Reading Henry James

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.

Published: 1896
Length: 15,400 words, 37 pages
Genre: artists and their arts
Library of America volume: Complete Stories, 1892-1898
Penguin edition: The Figure in the Carpet and Other Stories
Etext: Gutenberg

Published in 1896, this story belongs to the end of Henry James’s “middle period”; more specifically, it was written shortly after Henry’s singular failure in the theater, during which he was booed during curtain calls for Guy Domville, one of his plays. I have chosen to start by looking at this story, before embarking on my chronological reading of Henry’s fiction, because of the subject, which, I think, has particular relevance to my reading project.

Henry wrote about this story in his notebook, in a long entry on October 24, 1895:

“I seem to see a little subject in this idea, that of the author of certain books who is known to hold–and to declare as much, au besoin, to the few with whom he communicates–that his writings contain a very beautiful and valuable, very interesting and remunerative secret, or latent intention, for those who read them with a right intelligence–who see into them, as it were—bring to the perusal of them a certain perceptive sense.

[...]

“His great amusement in life is really to see if anyone will ever see it…”

That, then, is what Henry would call the “germ” of the story. His notebook entry goes on to sketch out the plot that will examine this “figure in the carpet.”

In the story, an unnamed narrator, a minor critic, writes about the latest novel by Hugh Vereker for a publication called The Middle. He finds this author “clever,” and, shortly after the review is published, meets Vereker at a weekend party. A person there has a copy of the publication, and gives it to Vereker to read. He dismisses it as “the usual twaddle,” and says that the author “doesn’t see anything.” As the narrator is heading off to his bedroom, he crosses Vereker who apologizes for his comments, saying that he only just found out that the narrator was the author of the “little notice.” But the two sit down to discuss this, and Vereker’s work in general.
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As I prepare to start reading Henry James, and writing about his works, I wanted to post some information about how I’m planning to proceed, and what I’m planning to post. While my reading will be chronological, I’m going to make one exception, and read a short story out of order. The first story I read, and write about, will be The Figure in the Carpet. Those who are familiar with the story will understand why – for the rest of you, you’ll just have to find out on your own, either by reading the story, or by reading what I have to say about it.

For each story, novella or novel, I’ll be posting some information: the date the work was published, the number of words it contains (rounded to the nearest hundred), the number of pages in the Library of America edition, the genre (I’ll be making up some genres that I think fit the works), and links to the Library of America edition containing the work, as well as to other editions or online texts.

All of my posts about Henry’s works will contain spoilers. So if you haven’t read certain works, and don’t want to know what happens, don’t read what I’ve written. You can always come back later and search for specific works using the search box to the right, or look in the category listing, which will have links for Stories, Novellas and Novels.

I’m happy that the Library of America is giving me some support by publicizing this site to their readers. I’ve given them a free ad that you can see in the sidebar to the right. If you don’t have Henry’s stories, you should certainly get the five Library of America volumes. For only $140, you get nearly 5,000 pages of Henry’s great stories; it’s an unbeatable offer. (And, while you’re at it, you can join the Library of America to get other books by great American authors, especially the other books of Henry James’s novels, travel writings, and critical writings.)

So stay tuned for the beginning of my reading and writing project. I’m actually planning to read The Figure in the Carpet soon, and will make my first post about my reading later today. If you want to stay up-to-date, use the RSS links in the right sidebar. (If you don’t know how RSS works, there’s a good article on the BBC web site explaining it and how you can subscribe to a web site.)