You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
lee_foust 's review for:
Roderick Hudson
by Henry James
OK, third installment in the reading the complete novels of Henry James in chronological order:
Wait, third? you ask? Isn't this his first? Well, he considered Watch and Ward his first real attempt at a novel, but since he superseded it so well with this one, he later kinda renounced Watch and Ward and considered this his first major novel. It is good and much better and more deep than Watch and Ward so, well, there you are. James had also written, in the previous decade, some quite long stories by modern standards and I had one in book form, so here I am at my third installment.
Excellent work, Mr. James. I see he has grasped now the concept of the novel as more than a mere narrative, as a kind of philosophical or at least thematic proposition to be worked out in narrative form with great attention to detail, setting, and particularly character. The great 19th century conception of the form! Although only a kind of B+/A- version, this is pretty darn good and definitely a step up in pretension of design and execution for James and worthy to be considered his first full-fledged novel and portend of greater things to come.
The novel's theme appears to be personality/nature, love, and art in that order. We're given two couples, primarily the men of course (male author, sexist era), but the two women who entertain their fancies (not to mention the well-drawn mother character and a semi-mysterious Italian count), to consider. Rowland and Roderick are the kinds of opposites that attract and the novel's plot functions well here in the classic Heraclitian "Character is destiny" mode by revolving around their friendship and the former acting as a kind of patron (and even guardian, dare I say matron?) to the latter's art. The two women, homespun Mary and the culturally American but raised in Europe bon vivant Christina, although they don't get to interact much, serve to further the plot and show us the differences in taste and social modus operandi of our two protagonists. thus the theme of love, or attraction, and courtship enters the plot as a secondary theme.
Since Roderick is an artist and Rowland is sponsoring him--and takes him to Rome to thrust him into the American expatriate artist world of the period--there is a lot said about artistic temperament, art itself, and the bohemian way of life, about which much ink was spilled these last couple of decades of the Belle Epoque, in the novel. While I love all these themes--for I, too, am a writer who has long lived in Italy mixing with the international Boho crowd--the novel only gets four stars from me because, although an entertaining narrative, I'm not convinced it knows exactly what it wants to say about these things or, at the very least, it failed to communicate to me exactly how the three themes fit together.
The artist, it would appear, is more or less emotionally a-moral, while the "good man" benefactor remains stoic and proper, yet fails to grasp (as I did as well, I think on purpose, because we're seeing most of the novel through Rowland, the good man's POV) a key element of what's going on. In a certain sense both of our protagonists are tragically flawed with egotism, for neither one seems to really understand and consider others, even if Rowland thinks he does. His original grand gesture of lifting Roderick out of the law office and allowing him this opportunity is a kind of super self-centered form of altruism, wherein you better the life of an artist only to make them a kind of indentured servant. This is all quite interesting on the level of the characters' personalities and furthers the plot, but I'm unconvinced that artists are all of any single character. Indeed the novel seems to think so as well, giving us several other artists of totally different temperaments, as if to say, "Hey, Roderick is only one type of artist." Which is smart, fine, but then, so what if he's this way?--since if other artists are different the novel isn't saying anything very clear or profound about art or the nature of artistic genius. Or, anyway, the message was unclear to me. Although we do like to read the exciting biographies of those geniuses who are amoral and usually abandon art early and crash and burn in hedonism and tragedy, there are other great hedgehog artists who just plow away quietly making beautiful things, like James himself.
I agree with Fionnuala's review here noting that there's an Orlando Furioso or at least medieval chivalric motif at work in the novel. While reading the similarity of the names Roderick and Rowland drove me crazy; still, it works to suggest that they're perhaps two halves of a kind of whole (many here argue they are the two sides of James's own personality as he saw it; which might be why we neither wholly like or hate either in the end, a great narrative choice which is a credit to realism moving away from the clear-cut heroes and villains of melodrama).
Lastly, the theme of love fails to philosophically resonate with that of art, even if again, a la Heraclitus, the fact that the men each love the woman who loves the other is a fitting addition to the overall character sketch. So, three themes in search of a perfect cohesion. Still, the characters and plot (and the luscious sentences) carry one through. A remarkable work.
One caution/recommendation: I jut happen to have this older penguin paperback edited by S. Gorley Putt. The introduction points out that there are basically three versions of the novel, the original publication, a heavy re-write done some seven years later for a second edition, and then another heavy revision done for the usually definitive New York Edition of James's oeuvres he did toward the end of his life. My paperback features the second edition, believing it to be an improvement on the first, eschewing the third as overwritten. Indeed I listened to an online audiobook version for some chapters to save some wear and tear on my eyes and compared several passages and found the New York edition to be in almost all cases of variation distinctly overwritten. See if you can find that second edition.
I am tempted now to skip several novels and proceed to The Princess Cassamassima since the Christina Light character returns there, but, darn it, I had wanted to go in the order that James wrote the novels so I think The American is next for me.
Wait, third? you ask? Isn't this his first? Well, he considered Watch and Ward his first real attempt at a novel, but since he superseded it so well with this one, he later kinda renounced Watch and Ward and considered this his first major novel. It is good and much better and more deep than Watch and Ward so, well, there you are. James had also written, in the previous decade, some quite long stories by modern standards and I had one in book form, so here I am at my third installment.
Excellent work, Mr. James. I see he has grasped now the concept of the novel as more than a mere narrative, as a kind of philosophical or at least thematic proposition to be worked out in narrative form with great attention to detail, setting, and particularly character. The great 19th century conception of the form! Although only a kind of B+/A- version, this is pretty darn good and definitely a step up in pretension of design and execution for James and worthy to be considered his first full-fledged novel and portend of greater things to come.
The novel's theme appears to be personality/nature, love, and art in that order. We're given two couples, primarily the men of course (male author, sexist era), but the two women who entertain their fancies (not to mention the well-drawn mother character and a semi-mysterious Italian count), to consider. Rowland and Roderick are the kinds of opposites that attract and the novel's plot functions well here in the classic Heraclitian "Character is destiny" mode by revolving around their friendship and the former acting as a kind of patron (and even guardian, dare I say matron?) to the latter's art. The two women, homespun Mary and the culturally American but raised in Europe bon vivant Christina, although they don't get to interact much, serve to further the plot and show us the differences in taste and social modus operandi of our two protagonists. thus the theme of love, or attraction, and courtship enters the plot as a secondary theme.
Since Roderick is an artist and Rowland is sponsoring him--and takes him to Rome to thrust him into the American expatriate artist world of the period--there is a lot said about artistic temperament, art itself, and the bohemian way of life, about which much ink was spilled these last couple of decades of the Belle Epoque, in the novel. While I love all these themes--for I, too, am a writer who has long lived in Italy mixing with the international Boho crowd--the novel only gets four stars from me because, although an entertaining narrative, I'm not convinced it knows exactly what it wants to say about these things or, at the very least, it failed to communicate to me exactly how the three themes fit together.
The artist, it would appear, is more or less emotionally a-moral, while the "good man" benefactor remains stoic and proper, yet fails to grasp (as I did as well, I think on purpose, because we're seeing most of the novel through Rowland, the good man's POV) a key element of what's going on. In a certain sense both of our protagonists are tragically flawed with egotism, for neither one seems to really understand and consider others, even if Rowland thinks he does. His original grand gesture of lifting Roderick out of the law office and allowing him this opportunity is a kind of super self-centered form of altruism, wherein you better the life of an artist only to make them a kind of indentured servant. This is all quite interesting on the level of the characters' personalities and furthers the plot, but I'm unconvinced that artists are all of any single character. Indeed the novel seems to think so as well, giving us several other artists of totally different temperaments, as if to say, "Hey, Roderick is only one type of artist." Which is smart, fine, but then, so what if he's this way?--since if other artists are different the novel isn't saying anything very clear or profound about art or the nature of artistic genius. Or, anyway, the message was unclear to me. Although we do like to read the exciting biographies of those geniuses who are amoral and usually abandon art early and crash and burn in hedonism and tragedy, there are other great hedgehog artists who just plow away quietly making beautiful things, like James himself.
I agree with Fionnuala's review here noting that there's an Orlando Furioso or at least medieval chivalric motif at work in the novel. While reading the similarity of the names Roderick and Rowland drove me crazy; still, it works to suggest that they're perhaps two halves of a kind of whole (many here argue they are the two sides of James's own personality as he saw it; which might be why we neither wholly like or hate either in the end, a great narrative choice which is a credit to realism moving away from the clear-cut heroes and villains of melodrama).
Lastly, the theme of love fails to philosophically resonate with that of art, even if again, a la Heraclitus, the fact that the men each love the woman who loves the other is a fitting addition to the overall character sketch. So, three themes in search of a perfect cohesion. Still, the characters and plot (and the luscious sentences) carry one through. A remarkable work.
One caution/recommendation: I jut happen to have this older penguin paperback edited by S. Gorley Putt. The introduction points out that there are basically three versions of the novel, the original publication, a heavy re-write done some seven years later for a second edition, and then another heavy revision done for the usually definitive New York Edition of James's oeuvres he did toward the end of his life. My paperback features the second edition, believing it to be an improvement on the first, eschewing the third as overwritten. Indeed I listened to an online audiobook version for some chapters to save some wear and tear on my eyes and compared several passages and found the New York edition to be in almost all cases of variation distinctly overwritten. See if you can find that second edition.
I am tempted now to skip several novels and proceed to The Princess Cassamassima since the Christina Light character returns there, but, darn it, I had wanted to go in the order that James wrote the novels so I think The American is next for me.