Reading Henry James: tips?

[bookbard]

I just downloaded the complete works of Henry James, as I haven't read a lot of the 'American' classics. I read 'The Turn of the Screw' and was a bit mystified - they kept going on about the servants corrupting the kids, and I was wondering whether they were referring to abuse? I'm thinking now they were meaning that the kids were taught to lie. It definitely ended pretty abruptly.

So out of his many other works, which would be the best to read next?

[jrichstad]

Portrait of a Lady is a good intro Henry James. It's a bit easier to read than some of the others. 

I like to read extremely difficult novels and I find Henry James impossible lol. Is there a reason youe particularly interested in him?

Source: English PhD

[Laura Corin]

4 minutes ago, jrichstad said:

Portrait of a Lady is a good intro Henry James. It's a bit easier to read than some of the others. 

I like to read extremely difficult novels and I find Henry James impossible lol. Is there a reason youe particularly interested in him?

Source: English PhD

I enjoyed Portrait of a Lady. For some reason I don't find James hard.

Source - doing undergraduate English now. Previously completed BA in French and Drama. Just finished slogging through Trainspotting...

[Not_a_Number]

I think I've only read shorter stuff by him... maybe Washington Square and Daisy Miller? I've been meaning to read more, but I got turned off of the "Turn of the Screw" pretty early. 

[Not_a_Number]

28 minutes ago, jrichstad said:

I like to read extremely difficult novels and I find Henry James impossible lol.

What makes him so hard, out of curiosity? I haven't generally been able to get into his stuff, but I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly why. 

[jrichstad]

25 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

What makes him so hard, out of curiosity? I haven't generally been able to get into his stuff, but I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly why. 

Well some people love him, as above. 🤷 I find him difficult because his novels are full of obsessive description of tiny emotional moments and interrogation of motivations/ desires/ feelings that I just... don't find interesting or compelling, I guess? My eyes literally just skip over the words. I tried to re-read The Golden Bowl recently (20 or so years after reading it for the first time in undergrad) because I figured that surely I'd be able to appreciate it now. Nope! It made me understand why some people find reading boring. 

I tend to like bigger, shaggier, plottier novels, which is certainly not to everyone's taste. (Top five Anglophone, no particular order: Moby-Dick, Daniel Deronda, Bleak House Tristram Shandy, Jane Eyre.) I asked OP why she wanted to read James because if she's particularly interested in James that's one thing, but if it's more general "I want to read the classics", then she might find other novels or writers more enjoyable.

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, jrichstad said:

Well some people love him, as above. 🤷 I find him difficult because his novels are full of obsessive description of tiny emotional moments and interrogation of motivations/ desires/ feelings that I just... don't find interesting or compelling, I guess? My eyes literally just skip over the words. I tried to re-read The Golden Bowl recently (20 or so years after reading it for the first time in undergrad) because I figured that surely I'd be able to appreciate it now. Nope! It made me understand why some people find reading boring. 

I tend to like bigger, shaggier, plottier novels, which is certainly not to everyone's taste. (Top five Anglophone, no particular order: Moby-Dick, Daniel Deronda, Bleak House Tristram Shandy, Jane Eyre.) I asked OP why she wanted to read James because if she's particularly interested in James that's one thing, but if it's more general "I want to read the classics", then she might find other novels or writers more enjoyable.

So, Middlemarch vs Daniel Deronda: which do you prefer? 😄 I've read a lot of George Eliot's stuff, and I'm a big fan. 

(I should read the other ones on your list! I've been meaning to. I have Jane Eyre and that's all.) 

[jrichstad]

37 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

So, Middlemarch vs Daniel Deronda: which do you prefer? 😄 I've read a lot of George Eliot's stuff, and I'm a big fan. 

(I should read the other ones on your list! I've been meaning to. I have Jane Eyre and that's all.) 

It's a close one! I generally say Daniel Deronda because of what I said above: I like shaggier novels, and the slight awkwardness of the double plot is a plus for me. It's more interesting when you can see the seams. If you ask me, it's all been downhill for novels since Tristram Shandy 😄

 

[Not_a_Number]

1 hour ago, jrichstad said:

It's a close one! I generally say Daniel Deronda because of what I said above: I like shaggier novels, and the slight awkwardness of the double plot is a plus for me. It's more interesting when you can see the seams. If you ask me, it's all been downhill for novels since Tristram Shandy 😄

 

I like the tighter construction of Middlemarch better 🙂. Plus, George Eliot definitely knew more about the society she was writing about in Middlemarch than in Daniel Deronda 😉. But I like them both. 

I do love old British novels. So I'm with you on that. 

[Lori D.]

re: Turn of the Screw
Unreliable narrator is a critical idea to understand, in order to be able to wrestle with Turn of the Screw. The story opens with a narrator who basically says "here's a ghost story", and then the story unfolds through the point of view of the governess, who you begin to realize may or may not be reliable in the telling of events (i.e. may or may not be intentionally "embroidering" on what happened, or it could be a "fantasized" version of what happened, or it could be hallucinated version of events). And by the end, you are left with a sort of "lady or the tiger" sense that maybe the governess has "gaslighted" everything -- or that the entire story is just a fabricated ghost tale, like the original narrator says... Which makes you question if the original narrator is an reliable narrator... 😉 

re: themes and ideas in James' writing
Henry James was very interested in writing about "the life of the mind" and about the intricacies of character--rather than about plot/action. As an extension of his interest in digging into individual characters and their psychology, he also wrote about people and their interactions in society. He often included his own experiences and observations as an "ex-pat" (an American living abroad in Europe), showing the culture clashes between New World / Old Word perceptions.

This short Britannica article is a great quick overview of his life, and of the major ideas that appeared in his works, and how that changed over time. Background info on the life / times / influences of an author can really help "explain" what's going in the author's works. 😉 

Edited April 10, 2021 by Lori D.

[katilac]

7 hours ago, bookbard said:

I just downloaded the complete works of Henry James, as I haven't read a lot of the 'American' classics. I read 'The Turn of the Screw' and was a bit mystified - they kept going on about the servants corrupting the kids, and I was wondering whether they were referring to abuse? I'm thinking now they were meaning that the kids were taught to lie. It definitely ended pretty abruptly.

 The entire story is deliberately ambiguous. I think sexual abuse is certainly a reasonable interpretation (although the lying is part of the 'corruption' as well). 

If you read it as a true ghost story, then you likely read the ending as Miles dying when the spirit of Quint quits possessing him. If you read it more as psychological suspense with an unreliable and crazed narrator, the more likely conclusion is that the governess killed him. The apparition and Miles' death occur immediately after he tells the governess (who is obsessed with innocence and corruption) why he was expelled from school: he said things to boys at school that he liked, which he guesses they repeated in turn to boys they liked. 

[bookbard]

Thank you, everyone! The background is that I read a book (The Art of Fiction by David Lodge) which used a lot of different books to analyse fiction. It reminded me of all the books I hadn't read. I had heard of The Turn of the Screw and knew about the two ways of reading it, and in fact as I was mostly reading it as "hallucinating governess" I had trouble following what the ghost story was supposed to be saying. I do think it was eerie though.

@jrichstadI will give Portrait of a Lady a go. Basically I feel like I've read a lot of British and Russian classics and not many American. I read a lot and prefer sci-fi fantasy with the occasional literary fiction and non-fiction, but I do like to add a classic in here and there. I'd say my favourite books ever would be Dr Zhivago and Jane Eyre. But I've read them so many times I can just open them anywhere and enjoy them.