Reading Henry James

I love to read. Reading has long been one of my favorite recreations, since the days when I would visit the library as a child, on Saturday mornings, picking out books because the covers looked interesting. While I make my living as a writer, I currently only write ephemeral books and articles—I write about computers, software and digital music, all things that will be forgotten (at least in their current incarnations) in a couple of years. While my profession involves words, this doesn’t prevent me from enjoying words for their own sake in my time off.

I read widely and voraciously, but a handful of authors stand out for me. Some because of a single book that has changed my life: Henry David Thoreau, for example, the author of Walden, or Ross Lockridge Jr., author of only one novel, Raintree County. Others because of their ideas: Ralph Waldo Emerson, for the depth and accessibility of the philosophy he presents in his Essays, as well as his perceptive journals. Other authors are important because of their insight, or their characters; I think of Proust, Balzac and Joyce; of Richard Russo, Russell Banks, John Irving or Robertson Davies. Finally, there are authors whose work in certain genres provides entertainment; for, after all, we read not only to understand life, but also to enjoy it. I am an avid reader of mysteries and crime fiction, I read some science fiction (though in my adolescence I read much more), and I’m a big fan of Stephen King who creates worlds of wonder, and who is probably the Dickens of our time.

But one author stands at the top of the heap: Henry James. His books remain, for me, models of superior prose, but also contain profound analyses into their characters minds, experiences and motivations. While I don’t care for desert-island lists—how could you choose, for example, from among Bach’s cantatas if you only could take ten to a desert island? Or which ten Grateful Dead concerts could you select to listen to forever, neglecting all the others?—if there were only one author whose works I could take to a desert island, it would have to be Henry. (I feel I know him well enough to talk of him on a first-name basis; he would disapprove, of course, expecting to be called “Master”, or “Cher maître”, but so what?)
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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!

Many people have preconceptions about Henry James’ fiction, and claim that his work is difficult to read, that it’s boring, or that it’s hard for readers to relate to his characters. I can understand these feelings, and it can be helpful for new readers of Henry James to understand some things about his work, his writing style, and the context surrounding his themes.

First of all, Henry’s fiction is slow. This isn’t a bad thing – unless you’re only used to thrillers and other books that move very fast – but just the way literature was in Henry’s time. He lived in a slow time. Travel was by horse-drawn carriage. The motorcar only became popular near the end of Henry’s life (and he took a number of thrilling rides in Edith Wharton’s car). Communication was slow too. While some people sent telegrams, just as people send text messages today (see especially the story In the Cage for reflections on the people who could afford to send telegrams often), most communication was by letter. Letters could take a long time to go from city to city, though postal services within major cities were very efficient, perhaps more so than today.

The stories Henry wrote were slow as well. Some of them took place over long periods of time, but many of them are interior stories, where much of the “action” takes place inside the minds of the characters. Henry was the first novelist to use such intense examination of characters’ feelings and motivations, and his technique opened the door to modern fiction, such as James Joyce’s Ulysses, which featured extensive interior monologues. While Henry didn’t go that far, he would give detailed looks at the thoughts of his characters, sometimes spending a page on a fleeting impression and its many ramifications. Granted, you may not want to read about what people think. Yet characterization is what makes many stories and novels so personal. The more you understand and identify with a character, the more you’re touched by their experiences.
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