much going on. The elitism of the nobility. The double-standard of a man's trying to "marry up" vs. the conduct of a "loose woman" working her way up the social ladder via hypergamy. The nobility of the "democratic" common man trumping the titular nobility of a corrupt, arrogant, wicked higher class. A commentary on the purpose of wealth. The finer points of appreciation for artwork vs. "Is there a hot chick in the painting?" And the list could go on and on!
Bravo!