As the artsy friend of Newland Archer says in The Age of Innocence: "Ah, good conversation—there’s nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.” I appreciate your essay so much because, well, I agree with you and Wharton. When you say that a "well-functioning realism requires characters to have some form of an intellectual life," I find myself vigorously nodding along. I think James is so magnificent at letting us in on the underlying intellectual patterns and belief systems of his characters, and that is why we believe their stories and their struggles so deeply. I wonder with you why anyone would want to write (or read, for that matter) stories that weren't, at their heart, political by way of being about very real ideas.
The POV wobble is totally compelling to me. There's a scholarly article (or a book?) out there somewhere that makes an adjacent argument about Jamesian style, particularly as it gets more hypotactic in the late novels. If I'm recalling correctly, the argument is basically that James's style becomes so pressing and particularly *Jamesian* that the narration departs from a realistic third-person representation of consciousness, because all the characters end up thinking like James, himself. (I wish I could remember where I read this argument, because there's some interesting punchline to it! Maybe it's in Kevin Ohi's book on James, The Queerness of Style?)
I feel like this is precisely the kind of thing Lukacs disdains, but it's like the ideas end up IN the style. Somehow this isn't a bad thing (at least not for me). In fact, The Ambassadors might be my favorite. (Is The Ambassadors an off-label pick?! I feel like, not quite? Not quite to the degree Princess Cassamassima is, in any case.) But it's a total mystery to me why it works.
Ugh, I love thinking about James. Thanks for this.
Colin Burrow on The Prefaces? I know this argument's been knocking around in my head for a few years, so I must've read it somewhere else, but yeah, there's significant overlap there. And I think Burrow is right about the convolutions of style as an orientation toward 'grubby' reality and basically a form of modernism. But whereas Joyce is protean, James's late style feels so particularly his to me. I always think of William's letters, beseeching his brother to write more clearly and plainly. Like, Henry James knew people hated his prose style, but he couldn't or wouldn't go back to more straightforward sentences! I mean, damn.
Anyway, if I think of the other text, I'll update my comment!
Think Benjy in The Sound and the Fury as a pov character who doesn't really think or talk. However, he does percieve and feel and has an ideology of sorts in the sense that he has some culturally bound notions of right and wrong.
I suppose technically "A Day In The Life" is not literature. But we do not really see the singer thinking or talking very much over the course of those 3 minutes. Dave Marsh saw the same phenomenon with Elvis Costello's "Less Than Zero" where the singer is deliberately not thinking very much but he shows you the kind of non-thinking that is going on around him.
Man, I would be scandalized too if someone hypothesized a first person POV of a character who doesn’t think or talk much. What would the point of that be? First person has a purpose as a tool. I mean, I want all my POVs to have a shitton of interiority—not just first person. But damn. You don’t pick up a wrench when you’re not going to use a wrench.
Haha, I think it’s an interesting question! In part because it’s so scandalizing. Like, what WOULD such a thing look like. And what would it be for? I am still turning it over.
I have a friend who apparently doesn’t think in full sentences. Like he says the way his brain works he doesn’t have an internal monologue or much phantasia at all. So maybe it would be for a person like him? If he wasn’t extroverted?
Thank you for this very unexpected pleasure this afternoon
As the artsy friend of Newland Archer says in The Age of Innocence: "Ah, good conversation—there’s nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.” I appreciate your essay so much because, well, I agree with you and Wharton. When you say that a "well-functioning realism requires characters to have some form of an intellectual life," I find myself vigorously nodding along. I think James is so magnificent at letting us in on the underlying intellectual patterns and belief systems of his characters, and that is why we believe their stories and their struggles so deeply. I wonder with you why anyone would want to write (or read, for that matter) stories that weren't, at their heart, political by way of being about very real ideas.
The POV wobble is totally compelling to me. There's a scholarly article (or a book?) out there somewhere that makes an adjacent argument about Jamesian style, particularly as it gets more hypotactic in the late novels. If I'm recalling correctly, the argument is basically that James's style becomes so pressing and particularly *Jamesian* that the narration departs from a realistic third-person representation of consciousness, because all the characters end up thinking like James, himself. (I wish I could remember where I read this argument, because there's some interesting punchline to it! Maybe it's in Kevin Ohi's book on James, The Queerness of Style?)
I feel like this is precisely the kind of thing Lukacs disdains, but it's like the ideas end up IN the style. Somehow this isn't a bad thing (at least not for me). In fact, The Ambassadors might be my favorite. (Is The Ambassadors an off-label pick?! I feel like, not quite? Not quite to the degree Princess Cassamassima is, in any case.) But it's a total mystery to me why it works.
Ugh, I love thinking about James. Thanks for this.
Interesting! Was it the LRB piece by chance?
Colin Burrow on The Prefaces? I know this argument's been knocking around in my head for a few years, so I must've read it somewhere else, but yeah, there's significant overlap there. And I think Burrow is right about the convolutions of style as an orientation toward 'grubby' reality and basically a form of modernism. But whereas Joyce is protean, James's late style feels so particularly his to me. I always think of William's letters, beseeching his brother to write more clearly and plainly. Like, Henry James knew people hated his prose style, but he couldn't or wouldn't go back to more straightforward sentences! I mean, damn.
Anyway, if I think of the other text, I'll update my comment!
Where were you when I was in college? Oh, right. About twenty years shy of birth. Keep them coming so we can all think of literature anew.
Think Benjy in The Sound and the Fury as a pov character who doesn't really think or talk. However, he does percieve and feel and has an ideology of sorts in the sense that he has some culturally bound notions of right and wrong.
I suppose technically "A Day In The Life" is not literature. But we do not really see the singer thinking or talking very much over the course of those 3 minutes. Dave Marsh saw the same phenomenon with Elvis Costello's "Less Than Zero" where the singer is deliberately not thinking very much but he shows you the kind of non-thinking that is going on around him.
Man, I would be scandalized too if someone hypothesized a first person POV of a character who doesn’t think or talk much. What would the point of that be? First person has a purpose as a tool. I mean, I want all my POVs to have a shitton of interiority—not just first person. But damn. You don’t pick up a wrench when you’re not going to use a wrench.
Haha, I think it’s an interesting question! In part because it’s so scandalizing. Like, what WOULD such a thing look like. And what would it be for? I am still turning it over.
I have a friend who apparently doesn’t think in full sentences. Like he says the way his brain works he doesn’t have an internal monologue or much phantasia at all. So maybe it would be for a person like him? If he wasn’t extroverted?