/lit/ - Literature

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>>3499263
Have any of you read at least one of the last three completed novels of James? When people say that Hemingway was the best American novelist I get the suspicion that they've read little else. It seems like people just list off what they were taught in school.

>Christopher Ricks was eager to emphasize the importance of universities in determining writers’ reputations—sustaining them, and laying them to rest. “It used to be the case that, if you were wondering why x had enjoyed fame or suffered obloquy or neglect, it was because of the Church,” he told me. We were sitting in a tent in St. Anne’s College, at the end of a day that had started with his keynote lecture. The other speakers and delegates were conducting the reverse ritual of their anticipatory morning coffee: the reflective evening drink. Ricks and I were in a corner, talking about what he called the “conditions of patronage.” “Books are in print because of the most important patrons, and the most important patrons for the last fifty years have been the universities,” he said. “James stands in need of being taught.

http://www.thenation.com/article/170785/masters-servants-henry-james#