Sir Bartholomew
12-27-2007, 09:46 PM
I read the Ambassadors without knowing its obstacles. It was tough and I never fully appreciated it then. It was my first reading of what they so called James' late phase; I had no idea then what that meant.
Subsequently I read the Wings of the Dove and the Golden Bowl; my admiration for James has grown steadily yet slowly. I came to know what he was all about and his peculiarities, but, he infuriates nonetheless.
So I asked myself, why write like this? And why read this nonsense? I read the Portrait of a Lady with minimal effort (I wasn't acquainted with book reading at that time); there are moments in it of introspection but none like in the later novels. To answer my question, with the help of some helpful book intros, I read like a crazy martyr. There are times where I thought my nose will bleed. I felt like a failure.
But everything came clearer when I put less into it. James wrote like this to confuse and, I guess and hope, that he didn't mean to be comprehensible (I mean those long passages of "whatever", as I called them). What I did was I let it all go, relaxed and didn't care if I wasn't getting it. I only did my best to work it all out after reading the final page; and somehow, it did make sense.
I can safely say that the Golden Bowl impressed me most. Before reading it I knew what I'll be getting myself into. I sat down, I leaned back and read as if I was Alfred Hitchcock, I muttered F.U. whenever James is at "it" again. In the end the novel satisfied me more than I expected. I had this urge to reread the Ambassadors and the Wings of the Dove, but not now. I had to recuperate my sanity first.
Subsequently I read the Wings of the Dove and the Golden Bowl; my admiration for James has grown steadily yet slowly. I came to know what he was all about and his peculiarities, but, he infuriates nonetheless.
So I asked myself, why write like this? And why read this nonsense? I read the Portrait of a Lady with minimal effort (I wasn't acquainted with book reading at that time); there are moments in it of introspection but none like in the later novels. To answer my question, with the help of some helpful book intros, I read like a crazy martyr. There are times where I thought my nose will bleed. I felt like a failure.
But everything came clearer when I put less into it. James wrote like this to confuse and, I guess and hope, that he didn't mean to be comprehensible (I mean those long passages of "whatever", as I called them). What I did was I let it all go, relaxed and didn't care if I wasn't getting it. I only did my best to work it all out after reading the final page; and somehow, it did make sense.
I can safely say that the Golden Bowl impressed me most. Before reading it I knew what I'll be getting myself into. I sat down, I leaned back and read as if I was Alfred Hitchcock, I muttered F.U. whenever James is at "it" again. In the end the novel satisfied me more than I expected. I had this urge to reread the Ambassadors and the Wings of the Dove, but not now. I had to recuperate my sanity first.