Henry James literally did not write ‘The Ambassadors’. He dictated it. Yet as he turned to dictation his prose became increasingly baroque. (“The tapeworm sentences.”) The exact opposite of what you (or, at least, a layman like myself) might expect. A remarkable weird result.
Perhaps revision of the transcripts played some part?
Then there’s the persistent bizarre ambiguity in the situations, characters’ motivations and (what we now might call) power dynamics of the later work. Edmund Wilson hit on this quality when he used the word “ambiguity” in the title of his essay on James. An essay that, in essence, asked “My God! Are we even sure there are ghosts in James classic ghost story ‘Turn of the Screw’?”
My philistine take is that James’ last three novels are inferior to ‘The Bostonians’ and ‘Washington Square’, but enjoy an inflated reputation, in part because their very difficulty seems to anticipate and align them with modernism, in part because their difficulty & strangeness makes them more interesting for academics to study & write about, and in part because genuine lovers of James are delighted to indulge him as he pursues his idiosyncrasies & vision past commercial considerations. His late novels thus become to James’ admirers what ‘Exile on Main St.’ is to Rolling Stones fans.
There’s a story about one of Dickens’ daughters. I’m, no doubt, getting details wrong, but, I believe, she had a mild illness and instead of going to lessons she was home and in a room she wasn’t usually in at that time of day. She thus was able to hear her father write. He was acting out the characters as he wrote, speaking their lines in their voices.
The podcast is fantastic, btw. The fact that’s there’s not a broad underlying structure and a listener doesn’t know where you’re going to go is a real plus I hadn’t anticipated. It comes across like a compilation of the very best bits from several projects.
Yes. Totally applies. While James produced the novel, he did not literally “write” (“mark letters, words, or other symbols on a surface, typically paper, with a pen, pencil, or similar implement” — Merriam-Webster) it.
That’s the point. While you might expect novels that are dictated to be more colloquial or have simpler sentences than those written pen in hand, the exact opposite happened with James.
The baroque was initially a Counter Reformation movement in which artists sponsored by the Catholic Church rejected the new Protestant austerity and doubled down on virtuosity, excess, movement and — this is key — elaborate structures.
The description of James’ late prose as baroque is accurate and fair.
Edward Gibbon and Isak Dinesen (of ‘Seven Gothic Tales’, not the inferior memoirs) also wrote prose that may be described as baroque. I’d argue they were more successful. My labeling them baroque is not an insult. They were astonishingly good.
Very interesting that he dictated the novels, according to commenter below.. That aligns with a surprising discovery I made recently. I found it easier to listen to his novels than to read them. I tried an audiobook not expecting it to be listenable. But the page long sentence I’d been dreading amazingly became clear. The actor had the rhythm down. The tone. That helped a lot. I did have to refer to the text, but the audio version was a revelation. True, it was only Portrait of a Lady, not a late novel. But I’m going to try this out with the Ambassadors.
Unlike the writer above, I love James’s late novels. I am not an academic. And find it interesting that the above writer makes snide remarks about people who like these books. It is just a matter of taste, i think. These are books that reward re-reading and discovering new aspects and complexities. He is particularly skilled at describing how each character has only a partial or limited idea of what is the situation. I thought the episode excellent in describing some issues reading books from another time or another language. The books are character driven, and there are many characters to get to know, more than a single reading can explore.
On the comma, I think James is creating a description in which the person, say Mamie, is all of those adjectives at once, combined, not each one separately. So, to me, no commas makes sense..creates an image.
Due to my tech incompetence, I was unable to edit my comment (I wanted to include the Dickens stuff) so I just copied it, deleted and reposted it with the Dickens paragraph inserted. Anyway, I am pretty sure you are referring to me.
I didn’t mean to be snide. I think ‘The Bostonians’ is incredibly underrated in large part because it can be assigned to undergrads without needing a PhD on constant lifeguard duty like, say, ‘The Golden Bowl.’ (A lot of extraordinary books require that kind of supervision, mind you. Proust comes to mind. So does Shakespeare.) Again: I just think there’s a tendency with James and, interestingly enough, also, Beethoven to overvalue the late work for those three reasons (anticipating modernism, being interesting/difficult/strange/academia-friendly, presenting a beloved artist’s vision with shockingly few concessions) at the expense of his more popular works that are even better. But I am not arguing that the later works are without merit. I really like ‘Exile on Main St.’ And I didn’t mean to knock people who love late James. I’m sorry if I gave that impression.
You may not mean to be “ snide” but then you repeat the assertion that it takes “supervision” to read late James. I, for one, have no degree in literature and never read it with a guide. That a book or music takes a bit of effort and benefits from repeated reading doesn’t mean it is over rated. I happen to like many of James’s earlier works as well, I would add, and have read many of them multiple times with increased appreciation. It is an odd fact that people will listen to the same piece of music over and over to get more from it, but object to doing that with books.
You seem to think these books are admired only because they can be difficult rather than any other reasons. I say that is not even on the list of reasons I admire them
“You seem to think these books are admired only because they can be difficult rather than any other reasons.”
No. That’s not at all what I believe — or wrote.
I think they’re fine works that may be treasured or overrated by academics (compared to his other works) for those reasons. One of which is that lovers of Henry James (like yourself) may find what makes him unique in greater quantity and indulged with more license than they do in his earlier novels.
I really like Dickens and “Gamp quotes Mrs. Harris” comes from Dicken’s ‘Martin Chuzzlewit.’ I have literally named myself after Sairey Gamp, a character in that novel.
Now ‘Great Expectations’ is more successful as a novel than MC. Depending on my mood, I may even be willing to concede it is “better” than MC. But I have much more affection for MC. For good (and a lot that is bad) it is more Dickensian. And I really like Dickens. It is also stranger.
That’s the nature of art — and going deep into an adored artist’s canon. MC has the worst first chapter of any Dickens novel. Probably the worst chapter he ever wrote. The book meanders. I could go on and on about its many flaws. Dickens does something so outrageously schlocky at the end that it inspires a perverse awe. But the book also has chapters of some of his best writing. And it has some of his greatest comedy. It’s not his best. But it’s one of my favorites.
All that said, I will concede that I do believe academics prefer to write and talk about difficult works of art.
And, yup, I do think that for many people the last three James novels can be tough going.
I was forced to read Great Expectations in high school, and hated it. Reread a few years ago and and liked it very much. Haven’t read MC, so can’t comment, but my favorite Dickens is Our Mutual Friend.
Academics write about “difficult” books because there is more to say that isn’t obvious and may be original. I don’t think they do so to indicate that they are better. They are not reviewers, who seem to be split on these books.
I agree that many people find late James difficult and prefer not to read them because of that. They would also avoid Proust, Woolf, and Joyce among others. All these have a reputation which puts some off, so they don’t even try. Similarly, some won’t read anything over 300 pages, and so wouldn’t read Eliot’s Middlemarch. think they miss out, but do feel glad they read at all.
The way James used the term “wonderful” reminds me of Jonathan Edwards essay on the “awful sweetness” of a walk with god. Interesting the awful and wonderful were once synonyms!
Your comment on the verb "pick up" reminded me of a similar phenomenon in Canadian French where the verb "pogner" has dozens of meanings that derive loosely from the original meaning of to catch, which is its sole meaning in European French. For more on "pogner" I recommend an episode from one of my favorite YouTubers, maprofdefrançais, entitled "Le mot le plus utilisé au Québec?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJbNIAdILeo
Really interesting stuff as always. I've always been uncertain about how to talk about dialogue. I know people who are very focused on making sure a character sounds very specific whereas I often trust that an actor will do what they want. Yet you're making me rethink it about the idea of use of the word ain't.
Thanks for the shout-out to Ned Sparks -- your vocal impression was perfect! He also graced my favorite film of the period, "Gold Diggers of 1933," made the same year as "42nd Streeet."
This is quite a wonderful -- In James' sense -- introduction to the intricacies of "The Ambassadors", a novel I love. Two very minor mentions: Waymarsh aligns himself with the Wollett faction in the novel, but he's from Connecticut (which is certainly close enough). And indeed, he's educated; he's a lawyer.
I can't help wondering what you make of what many, including me, think is one of the novel's most thrilling sentences, the one about Maria Gostrey's apartment filled with precious collectors' objects: "The flame of the disinterested burned in her cave of treasures as a lamp in a Byzantine vault." Would you have preferred "like"? I go to battle for "as".
Thanks for pointing others to this astonishing book.
Henry James literally did not write ‘The Ambassadors’. He dictated it. Yet as he turned to dictation his prose became increasingly baroque. (“The tapeworm sentences.”) The exact opposite of what you (or, at least, a layman like myself) might expect. A remarkable weird result.
Perhaps revision of the transcripts played some part?
Then there’s the persistent bizarre ambiguity in the situations, characters’ motivations and (what we now might call) power dynamics of the later work. Edmund Wilson hit on this quality when he used the word “ambiguity” in the title of his essay on James. An essay that, in essence, asked “My God! Are we even sure there are ghosts in James classic ghost story ‘Turn of the Screw’?”
My philistine take is that James’ last three novels are inferior to ‘The Bostonians’ and ‘Washington Square’, but enjoy an inflated reputation, in part because their very difficulty seems to anticipate and align them with modernism, in part because their difficulty & strangeness makes them more interesting for academics to study & write about, and in part because genuine lovers of James are delighted to indulge him as he pursues his idiosyncrasies & vision past commercial considerations. His late novels thus become to James’ admirers what ‘Exile on Main St.’ is to Rolling Stones fans.
There’s a story about one of Dickens’ daughters. I’m, no doubt, getting details wrong, but, I believe, she had a mild illness and instead of going to lessons she was home and in a room she wasn’t usually in at that time of day. She thus was able to hear her father write. He was acting out the characters as he wrote, speaking their lines in their voices.
The podcast is fantastic, btw. The fact that’s there’s not a broad underlying structure and a listener doesn’t know where you’re going to go is a real plus I hadn’t anticipated. It comes across like a compilation of the very best bits from several projects.
Fascinating that he dictated his novels. You might be interested in my comment on audiobooks.
Yes. Totally applies. While James produced the novel, he did not literally “write” (“mark letters, words, or other symbols on a surface, typically paper, with a pen, pencil, or similar implement” — Merriam-Webster) it.
That’s the point. While you might expect novels that are dictated to be more colloquial or have simpler sentences than those written pen in hand, the exact opposite happened with James.
The baroque was initially a Counter Reformation movement in which artists sponsored by the Catholic Church rejected the new Protestant austerity and doubled down on virtuosity, excess, movement and — this is key — elaborate structures.
The description of James’ late prose as baroque is accurate and fair.
Edward Gibbon and Isak Dinesen (of ‘Seven Gothic Tales’, not the inferior memoirs) also wrote prose that may be described as baroque. I’d argue they were more successful. My labeling them baroque is not an insult. They were astonishingly good.
Very interesting that he dictated the novels, according to commenter below.. That aligns with a surprising discovery I made recently. I found it easier to listen to his novels than to read them. I tried an audiobook not expecting it to be listenable. But the page long sentence I’d been dreading amazingly became clear. The actor had the rhythm down. The tone. That helped a lot. I did have to refer to the text, but the audio version was a revelation. True, it was only Portrait of a Lady, not a late novel. But I’m going to try this out with the Ambassadors.
Unlike the writer above, I love James’s late novels. I am not an academic. And find it interesting that the above writer makes snide remarks about people who like these books. It is just a matter of taste, i think. These are books that reward re-reading and discovering new aspects and complexities. He is particularly skilled at describing how each character has only a partial or limited idea of what is the situation. I thought the episode excellent in describing some issues reading books from another time or another language. The books are character driven, and there are many characters to get to know, more than a single reading can explore.
On the comma, I think James is creating a description in which the person, say Mamie, is all of those adjectives at once, combined, not each one separately. So, to me, no commas makes sense..creates an image.
Due to my tech incompetence, I was unable to edit my comment (I wanted to include the Dickens stuff) so I just copied it, deleted and reposted it with the Dickens paragraph inserted. Anyway, I am pretty sure you are referring to me.
I didn’t mean to be snide. I think ‘The Bostonians’ is incredibly underrated in large part because it can be assigned to undergrads without needing a PhD on constant lifeguard duty like, say, ‘The Golden Bowl.’ (A lot of extraordinary books require that kind of supervision, mind you. Proust comes to mind. So does Shakespeare.) Again: I just think there’s a tendency with James and, interestingly enough, also, Beethoven to overvalue the late work for those three reasons (anticipating modernism, being interesting/difficult/strange/academia-friendly, presenting a beloved artist’s vision with shockingly few concessions) at the expense of his more popular works that are even better. But I am not arguing that the later works are without merit. I really like ‘Exile on Main St.’ And I didn’t mean to knock people who love late James. I’m sorry if I gave that impression.
You may not mean to be “ snide” but then you repeat the assertion that it takes “supervision” to read late James. I, for one, have no degree in literature and never read it with a guide. That a book or music takes a bit of effort and benefits from repeated reading doesn’t mean it is over rated. I happen to like many of James’s earlier works as well, I would add, and have read many of them multiple times with increased appreciation. It is an odd fact that people will listen to the same piece of music over and over to get more from it, but object to doing that with books.
You seem to think these books are admired only because they can be difficult rather than any other reasons. I say that is not even on the list of reasons I admire them
“You seem to think these books are admired only because they can be difficult rather than any other reasons.”
No. That’s not at all what I believe — or wrote.
I think they’re fine works that may be treasured or overrated by academics (compared to his other works) for those reasons. One of which is that lovers of Henry James (like yourself) may find what makes him unique in greater quantity and indulged with more license than they do in his earlier novels.
I really like Dickens and “Gamp quotes Mrs. Harris” comes from Dicken’s ‘Martin Chuzzlewit.’ I have literally named myself after Sairey Gamp, a character in that novel.
Now ‘Great Expectations’ is more successful as a novel than MC. Depending on my mood, I may even be willing to concede it is “better” than MC. But I have much more affection for MC. For good (and a lot that is bad) it is more Dickensian. And I really like Dickens. It is also stranger.
That’s the nature of art — and going deep into an adored artist’s canon. MC has the worst first chapter of any Dickens novel. Probably the worst chapter he ever wrote. The book meanders. I could go on and on about its many flaws. Dickens does something so outrageously schlocky at the end that it inspires a perverse awe. But the book also has chapters of some of his best writing. And it has some of his greatest comedy. It’s not his best. But it’s one of my favorites.
All that said, I will concede that I do believe academics prefer to write and talk about difficult works of art.
And, yup, I do think that for many people the last three James novels can be tough going.
I was forced to read Great Expectations in high school, and hated it. Reread a few years ago and and liked it very much. Haven’t read MC, so can’t comment, but my favorite Dickens is Our Mutual Friend.
Academics write about “difficult” books because there is more to say that isn’t obvious and may be original. I don’t think they do so to indicate that they are better. They are not reviewers, who seem to be split on these books.
I agree that many people find late James difficult and prefer not to read them because of that. They would also avoid Proust, Woolf, and Joyce among others. All these have a reputation which puts some off, so they don’t even try. Similarly, some won’t read anything over 300 pages, and so wouldn’t read Eliot’s Middlemarch. think they miss out, but do feel glad they read at all.
If you were polling most-liked episodes then I'd put this in my top 10 of all time.
The way James used the term “wonderful” reminds me of Jonathan Edwards essay on the “awful sweetness” of a walk with god. Interesting the awful and wonderful were once synonyms!
Your comment on the verb "pick up" reminded me of a similar phenomenon in Canadian French where the verb "pogner" has dozens of meanings that derive loosely from the original meaning of to catch, which is its sole meaning in European French. For more on "pogner" I recommend an episode from one of my favorite YouTubers, maprofdefrançais, entitled "Le mot le plus utilisé au Québec?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJbNIAdILeo
Really interesting stuff as always. I've always been uncertain about how to talk about dialogue. I know people who are very focused on making sure a character sounds very specific whereas I often trust that an actor will do what they want. Yet you're making me rethink it about the idea of use of the word ain't.
Thanks for the shout-out to Ned Sparks -- your vocal impression was perfect! He also graced my favorite film of the period, "Gold Diggers of 1933," made the same year as "42nd Streeet."
This is quite a wonderful -- In James' sense -- introduction to the intricacies of "The Ambassadors", a novel I love. Two very minor mentions: Waymarsh aligns himself with the Wollett faction in the novel, but he's from Connecticut (which is certainly close enough). And indeed, he's educated; he's a lawyer.
I can't help wondering what you make of what many, including me, think is one of the novel's most thrilling sentences, the one about Maria Gostrey's apartment filled with precious collectors' objects: "The flame of the disinterested burned in her cave of treasures as a lamp in a Byzantine vault." Would you have preferred "like"? I go to battle for "as".
Thanks for pointing others to this astonishing book.