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3.39 AVERAGE
3.39 AVERAGE
Oof this one was a challenge to get through. But for all that I did end up enjoying it. Even if for 80% of the conversations I had no idea what anyone was talking about. That's James for ya.
What a tour-de-force this book is! Even more so than in any of the other James' novels I've read, there is the story on the surface and the story underneath -- or maybe even stories. Near the end I found the story underneath very chilling, though very subtle. The power of this one scene could change your thought process about what you thought was going on previously. How James gets into the heads of these individuals is amazing -- or should I say masterful, as he is in complete control, and all I could do was follow.
Henry James is funny.
I see already the raised eyebrows inspired by that statement. 'Fun' might well be the last quality that anyone has ever associated with Henry James, but as I read this book, I began to have the impression that the author had a lot of fun writing it. I certainly had fun reading it.
The fun was in the characters, who they were and how they spoke. It was in the shifting points of view, which revealed so many things to the reader and hid just as many more. It was in the constant play between the known and the unknown, the said and the unsaid. It was in the cool acknowledgement that the coincidence at the centre of the plot was the sort of thing that happens mainly in novels. It was in the clever way in which the golden bowl, in a story about collecting beautiful things, becomes a symbol of the failure of the power of purchase. But the best fun for me was in the way the author seemed to insert himself, and the reader alongside him, into the heart of the story.
I could examine all those claims one by one, slowly and carefully, but the examination would very likely take as long as the book itself so I'll just focus on the last point: how I felt Henry James inserted himself and the reader into the novel.
From early on, two characters stood out for me, Mrs Assingham and her husband Bob, otherwise known as Fanny and the Colonel. Fanny and the Colonel are not main characters, the story might easily have been told without them, but I'm choosing to imagine that Henry James created them to inject exactly the element of fun he himself needed while writing, and which he wanted to offer the reader as a kind of bonus.
The book is divided into two parts, the first more or less written from the point of view of a handsome but impoverished Italian called Amerigo who marries an American heiress called Maggie whose father collects art objects of every kind. The second part is mostly from the point of view of Maggie.
In both parts, Fanny Assingham is given special treatment: a chapter every so often in which the narrative centers entirely on her and the Colonel. During these sections, Fanny analyses the thoughts and actions of all the other characters as if she were the author and had created them all and understood all their motives, even the most hidden. Her analysis takes the form of a series of hilarious dialogues with the Colonel in which she mostly speaks and the more humble Colonel mostly listens. In fact Henry James calls her the Sphinx at one point, and the Colonel is some old pilgrim in the desert, camping at the foot of that monument.
As her theories get more and more cryptic, the Colonel reacts like a typical reader, raising an eyebrow here, wincing visibly there, and sometimes showing such an exhausted patience with his wife's circling of the other characters' motives that indulgent despair was generally at the best his note. At other times, he keeps up with the complex logic of her theories remarkably well, this was another matter that took some following, but the Colonel did his best, and he occasionally asks the kind of irritable question we the readers may silently put to the author, "Are you saying that…?”
But the Colonel is mostly patient in spite of the labyrinthine intricacies of Fanny's thought, he’d adopt it and conform to it as soon as he should be able to make it out. The only thing was that it took such incalculable twists and turns. So the Colonel reacts exactly like a reader of Henry James; after all, which reader of his longer books has not felt that indulgent despair from time to time.
In spite of all the serious analysis Fanny indulges in, there's still a lot of humour in her exchanges with the Colonel. They are playing a game together which they both enjoy. When she broods about the punishment the other characters may have to endure, he teasingly asks what his own punishment will be. 'Nothing - you're not worthy of any,' she replies, like a magnificent monarch. When she's not being regal, she's being tragic, it had still been their law, a little, that she was tragic when he was comic, and even if the Colonel pretends to be long-suffering, his cigar invariably gives him away. Many of their exchanges are punctuated by reference to the Colonel's pleasure in smoking his cigar or his pipe as he listens to his wife being tragic.
He paid this the tribute of a long pull on his pipe….
After a long contemplative smoke…
His cigar in short once more alone could express it.…
The Colonel smoked on it.…
'But she wasn't," said the Colonel very smokingly.…
He listened to his companion tonight, while he smoked his last pipe, he watched her through her demonstration, quite as if he had paid a shilling.…
The Colonel's pleasure from smoking is so constantly underlined that I began to see other meanings in it. At one point he is described, on taking his pipe from his mouth, as 'ejaculating' his response, after which, the Colonel sat back at his ease, an ankle resting on the other knee and his eyes attentive to the good appearance of an extremely slender foot which he kept jerking in its neat integument of fine-spun black silk and patent leather. It seemed to confess, this member, to consciousness of military discipline, everything about it being as polished and as perfect, as straight and tight and trim, as a soldier on parade.
Putting all that together, alongside the names Henry James chose for these two characters, Fanny and Assingham, I felt there had to be something salacious in his intentions with regard to the provocative pair. I may be hilariously wrong but I reserve the right to analyze and interpret things in my own way, just as Fanny Assingham does. You are free to raise an eyebrow, and even wince - like the Colonel.
……………………………………………………………
When I finished this book and turned to the Appendix, I found a passage in which Henry James speaks of the pleasure he got from writing the book. Addressing us, the readers, he says, It all comes back to that, to my and your ‘fun’ - if we but allow the term its full extension; to the production of which no humblest question involved, even to that of the shade of a cadence, is not richly pertinent...
Just as Fanny relies on the Colonel to listen to her analysis and see her through, Henry James relies on us, and engages to come out at the right end if we will have sufficient patience.
I very much feel he did in this book, and that I did too.
I see already the raised eyebrows inspired by that statement. 'Fun' might well be the last quality that anyone has ever associated with Henry James, but as I read this book, I began to have the impression that the author had a lot of fun writing it. I certainly had fun reading it.
The fun was in the characters, who they were and how they spoke. It was in the shifting points of view, which revealed so many things to the reader and hid just as many more. It was in the constant play between the known and the unknown, the said and the unsaid. It was in the cool acknowledgement that the coincidence at the centre of the plot was the sort of thing that happens mainly in novels. It was in the clever way in which the golden bowl, in a story about collecting beautiful things, becomes a symbol of the failure of the power of purchase. But the best fun for me was in the way the author seemed to insert himself, and the reader alongside him, into the heart of the story.
I could examine all those claims one by one, slowly and carefully, but the examination would very likely take as long as the book itself so I'll just focus on the last point: how I felt Henry James inserted himself and the reader into the novel.
From early on, two characters stood out for me, Mrs Assingham and her husband Bob, otherwise known as Fanny and the Colonel. Fanny and the Colonel are not main characters, the story might easily have been told without them, but I'm choosing to imagine that Henry James created them to inject exactly the element of fun he himself needed while writing, and which he wanted to offer the reader as a kind of bonus.
The book is divided into two parts, the first more or less written from the point of view of a handsome but impoverished Italian called Amerigo who marries an American heiress called Maggie whose father collects art objects of every kind. The second part is mostly from the point of view of Maggie.
In both parts, Fanny Assingham is given special treatment: a chapter every so often in which the narrative centers entirely on her and the Colonel. During these sections, Fanny analyses the thoughts and actions of all the other characters as if she were the author and had created them all and understood all their motives, even the most hidden. Her analysis takes the form of a series of hilarious dialogues with the Colonel in which she mostly speaks and the more humble Colonel mostly listens. In fact Henry James calls her the Sphinx at one point, and the Colonel is some old pilgrim in the desert, camping at the foot of that monument.
As her theories get more and more cryptic, the Colonel reacts like a typical reader, raising an eyebrow here, wincing visibly there, and sometimes showing such an exhausted patience with his wife's circling of the other characters' motives that indulgent despair was generally at the best his note. At other times, he keeps up with the complex logic of her theories remarkably well, this was another matter that took some following, but the Colonel did his best, and he occasionally asks the kind of irritable question we the readers may silently put to the author, "Are you saying that…?”
But the Colonel is mostly patient in spite of the labyrinthine intricacies of Fanny's thought, he’d adopt it and conform to it as soon as he should be able to make it out. The only thing was that it took such incalculable twists and turns. So the Colonel reacts exactly like a reader of Henry James; after all, which reader of his longer books has not felt that indulgent despair from time to time.
In spite of all the serious analysis Fanny indulges in, there's still a lot of humour in her exchanges with the Colonel. They are playing a game together which they both enjoy. When she broods about the punishment the other characters may have to endure, he teasingly asks what his own punishment will be. 'Nothing - you're not worthy of any,' she replies, like a magnificent monarch. When she's not being regal, she's being tragic, it had still been their law, a little, that she was tragic when he was comic, and even if the Colonel pretends to be long-suffering, his cigar invariably gives him away. Many of their exchanges are punctuated by reference to the Colonel's pleasure in smoking his cigar or his pipe as he listens to his wife being tragic.
He paid this the tribute of a long pull on his pipe….
After a long contemplative smoke…
His cigar in short once more alone could express it.…
The Colonel smoked on it.…
'But she wasn't," said the Colonel very smokingly.…
He listened to his companion tonight, while he smoked his last pipe, he watched her through her demonstration, quite as if he had paid a shilling.…
The Colonel's pleasure from smoking is so constantly underlined that I began to see other meanings in it. At one point he is described, on taking his pipe from his mouth, as 'ejaculating' his response, after which, the Colonel sat back at his ease, an ankle resting on the other knee and his eyes attentive to the good appearance of an extremely slender foot which he kept jerking in its neat integument of fine-spun black silk and patent leather. It seemed to confess, this member, to consciousness of military discipline, everything about it being as polished and as perfect, as straight and tight and trim, as a soldier on parade.
Putting all that together, alongside the names Henry James chose for these two characters, Fanny and Assingham, I felt there had to be something salacious in his intentions with regard to the provocative pair. I may be hilariously wrong but I reserve the right to analyze and interpret things in my own way, just as Fanny Assingham does. You are free to raise an eyebrow, and even wince - like the Colonel.
……………………………………………………………
When I finished this book and turned to the Appendix, I found a passage in which Henry James speaks of the pleasure he got from writing the book. Addressing us, the readers, he says, It all comes back to that, to my and your ‘fun’ - if we but allow the term its full extension; to the production of which no humblest question involved, even to that of the shade of a cadence, is not richly pertinent...
Just as Fanny relies on the Colonel to listen to her analysis and see her through, Henry James relies on us, and engages to come out at the right end if we will have sufficient patience.
I very much feel he did in this book, and that I did too.
i have never felt more seen. here are characters who hate confrontations so much they would overthink every 5 minutes
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Was difficult to decide between 3 & 4 stars. The moments of recognition, confrontation, and partial reconciliation throughout the novel are nearly unmatched. James is masterful in these moments. But the book makes you earn these moments with hundreds of pages of difficult prose in which little happens. Not that this isn’t integral to the story’s purpose, in its own way. Just that it seemed excessive.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
James was born in a late phase and grew phasier all his life, like a jungle vine. . . .
his style, the supple, witty, sensual, sensitive circumloquasi style--and The Bowl is
it's final and most refulgent state.. James was a nuancer and believed in the art
of qualifications, an art of making finer and finer distinctions . . . "try o be someone"
he said, "on whom nothing is lost."
William Gass from "A Temple of Texts."
his style, the supple, witty, sensual, sensitive circumloquasi style--and The Bowl is
it's final and most refulgent state.. James was a nuancer and believed in the art
of qualifications, an art of making finer and finer distinctions . . . "try o be someone"
he said, "on whom nothing is lost."
William Gass from "A Temple of Texts."
How can anyone enjoy this thing? I have no problem with using five words where one will do, but This sumbitch uses 500 where one will do. Sometimes two or three densely-packed pages go by, with no dialogue and no action, and the sum total of what has been added to the story is “Maggie thought about something”
And even when there WAS conversation, NOBODY SAID ANYTHING! Then danced around their points, the flirted with their actual meanings, the repeated the last word that the previous person said.... aauugghh.
I thought maybe it was Henry James altogether, but then remembered The Portrait of a Lady, which I quite liked. So it’s just to this awful, awful book. Might have made an interesting short story, but a 600-pager? No thank you.
And even when there WAS conversation, NOBODY SAID ANYTHING! Then danced around their points, the flirted with their actual meanings, the repeated the last word that the previous person said.... aauugghh.
I thought maybe it was Henry James altogether, but then remembered The Portrait of a Lady, which I quite liked. So it’s just to this awful, awful book. Might have made an interesting short story, but a 600-pager? No thank you.
Read for my degree, which can sometimes pose an obstacle to the full enjoyment of a text; however, regular seminars are useful for penetrating deeper into prose that would otherwise go over my head. Having examined James' fiction from The Europeans through The Portrait of a Lady to this, it's clear that the older he got he developed a dense, loquacious style with a heavy use of subordinate clauses. I find that style difficult to get on with, and in that regard I'm grateful for group discussion to probe beneath the abundance of quite irritating side-tracks and get to the meat of the story. Luckily, the story is a very subtle, inward-looking study of adultery and its effect on the social bubbles in the Anglo-American upper class. James' gentle handling of characters that could easily be framed as irredeemable villains is refreshing and demonstrates that curiosity, not judgement, is one of his primary motives.
Henry James is still the master of exposing a character and relationship dynamics through the art of conversation, but this book ultimately lacked balance. The writing is stretched to the maximum (of Henry James' ability rather than the plot, which itself would not allow for such a long book).