Henry James' 1879 Confidence is considered to be the least of his novels. I find all of James entertaining, though, and often frustrating in equal measure. The measure is equal here, in a story of romantic entanglements between a coterie of lackadaisical European travelers.
As always, the fun (and what profundity is present) is all in the sparring, probing conversations and debates, as each character attempts to know the others' intentions, goals and hearts. The attempt to use words to bring other's true thoughts to the surface is a complex and endlessly satisfying game in James. In Confidence, it's used at times almost farcically.
Where Confidence fails is in its predictabilities and unbelievable coincidences. When our protagonist, Bernard, meets the beautiful and mysterious Angela in Tuscany, the event is quickly over. When Barnard's best friend, Gordon, later asks him to come to Germany to give his appraisal of Gordon's girlfriend, the reader intuitively tells him or her self: don't let it be Angela; that's too much of a coincidence. Worse coincidences, more unbelievable, await. The story, which ends in an uncharacteristic manner for James, does at least feature a strong and smart woman, stronger and smarter, in fact, than the layabout, clueless, and rather uninteresting males surrounding her.
This
edition of C.S. Lewis' classic children's fantasy is a reprint of the
first, 1950 edition. Pauline Baynes' charming and evocative original
illustrations are all included (they were truncated, or not used at all,
in many later US editions).
The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe's classic status is due to many reasons, foremost being that
Lewis tells a relentlessly compelling story, with characters flawed
(thus, true to life) and engaging, told in homey, confidential language.
The world of Narnia seems infinitely exploratory. Atheists may dislike
the transparent central allegory. That's okay; there are hundreds of
thousands of other books for them to read. This book's emotional
resonance is such, though, that only the most hard-hearted curmudgeon
could put up a shield against it.
Like most any short story collection, the quality of Flappers and Philosophers is hit and miss. It must be taken into account that most of these stories, published in book form in 1920, were written for and/or published in The Saturday Evening Post, and so were tailored and fashioned to appeal to that market and meet one strict goal: to sell and generate income. Within those boundaries, though, this collection contains some fine and experimental writing, creating works more coherent and consistent than most of Fitzgerald's novels.
Not having read Fitzgerald short stories before, I was surprised by the variety of subject matter and tone in the book. Two stories, Benediction and The Cut-Glass Bowl, reveal that Fitzgerald could have made a career writing the sort of supernatural-tinged psychological dramas published in Weird Tales magazine (which began being published in 1923). The Cut-Glass Bowl, in particular, is like Douglas Sirk meets H.P. Lovecraft.
The Ice Palace and Bernice Bobs Her Hair are two of the strongest stories; both have been filmed and hold up strongly after ninety years. The Ice Palace has a very strong sense of place and atmosphere.
Other stories are of lesser quality. The Offshore Pirate (also filmed) seemed too manipulative and also suffered from casual racism. Head and Shoulders is a whimsical one-note twister which failed to win me.
Knowing a bit of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's lives, I found much of the material autobiographical in a real raw, exposed way: the visit to the Confederate graveyard, the fiancee's visit up North, the reversal of roles in Head and Shoulders...these events and many more nearly took me "out of the story" as they so clearly mirror the Fitzgeralds' actions and feelings (to be fair, the novels function the same way). What my reaction to the fiction would be if I wasn't aware of those correlations, I can't say.
Recently read: The American, Henry James' 1877 novel of American capitalistic brashness clashing with unyielding Parisian aristocracy.
The novel, James' third (if you count his immature Watch and Ward - he didn't count it) is a transitional novel, more complex and arresting than his previous Roderick Hudson. In The American, James' protagonist is Christopher Newman, a self-made, uncultured American millionaire who travels to Paris to find (i.e. buy, with his freedom and wealth) culture and a wife. He aims for what he perceives as the top: a beautiful widow, Claire de Cintré, of the long-lived and righteously proud Bellegarde family.
Despite a second half which some readers (though not me) find too melodramatic (I thought the novel surprisingly detoured into Dickens-like material), The American is a compelling read to the last ironically sad page. The subtle and often witty verbal sparring is measured and engaging.
James' descriptions, based on his own limited admittance into Parisian high culture, brings the Bellegardes and their hermetic residence to life; I feel as if I've visited there. Certainly souls quite like the Bellegardes must have made an acute impression on James because, with the exception of Claire, they are the most sharply drawn characters in the book.
Truth be told, I found my sympathies for the characters divided: I could relate to both Newman's and the Bellegarde's uncompromising determinations and positions. James' main intention for the novel was to write about an American wronged by the old aristocracy and ultimately doing the "right thing" in return. This makes for a plot that perhaps sounds more potentially satisfying than the final result.
The novel does suffer somewhat from the sketchiness with which James draws Claire. Little is revealed by her or about her apart from Newman's somewhat superficial observations and interractions, making the love he professes to feel for her less convincing than it might have been, if not almost puzzling. This fault in the novel coincides with Newman's lack of passion and energy in fighting for the hand of Claire when that's what's required for him to meet the goal the novel has established for him. Certainly a man who started with little in life and made an immense fortune manufacturing washtubs wouldn't admit defeat as wimpily as Newman does. It's almost as if James couldn't conceive of, or bring himself to write about, the sort of person who would passionately love and passionately fight for love. James, who never married, frequently disallows his protagonists to marry and the critical reviews of the novel when it was first published are so united in their puzzlement over this aspect of the plot that they almost, understandably and inadvertently, become an indictment against James the person (as opposed to James, the novelist).
The version of The American I read was a Norton Critical Edition, with plentiful footnotes, James' frequently inscrutable forward to the 1907 "New York" edition, excerpts from James' letters at the time of the writing of the novel, reviews written when the novel was first published
and various 20th century reviews. The Norton Edition also contains the "happy ending" version of a play James wrote based on the novel, a cringe-inducing example of an artist throwing what he has to know is slop to a perceived audience of pigs.
In the name of all that's good, if you decide to read the novel, please read the original 1877 version instead of James' 1907 revision. The rewritten version thickly covers the fresh immediacy and clarity of the original text with elaborately needless details and twisting asides which frequently obscure rather than reveal James' original intent.
