Don't You Think The Ambassadors Of Henry James Is One Of The Most Delicious Ever Wrote In Literature History?
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Don't You Think The Ambassadors Of Henry James Is One Of The Most Delicious Ever Wrote In Literature History?
It's probably been twenty years since I read The Ambassadors. I really liked it at the time. I probably had more patience for James's late writing style then than I do now. A year ago or so I tried to read The Golden Bowl but I had to stop mid way. It was too tough a read for what i thought was unnecessarliy byzantine. but The Ambassadors had interesting characters and while the situation was typical James (very subtle and drawn out) I remember enjoying all the motivations of the characters.
I'm reading now "The American" and I'm greatly impressed by the mastery of the author to describe characters. I advise everyone who wants to imrove his English to read this book. But I advise to read it only if you have read other books before it, because the vocabulary, the constructions to use and the thoughts are rather compliceted and can be bewidering to the not prepared.
Who on earth are the people in The Ambassadors? I am a few pages from the end, and can't think of a single incident in the book worth noting.
The character of Chad is particularly flat. Strether has some clever things to say, but mostly to himself. To paraphrase Freud, what do the women want?
I love this author, but what the hell is this?
Bill (age: 59)
I too love Henry James, but it takes a strong constitution and infinite patience to plow through some of his stuff. As Oscar Wilde once put it, James wrote fiction "as though it were his painful duty"!
Notwithstanding I remember reading "The Ambassadors" years ago, for an English course, and I quite enjoyed dissecting the various motifs. I was very young at the time, a bit pretentious in fact, and I had a ball! But seriously, the book really held my interest, as did "The American" which I read during the same period. James understood human nature very well and God bless him, he was subtle and perceptive!
He had his mystical side as well. My all-time favorite ghost story has to be "The Turn of the Screw." Talk about layered meanings and multiple interpretations! Is the governess delusional or is she really seeing ghosts? Does she save little Miles' soul----or rather, does she scare him to death? I'll never know for sure! But I've reread this one several times, and it still continues to cast the same eerie spell.
Portrait of A Lady is a very good read as well.