Dear readers, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to begin my reading of Henry James. Work and other things kept me very busy, and only now has my plate cleared enough to begin reading and commenting on Henry’s works. You’ll find above a discussion of Henry’s first story, A Tragedy of Error, and more will come soon.
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’ve had a lot of work these past couple of weeks, so I haven’t been able to get started with my reading. However, I did get a Kindle, and have it packed for return. I was hoping to read some Henry James on the Kindle, but I’ll settle for reading on my iPod touch.
Read my thoughts about the Kindle on my other website, Kirkville.
More Henry coming soon; promise!
Amazon has started shipping its international Kindle. I wrote about it here, on my other blog, Kirkville, and I previously wrote here and here about using the Kindle on an iPod touch. (The international Kindle concerns me because I live in France.)
I’ve stated here that I’m planning to read all of Henry’s work in the Library of America editions – at least as long as I can, because they haven’t yet published the last two novels. But I also mentioned perhaps listening to some works as audiobooks, and why not reading some on a Kindle.
For I haven’t yet decided whether I want to buy a Kindle. If you check out Kirkville, you’ll see that my day job is writing about computers and technology. As such, it’s only natural that I get a Kindle to learn more about ebooks. (Actually, ebooks aren’t new to me; I did a fair amount of work for a French ebook publisher more than ten years ago.) But the Kindle does what ebook readers didn’t do before: it makes it possible to buy books easily. It’s the iPod of ebook readers; for now. And that’s why I’m hesitant about buying one. Rumors about Apple releasing a tablet have been floating around the Internet for some time, and intensifying in recent months, and if anyone can do it right, it’s Apple. With the iTunes Store to distribute books, an Apple ebook reader / tablet would be a true game-changer.
Anyway, I’m thinking about getting a Kindle, and if I do, I would certainly read some Henry James on it. I’ll post more if I decide to buy it, and if I start reading some Henry on it.
Meanwhile, I plan to start my reading soon, with Henry’s first story, A Tragedy of Error. Stay tuned.
This is, apparently, a valid question for some people. In a New York Times article about “hybrid books” – new forms of electronic books that include multimedia features – one Maryanne Wolf, professor of child development at Tufts University and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, wondered,
“Can you any longer read Henry James or George Eliot? Do you have the patience?”
Here at Reading Henry James, we certainly have the patience to read the Master. As I pointed out in How to Read Henry James, one may need to practice “slow reading” to get used to reading fiction like James’s, but also fiction by other authors from the 19th century (if one is not familiar with reading such authors).
In my short lifetime, I’ve seen radical changes in the way people experience media. About to turn 50, I’ve seen black-and-white television, then color; VCRs, then DVD players; the early computers and today’s handheld terminals, and now dedicated ebook readers. Yet, through all this time, the book has remained stable. What’s new is not the texts contained in books, but the way they are presented. It’s true that today’s young people are so used to things that move and go bang that they may find it more difficult to immerse themselves in books. I shudder to think that I may be part of the last generation to grow reading and to continue to do so throughout life, but we are facing new means of distributing written works that will change the way we read.
However, I am not against ebooks or ebook readers. I have Amazon’s Kindle app on my iPod touch, as well as another app called Stanza, which can download books from Gutenberg.org, and have read several books on that screen. While it’s not a “book-like” reading experience, I have no trouble reading that way. In fact, I plan to do some of my Henry James reading on that device. After all, with all those books in the public domain, the Henry James’s entire oeuvre is available for download for free!
