L'Amore Non Bastina por Mary

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.-- the opening.

Some authors imprint better than others on damaged neurons. Henry James, whose list serv I miss but remain off of because I would prefer to contribute intelligibly and lack confidence to tango with a group of catty overburdened teachers whom I annoy, at the end of the day, relieved to be gone as well. The dwarf female who precipitated my departure did not intend these consequences, but my pique remains. Should I email Dr. Hathaway? Perhaps. He was a favorite, even with his cataracts. One of my first scholars. 

David Foster Wallace. I am still evaluating how much genius Wallace had, in contrast to pretension, but his narrative voice is stitched into my self-hating faculties.

These are two examples. Those that slip away might surprise you: Dickens, Lawrence. Shelley is among them, not due to her flaws so much as she writes in such a fashion as to anticipate screen plays, and I can barely remember her epistolary novel. Her sympathy is far, far ahead of its time, especially when her voice is compared to Maupassant, Henry's contemporary, whose lucidity fails when tackling blind family members left to starve. Mary's blind man is the creature's educator, ironically, its humanist who doesn't judge.

Jerry once conveyed to class that he hated the Enlightenment and refused to teach it, in a charming moment of Celtic petulance; following in that vein, I disdain the Romantic Movement as much overwrought-- not to say Keats doesn't melt the heart -- but this was a very imprecise literary generation, who made drug dependency seem exotic, and left us with the eternal argument over what Romanticism means, god-fucking-dam-it-to-hell-sounding off as a joke, don't be alarmed,
but this morning they're banned! The Renaissance makes sense. Even the Medieval period makes sense. The Victorians are guilty of collapsing into Modernism but even they make a perfectly sound argument for knowing one's place. The Romantics wanted to dance and space out in poppy fields. Fuck that.

un galantuomo

My editions of Henry James are all over the place: 4 LOA's, his travel writings barely penetrated, battered paperbacks with his strongest shorter works and novellas, free digital editions, and one paid. This is my Golden Bowl edition, purchased before my kindle buying spree:



I have always assumed the cover illustration reflects Maggie Verver lost in thought, losing her infantilism, to use Virginia Llewellyn Smith's term in her introduction to the text, an introduction written for the aficionado, not the novice. I am paused in James' opening, amid his worry about novel illustrations, no doubt a relevant concern to the replete literary mind at the dawn of the twentieth century.

I am very strenuous about my Henry James, despite the occasional laxity in application, and that strain may make the more applied scholars uncomfortable, because I want the revelation, "god fucking damn it to hell, !" and none is forth coming. I will confess that my first try at this nearly last completed work was almost incomprehensible. I was 23, foaming at the mouth for some of that zoological sociability, which, in Jamesian frills and lace, is always concealed. The reader can infer it, however, with as much irony or horror as he, or she, likes.

Richard Hathaway, here is one of his guidepost critiques, was one of my first Jamesian skirmishes in relation to interpreting The Golden Bowl, and my ferocity toward penetration in no way reflects any lack of respect for la bonne instructeur. The glass half full, half empty approach is what creates Jamesian fanatics in the first place. Dr. Hathaway supports his optimism by citing Adam's last words to his daughter about her "good things".  My pessimism is due to Maggie's last perception of Amerigo's pride, "...strangely lighted his eyes that as for pity and dread of them she buried her own in his breast."

I think James, near the end of his life, has had enough of refined mannerisms, and implodes the end of the Victorian age with the only weapons he knew how to deploy. I hear the critiques ringing that I over simplify, but I have only just begun.