Still No Time to Read Henry for Now
I guess I deserve it; I set up this website, and find that Real Life prevents me from starting on my journey of reading Henry James. I’ve had a lot of work this past month, and, to be fair, a couple of other books have grabbed my attention. First was John Irving’s new novel, Last Night in Twisted River. I’m a big fan of Irving, and while I don’t like all of his books, he has written some true masterpieces. This one was, I hate to say, a bit of a let-down. While Irving’s prose glimmers with genius, the story was not very interesting. It was a bit of meta-fiction, and was very auto-biographical, and, in the end, not very memorable.
The next book to grab me – or that will be grabbing me, as I just got it today – is Stephen King’s latest novel, Under the Dome. Now you may scratch your head in wonder; why is a fan of Henry James reading Stephen King? Well, first, remember that Henry wrote some ghost stories (Turn of the Screw, etc.). But beyond that, King is a true master of prose. You may not care for his subject matter, but in my opinion, King will be seen, in 100 years’ time, as the Dickens of the 20th century. Some of his works are relatively minor, but when he’s at the top of his form – with such classics as The Stand, or his seven-volume fantasy epic The Dark Tower, he is as good as it gets. I respect anyone who says they don’t like “that kind of book,” but anyone who’s read a lot of King has to agree that he’s a master wordsmith.
In addition to those novels, and my day job, I’ve got a couple of books about Henry that I’ve been reading. I’ll post more about them soon, with reviews or book notes. I found an old book entitled Reading Henry James, by Louis Auchincloss, which is a kind of reader’s guide to the main works; and, no, that’s not why I chose the same name for this blog. I also got a volume of his complete plays, as well as a biography that I hadn’t read.
So I’ll be getting to my reading soon. Sorry I couldn’t start as quickly as I wanted, but I hope you’ll stick around, if only by using my RSS feed to keep up on what I post.
I absolutely agree about Stephen King, and I’m looking forward to reading Under The Dome. As someone who has greatly enjoyed Henry James (and Dickens!) I can say that Stephen King is a very talented writer and social observer. As an aside, Dickens himself wasn’t a slouch at the ghost stories, either.
From the sublime to the logorrheic! Stephen King is the guy who so desperately needs an editor with balls to prune back his endless forests of prose that I haven’t been able to stomach his work in many years. “Needful Things” was the turning point for me. After looking up from the book and realizing that I was several hundred pages into it and nothing had happened yet, I dropped it and King permanently.
He is also the guy who is incapable of subtlety. His folks are menaced by overblown lumbering grotesqueries. Their feelings are whatever chunks of Standard American Reaction he thinks can be made to fit into the plot twist at hand. He is so very far from James, who was capable of imagining and describing the most complex reactions of the human heart*, that I’m tempted to think now that you were deluded when you initially said you were interested in his work. I’ve never seen a bigger example of biting off more than you can chew!
The bottom line is this. Sometimes high art makes us work… and it generally highly rewards us for doing so. Schlock, on the other hand, encourages us to veg out and let the cartoons unroll before our googely eyes. Afterwards, we tend to feel about like we’d just watched a whole season of “The Love Boat” on TV.
Looks like you’ve gone vegetative without a fight.
————————————————————–
*and James was also capable of producing works so precious that they do occasionally make us long to hire Stephen King to storm in and sweep away the teacups. Turning to GOOD James books is the better alternative, in my opinion.
I shall look for the Auchincloss book, IMO anything he writes is worth the trouble to obtain it. Then, time must be carved out to read it very carefully and thoughtfully. I am rather relieved that you have not started reading the James short stories yet, as I haven’t activated my LOA membership, and these 1st short stories are not to be found in any library I have access to. The inter-library loan system has been mentioned by others, but in my case, the library is becoming very careful about what it will order. Yes, budget constraints, what a surprise! You might be right about the merits of The Dark Tower and The Stand, but I have abandoned Stephen King since reading his book about the buick – Buick 8, I think. I had just gotten a Lacrosse, and thought that it would be kitschily appropriate to read King’s book. It was not a good decision.