HENRY JAMES. Plus: Small, Engines, Fairies, Wardrobe, Measure, Mirth, Life, Weird, Affinities

Recent reading

As well as the books listed below, I have a few other things on my desk that I have been getting a lot of value from—Pragmatism, Scott’s poetry, Frank Kermode, Polanyi—but which I might (or might not) write about separately. Some very interesting new books have arrived in the post by Lea Ypi, Natasha Jouvousky, and Andrea Wulf, but I made the mistake of talking to someone about how much I love The Golden Bowl a few weeks ago, so now I am reading The Wings of the Dove preparatory to a re-read of that great, great novel. (I’m also listening to Beethoven’s late quartets.) I simply do not understand all the fuss that gets made about The Portrait of a Lady when we could all be worshipping The Golden Bowl. What I am realizing is that my lifelong ambivalence to James is because I tried to read the earlier work. Obviously, Washington Square and Daisy Miller and all the others are very splendid. But, there are some people who think The Portrait of a Lady is perhaps the great novel, who find The Golden Bowl unreadable (they are in good company: Edith Wharton hated it), whereas I am the reverse. Much as there is to admire in a book like The Bostonians, I just don’t love it. But the way James attempts to show us the unknowable in the late novels is just enthralling. Few books preoccupy us with the dedication I now feel for late James. This passage from the Preface to The American (a book so dull it nearly made me shout out in frustration) is a famous explication of what James was about—

The real represents to my perception the things we cannot possibly not know, sooner or later, in one way or another; it being but one of the accidents of our hampered state, and one of the incidents of their quantity and number, that particular instances have not yet come our way. The romantic stands, on the other hand, for the things that, with all the facilities in the world, all the wealth and all the courage and all the wit and all the adventure, we never can directly know; the things that can reach us only through the beautiful circuit and subterfuge of our thought and our desire.

In the late novels, James makes the beautiful circuit and subterfuge of our thought and our desire not only the style of his narrative but the substance of his investigations. It’s all I can think about right now, for reading at least, in between my work on other topics. I’ll read something else when I’m back from the vast imaginary splendour. The Ambassadors is next. Then The Golden Bowl. I may be some time.

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Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan

I just don’t admire this book as much as so many others seem to do. It’s well written enough and does all the right sentimental things to be popular, but somehow the insistence on moralising the everyday makes the story (that is what it is, not a novella) a little tot glaring. Dickens it a’int. I also read So Late in the Day and cannot fathom why we have to be told every time they rinse their plates before stacking the dishwasher.

Mortal Engines, Stanislaw Lem

I am reading more Sci-Fi and this was available at the library. I read a lot of it one sitting, enjoyed every tale, but didn’t feel any pull to go back. I thought the reimagining of wandering knights was great, but don’t really feel like I absorbed the tales or what they are about. Unlike the fairytale genre which Lem was influenced by, a lot of the details in these tales was superfluous, or seemed so to me. It’s all very good detail: the picture is well drawn: but the overall composition seemed vague. Solaris it was not. Perhaps I shall try the last few tales.

Perrault, Fairy Tales

Accompanied by Gustave Doré’s illustrations, this is a splendid edition from Oxford World Classics. I was late for the bus because of this book. Although these are all timeless tales, it is often Perrault’s version that you know from childhood. Some of the ones you do not know from school, like ‘Donkey-Skin’, ‘The Fairies’, or ‘Ricky the Tuft’ are just magnificent. Perrault has exquisite narrative instincts. Not only does he seem to be the one who made the riding hood red, the slipper glass, and to have put puss in boots, but he never says too much. This is why a great charm falls over his readers like a hard frost, which glitters because the lights only catches it glancingly, not with an great glare. His version of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is now the one I shall retain. Did you know that in earlier versions, the King who discovered Sleeping Beauty in the tower slept with her while she was asleep and that Fairies enabled her to give birth? ‘Red Riding Hood’, in this version, is much more obviously a warning to children about who they should and should not get into bed with.

Jane Austen’s Wardrobe, Hilary Davidson

This is a good basic book about the materials and economics of Jane Austen’s dresses. Lots of information, lots of fun. The famous painting which is the only guaranteed likeness of Austen has her facing away, so we do not se her face. We do, however, see the buttons on the back of her dress, an innovation from the year Cassandra made the picture.

Measure for Measure

I love this play though it was some years since I read it. The scenes with Angelo and Isabella must be some of Shakespeare’s best work.

But man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep.

The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence

I don’t know what to say other than OH MY GOD THESE NOVELS. You all know what a stunning genius she is. And now I do too. While I was reading these books, I talked about Edith Wharton wherever I went and now have a few more waiting in my pile.

House of Life

I have not read Rossetti since I was an undergraduate and it was a real pleasure to page through this again. Just imagine how Newland Archer felt reading this one.

WEIRD, Joseph Heinrich

I am years late to this, but this book is still very interesting. I am reading it for background research and it’s very good for that job.

Elective Affinities

Too blunt for my taste. I don’t love it at all. Probably it doesn’t translate well.