/lit/ - Literature

[/hjg/ - Henry James general No.13014771]

HENRY JAMES GENERAL
This thread is for the discussion of one of the greatest American writers and his work. I have read Portrait Of A Lady and The Aspern Papers earlier this month and enjoyed both immensely - especially The Aspern Papers. I will probably read Washington Square next and then perhaps move on to his notoriously difficult late period.
>question of the day: Was James gay and does it matter?

[Anonymous No.13014806]

>>13014771
He was a hack and the Physics of Creation was fucking shit.

[Anonymous No.13014810]

>>13014771
Pound's favorite novelist probably

[Anonymous No.13014831]

Essential chart for any newcomers to James

[Anonymous No.13014868]

Pseuds in here can't appreciate an artist of his patience and skill, marshalling all the techniques of literary realism to paint vast panaormaic portraits of belle epoque/Victorian society, straining those techniques to their limits. He might very well be the favorite writer of Pound in the same way Beraud was a favorite painter of Manet, or perhaps more aptly Manet the favorite of the impressionists, because after him there is nowhere to go except into the material of the art, to deal with the structure of writing, breakdown what makes up such realist illusions. If you can't write like Henry James you're just the literary equivalent of a conceptual performance art fag who couldn't paint a portrait to save their life yet still consider themselves 'artists.'

[Anonymous No.13014978]

>>13014771
I've only read Aspern Papers. I felt it was a bit too tedious to be desuuu.

[Anonymous No.13015014]

>>13014810
Really? As in, Ezra Pound?

[Anonymous No.13015082]

>>13014978
How come? It's pretty short and has a very strong narrative drive in my opinion. I was really enthralled, I would even compare it to a ghost story in the way James builds tension and suspense. The morbid setting of Venice also worked well for me. Reminded me of Don't Look Now and Death In Venice.

[Anonymous No.13015193]

>>13015014
That's right. Says to read James's essays to discover what a novel even IS. Pound respected him deeply.

[Anonymous No.13015199]

>>13015193
That's so surprising, they seem very different. Didn't even realize James was an essayist. Are his essays any good?

[Anonymous No.13015204]

>>13014806
Cringe
>>13014868
Based

[Anonymous No.13015211]

>>13015082
The prose style was a bit awkward for me and i love Pynchon. I remember feeling very impatient like "get the fuck on nigga".

[Anonymous No.13015242]

>>13015211
If you had these problems with The Aspern Papers, Henry James will not be for you. Pynchon is obviously completely different, I wouldn't even consider him a slow author.

[Anonymous No.13015248]

>>13015242
Thanks for the tip, bro. I'll read him when i'm a bit older and perhaps more patient.

[Anonymous No.13015261]

Along with Carlyle and Gibbon, James is my favorite prose stylist for the English language. Based on my taste, who else would you guys recommend? Can be fiction or nonfiction.

[Anonymous No.13015295]

>>13015248
Preferences are different and do change over time. James seems to be a divisive author but if you can get into him there will be very few literary pleasures that can compare

[Anonymous No.13015329]

>>13015261
Do you speak any other languages? I have found Thomas Mann to be similar to Henry James but I don't know how he reads in translation. What period of James's work do you prefer? I do feel like some of his later novels are pretty close to some modern writers and Faulkner in particular seems to be have been strongly influenced by him. Then there would also be the great French writers of the 19th century, Balzac and Flaubert especially are pretty close to James in terms of scope and style of the novels. What connects him to those older authors in your view?

[Anonymous No.13015351]

>>13015261
Any recommendations for Carlyle? I've been meaning to check him out for a while now but don't really know where to begin

[Anonymous No.13015370]

>>13015351
You can start with 'Chartism', or 'Hero Worship'. Both are accessible.

[Anonymous No.13015400]

Has any writer changed as much as James changed? When you read his early work like The American or Roderick Hudson, and then his later stuff like The Golden Bowl, it's almost a different writer, while still recognisable as James. Starts as lucid 19th century realism and ends up opaque impressionist proto-modernism.

[Anonymous No.13015443]

>>13015400
Tolstoy comes to mind but with him the change is more in terms of the ideology he lays out in his books. You could perhaps also consider Joyce if you compare Dubliners to Finnegans Wake for instance. But James would definitely be up there

[Anonymous No.13015808]

>>13014771
Henry James was definitely not a homosexual, or at least not one in practice. There is too much of a moral character to his works for me to believe that he would engage in sodomy. Writers such as Proust, Wilde, etc. on the other hand, were obvious flamers.

>>13014831
I might actually follow this guide. Thanks anon. James is a big hole in my knowledge of Anglo-American literature. I'm getting married to a British lady in less than a week and have spent a lot of time over there so I feel some kindredship with James and Eliot.

What do you think of Leavis' assessment of Austen, Eliot, James, and Conrad as the master English novelists? I can't say I have ever felt deeply drawn into their writing the way other novelists have done for me... mostly because there is so much delayed gratification.

Nonetheless, Dostoevsky, this board's favorite, is like riding training wheels compared to the aforementioned 4. Crime and Punishment is a fun thriller but so shallow compared to Anglo-American classics.

[Anonymous No.13015950]

>>13015808
i hope your bride's dress catches fire and she burns to death right in front of your eyes

t.fag

[Anonymous No.13015968]

>>13014771
I read part of the turn and the screw, I didn't like how british and well mannered every character is.
What's more tyebcopy I was reading had 5 philosophical analysis' of the book by different cholars: a Marxist, a feminist, a Freudian and I don't remember what else

[Anonymous No.13016028]

>>13015950
Kek. I have no hatred of gays my friend. I suppose anything could happen that day like any day!

>>13015968
For some reason I notice those types are really drawn to his work. I mean, they have their hands on every 19th century writer... but they really like James.

[Anonymous No.13016044]

>>13016028
>I have no hatred of gays my friend.
Fag

[Anonymous No.13016086]

>>13016028
I'm not your friend. Smugness is.

[Anonymous No.13016227]

>>13016086
Whatever you say, anon.

[Anonymous No.13016257]

>>13014771
fun fact, Henry James lived for some time in a house that was later owned by EF Benson author of the Mapp and Lucia novels. both writers featured a fictionalised version of the house in their work. the house was built in the 18th century and King George 1 once stayed there overnight after his ship was grounded in a storm.

>>13015968
>I didn't like how british and well mannered every character is.
he wrote it while he was living in the house mentioned above, on the south coast of England.

pic related. the house is now owned by the National Trust and is open to the public. i've been there a couple of times.

[Anonymous No.13016271]

>>13016257
I might pay a visit. Which county is it in? I am often in the Southwest.

[Anonymous No.13016274]

>>13016257
Cool that's how I imagined the house was

[Anonymous No.13016446]

>>13015261
Thomas Browne, Emerson.

[Anonymous No.13016486]

>>13014868
Except he never composed a single character beyond the bounds of a marionette.

[Anonymous No.13016489]

>>13015808
>Austen, Eliot, James, and Conrad as the master English novelists?
Well two of them aren't even English

[Anonymous No.13016503]

>>13016489
He makes a point of that in the study.

[Anonymous No.13016507]

>>13016503
He also has shit taste since Austen is the only good novelist on that list imo

[Anonymous No.13016528]

>>13016507
I wouldn't expect this from a fan of Austen.

[Anonymous No.13016571]

>>13016528
Well there you go. Where did you read Levis' assessment of these novelists?

[Anonymous No.13016619]

>>13016571
The Great Tradition by Leavis can be read on archive.org if you're curious.

[Anonymous No.13016690]

>>13016619
>>13015808
I was not aware The Great Tradition! Sounds interesting and I will definitely look into it.
I am surprised that none of the fanboys of Dostoyevski have attacked you yet. Personally, I would tend to agree with your statement. I loved Dostoyevski when I was a teenager but he is very blunt in the way he tackles philosophical and religious problems and topics. I would be interested in how you'd rate James compared to Flaubert and Balzac which I feel he is much closer to than the Russians anyways

[Anonymous No.13016768]

>>13016690
The odd thing about Dostoevsky that few of his fanboys know is that those Constantine Garnett translations didn't arrive until the 20th century long after his death. So very few of his contemporaries in other countries actually read him e.g. Dickens probably did not know Dostoevsky ever existed. Russia was considered to be an obscure, irrelevant, barely civilized country compared to Britain and France.

The reason why there was demand for Russian literature in the 20th century was because of the Bolshevik revolution and people's curiosity as to how that happened.

I don't deny the literary merit of the Russians, but for those of us who are interested in the development of style and themes over the course of a nation's history... Russian literature is going to be pretty irrelevant for the student of American or British literature because of its late entrance into our world. That's why I tend to read only literature in English... because my interests are more about how our classic writers have worked with their influences. For example, I would profit more by reading Dante than Dostoevsky because Dante fascinated so many American and English writers.

(The French absorbed the Russkis a little bit earlier. But that's another story.)

James was a reader of Flaubert as far as I know. They both took their craft very seriously. I remember reading Flaubert with more excitement when I was getting interested in literature for the first time. I have no idea what I would think of Flaubert now! As for Balzac, he struck me as a boring writer like Dickens. Now I like Dickens, so maybe I will give Balzac a read someday.

Honestly it's impossible for me to imagine James or Flaubert imitating Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in their support for fringe causes such as vegetarianism and Slavophilia. I think their obsession with fringe ideas and causes is what makes Tolstoy and Dostoevsky so weak.

[Anonymous No.13016788]

>>13016768
Dostoevsky was fairly well known in continental Europe wasn't he? I am no expert of the period but I remember for example Nietzsche saying something about Dostoevsky being the only psychologist he had anything to learn from.

[Anonymous No.13016809]

>>13016788
He was definitely well-known on the continent, I don't dispute that, but he had no influence on American or British literature until after the formative period of our novels primarily because no one could read them in English. Generally the only notable foreign influence on our novels is Don Quixote and some of the avant-garde types Leavis championed were interested in French novels, German philosophy, and the Italian renaissance... but not Mother Russia's contributions. It was only during the deeply ideological 1920's and 30's that American and British authors engaged seriously with the Rooshians (as Pound called them)...

[Anonymous No.13016812]

James liked Flaubert, especially Madame Bovary, for how consise and well contained and well structured it is. His whole approach to fiction was to avoid the sprawling Dickensian thing with multiplying subplots which go nowhere until it all gets resolved with a tacked on ending. He seems to have had an almost Aristotlean notion of order and unity in the novel.
I think Turgenev was the most famous Russian of that period, because he hung out in Paris and Italy and promoted himself more. Even Tolstoy originally got famous outside Russia for his Christian philosophy

[Anonymous No.13016827]

>>13016486
Even if that were true, it's not as dismissive as you intend it to be.

[Anonymous No.13016842]

>>13016768
I am definitely with you on Tolstoy. His later work in particular is barely readable for me since it is so deeply infused with ideology. Dostoevsky has some similar issues but I find him much better in regards to the psychological depiction of his characters.
I think Flaubert is a very interesting author and sometimes wrongfully classified as just another realist because most people only read Madame Bovary and maybe L’Éducation sentimentale.

>>13016809
Don't underestimate the influence of German literature! Someone above mentioned Carlyle who is pretty important in that regard and brought many German authors of his time to Britain. German romanticism also brought about a change in the perception of Shakespeare that profounfly influenced English scholars and authors.

[Anonymous No.13016845]

>>13016812
Don't you think Dickens' tendency to sprawl off that way, I mean, obviously that's picaresque tradition, but couldn't that owe in part due to the medium of serial publication?

I would be curious to know how often writers such as Austen, Eliot, James, and Conrad serialized their novels compared to more down-to-earth novelists such as Dickens and Balzac.

I think modern novels are more sleek partially because authors do not write sections of them to meet deadlines for serial publication. For example they say Ulysses by Joyce waffles the way it does partially because he is more or less improvising on the cuff to meet deadlines.

[Anonymous No.13016851]

>>13016809
>>13016812
very relevant Nock quote here, he's talking Harpers and Scribners in the 1870s-1890s I believe:

Continental literature scarcely existed for us. On a mere
perusal of our book-lists one could understand Matthew
Arnold's observation that in the things of the spirit America
could hardly lay claim to be more than a province of England.
Yet it was Scribner's which fixed forever my veneration for
Tourgueniev as incomparably the greatest of artists in fiction;
42]
it published a translation by Professor Boyesen of the two
stories of the nobleman Tchertapkhanov, and the story called A
Living Mummy, both from the Annals of a Sportsman. Harper's
gave me a translation of the beautiful little prose idyl of Germelshausen, from the German of Gerstäcker. Again, Scribner's
published a couple of delightful Flemish folk-tales, and a
charming German legend of the water-princess Use

[Anonymous No.13016877]

>>13015808
>Henry James was definitely not a homosexual, or at least not one in practice. There is too much of a moral character to his works for me to believe that he would engage in sodomy.
You should read Freud for a more insightful approach to the connection of homosexuality to art. There are other authors (such as Thomas Mann) that have similar accusations of latent homosexuality and I find those cases actually more interesting. Because of the psychological consequences of repression, latent homosexuality may have a much bigger impact on the creative process than actual lived out homosexuality

[Anonymous No.13016884]

>>13016851
Great quote. Proves what I have always said on-and-off again on this board just based on personal observation. Is this taken from a certain text? Who is Nock?

[Anonymous No.13016893]

>>13016877
There's not enough time in the world for me to justify spending my time reading essays with made-up words such as phallocentrism.

[Anonymous No.13016906]

>>13016884
Nock is an American conservative writer from the early 20th century, he wrote a number of essays, a biography of Thomas Jefferson, edited a literary publication. The quote is from his Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, very good read imo.

[Anonymous No.13016927]

>>13016893
>made-up words such as phallocentrism
Stupid and superficial complaint. Almost any philosopher/theorist makes up new words. The German language in particular is known for the tendency to constantly make up new compound nouns.
I am also not even a huge Freud fan (who can unironically be that nowadays) but he is still one of the most essential theorists of the 20th century and just straight up ignoring him is pretty ignorant

[Anonymous No.13016996]

>>13016906
>Nock
Someone called me a Georgist yesterday for saying that the existence of property tax means that all property is on lease from the government. I personally am against property tax but I did not make that evident from my post. What makes that Georgist?

[Anonymous No.13017010]

>>13016996
He was against property tax, I haven't read Progress and Poverty but that's where you'd want to start. Influenced a lot of people

[Anonymous No.13017028]

>>13016271
it's in Rye, West Sussex.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/lamb-house
the house itself isn't all that big, it's a town house for a family rather than a big mansion or anything. it's probably not worth making a special trip to see unless you were the biggest Henry James/EF Benson fan in the world but you could for example combine it with a trip to Hastings or do a bit of a literary tour and Rudyard Kipling's house, Batemans, which is 20 miles away

[Anonymous No.13017045]

>>13017028
also meant to add that Sissinghurst castle, former home of Vita Sackville West, writer and one time lover of Virginia Woolf, is also only a few miles away

[Anonymous No.13017057]

>>13016827
It is if you consider James’ main purpose was to do moral character studies

[Anonymous No.13019012]

>>13016845
James and Eliot certainly wrote some serial novels. Austen didn't, she was more like a modern novelist writing to their own pace without deadlines

[Anonymous No.13019664]

We had two nice Henry James threads a few weeks back with some insightful discussions. Always great to see /lit/ appreciate some authors outside the usual memes. Those threads made me realize how divisive James is and how much he triggers brainlets that solely read for plot. Pic related especially had people seething because of the supposed lack of plot and clear motivation. I don't even think James is that much worse in this regard compared to other 19th century novelists and most of his short stories are pretty plot-driven.
I want to get into his later novels soon. Is The Golden Bowl a good starting point?

[Anonymous No.13019692]

>>13019664
What Maisie Knew or The Spoils of Poynton are good, short novels that transition towards his late style.

[Anonymous No.13019773]

>>13019692
Cool, thanks. Will def look them up

[Anonymous No.13020158]

What would you consider James's most overrated story/novel and what's his most underrated?
For me, it's:
>overrated: The Bostonians
Too topical and the ending doesn't work at all
>underrated: The Birthplace
Really unique and interesting setting and overall great commentary on art and the canon

[Anonymous No.13020760]

How is his nonfiction? I have heard people praise his travel writings, any essays worth looking into? Preferably about aesthetics or literary criticism

[Anonymous No.13020844]

>>13020760
His literary criticism is of its time, but he writes intelligently about his contemporaries (his various takedowns of Trollope are entertaining).
Art of Fiction is the main essay to read; not many writers of James stature have left us a manifesto of sorts explaining what they were trying to achieve in their writing, and what they thought a good novel should be. The prefaces he wrote for the New York Edition generally give good insights into his inspiration and working methods for each book.
Penguin used to have a collection of his criticism which you might be able to find second hand.

[Anonymous No.13021303]

>>13020844
Thanks Anon. Have you by chance also read some of his autobiographical writings?

[Anonymous No.13021348]

Are any of his horror/ghost stories besides The Turn Of A Screw any good? I read that some years back and really liked it but all his other books seem to be about WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY or the female psyche

[Anonymous No.13021351]

>>13014868
>If you can't write like Henry James you're just the literary equivalent of a conceptual performance art fag
That's 99% of the planet you fucking cretin, literally no one can write like Henry James but that doesn't make realism the absolute pinnacle of the literary arts– If anything realism is its own inverse, a kind of pure textuality separate from the world that does nothing to intervene in or act upon it, merely reflecting the world instead. You're right that there's nowhere left to go except further into experimentation, fragmentation, etc., but that doesn't make that kind of writing any less worthy or valid.

[Anonymous No.13021386]

>>13020158
Overrated: Unironically everything. James is an author that is rightfully fading fast from the public memory and will in a hundred years not be in the canon anymore. His writing style is too dry and long-winded and overall too conservative

[Anonymous No.13021583]

>>13021386
>public memory
Dont think James has ever been read by the general public, he's always been a niche for the cognoscenti, probably the least widely read of any 19th century 'canon' writer. He's too influential on subsequent modernism to be entirely forgotten

[Anonymous No.13021911]

>>13021583
Ironically the suspicion that he was gay might be the one aspect that saves him from being erased from the canon for being just another dead white guy

[Anonymous No.13022249]

>>13020158
Overrated: Daisy Miller. It's not bad but pretty ordinary and unremarkable in my opinion and doesn't deserve the hype.
Underrated: The figure in the carpet. Good premise with a great mystery at the center that should interest any passionate reader. Masterful build up of suspension

[Anonymous No.13022272]

>>13022249
Figure in the Carpet is masterful trolling.

[Anonymous No.13022816]

Henry James is good but only as a writer of short stories. His novels are too tedious and slow. This Anon >>13021386 was basically right, it just doesn't apply to his shorter works. Don't know why that is though. Perhaps he had to make his novels a certain length for serial publishing?

[Anonymous No.13023277]

>>13021583
This. Henry James is the most direct ancestor of the modernists above any other novelists of the 19th century. Everything from his cosmopolitanism, his high aesthetic standards, his critical views, free indirect speech in prose, just about everything he has bears the marks of modernism... and even high modernists aren't read much by the average layman (as opposed to writers such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway).

>>13021911
He hasn't been erased from the canon... nothing can erase anyone from the canon because influence exists objectively. However you are right that the academy has been overly obsessed with whether or not he was a practicing sodomite.

[Anonymous No.13023529]

>>13021583
>He's too influential on subsequent modernism to be entirely forgotten
Not really. He had a shadow of an influence on FItzgerald, if you could even call Fitzgerald a modernist. On the four big modernist writers (Joyce, Hemingway, Yeats, Eliot) he had almost no real influence.

[Anonymous No.13023882]

>>13015950
here we have the all-loving dostoevsky fan

[Anonymous No.13023933]

>>13023529
An article on JSTOR quotes T.S. Eliot as saying that Henry James was "the most intelligent man of his generation" and "among the greatest novelists."

From an article about a dinnertime chat with Joyce:

>James Joyce, because of the state of his eyes, reads very little nowadays, and so it is a surprise to find that the conversation has turned to literature. He speaks of Henry James, who he thinks has influenced Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. He praises Portrait of a Lady, dwelling with much delight on the presentation of Isabel Archer.

Hemingway recommended a novel by Henry James to a young writer. I also noticed that he refers to him derisively in a citation from a JSTOR article, more for his subject matter than style. Nonetheless, he engaged with his work because of the high reputation Henry James had at the time.

As for Yeats, well, the two were in communication together but I did not find an article of James' influence on Yeats within 2 minutes of googling their names together. Studies on the relation of Fitzgerald and Henry James are also difficult to find because Eliot was quoted as saying this about Gatsby: "It seems to me to be the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James." This quote is blocking me from getting any useful results, however, it still means something. Of course this is coming from Eliot's mouth and not Fitzgerald's, but it shows what high esteem Henry James was held in the eyes of all Anglo modernists.

I'm sure if you did a bit of searching you could find other modernists engaged with his work even if they rejected elements of his style. I'm not sure on what grounds you would say he did not influence those writers you mentioned.

Sources:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/460755?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

https://newrepublic.com/article/119130/like-go-james-joyces-birthday-party

http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/ernest_hemingways_reading_list_for_a_young_writer_1934.html

[Anonymous No.13023946]

>>13016927
There is nothing wrong with neologisms so long as they are actually meaningful and true. Freud is a fake.

[Anonymous No.13024627]

>>13023933
Everyone knows all that and more (like the fact that Eliot wrote a few condescending and dismissive phrases about James.)

The question is, did James influence them in any important way? In the cases of Hemingway, Eliot, Yeats the answer is no. They demonstrate no signs of his style. Neither does Joyce, in my opinion.

[Anonymous No.13024683]

>>13023933
Based research poster!
I would also add that James had a pretty big influence on Faulkner who I would consider a greater modernist writer than Hemingway, Years or Eliot

[Anonymous No.13025067]

>>13024627
I see a big influence on Joyce, most particularly Dubliners. Also, James' treatment of consciousness is the closest forerunner of the modernist stream of consciousness style

[Anonymous No.13026284]

>>13024627
I have proof for my claims, you have none. All we can surmise from your post is that you are trolling and don't actually care about contributing to the discussion unless you decide to roll up your sleeves and contribute something substantial.

Whatever dismissive remarks Eliot may have written about James, it barely detracts, if there actually were any dismissive remarks he made, from that high-level of praise he gave him and the fact that he was considered notable enough to compare Fitzgerald's progress in the novel to James'. Eliot did not say Gatsby was "the first step that American fiction has take since Hawthorne" or "since Melville," he said "since Henry James."

The critical opinions of Eliot and Pound at this time were pretty much taken like prophets. There are no other critics from the modernist era who reflect the tastes of the age more. Anyone who has read the ABC of Reading by Pound would know his high opinion of Henry James considering that he was the only novelist he considered worthy of study by a poet.

I don't say this as any partisan of James; it's a verifiable fact. The modernists were also profoundly influenced by Robert Browning. While many of them would say, "oh yeah, I read Homer, I read Dante," in reality they were far closer to James and Browning, their immediate predecessors. Their interest in the "medieval mind" or the "pagan mind" was just a hobby or curiosity. In practice they learned the most about style and composition from their immediate forebears, which would most definitely have been James and Browning.

[Anonymous No.13026379]

>>13026284
Based academic Anon. Do you study literature?

[Anonymous No.13026420]

>>13021911
this

[Anonymous No.13026663]

>>13026379
I did study literature formally in university before changing majors to something that will pay the bills. But literature will always be an interest of mine. Lately religion has garnered more personal study from me but the novel and poetry will always be there.

Authors who say they are influenced by authors who are deeply anachronistic from their times should be viewed with suspicion. For example, it would be accurate to say that most contemporary authors are influenced by Hemingway, not Shakespeare, because while someone might like the themes and language of Shakespeare, it is more likely that someone is going to be more directly influenced in actual composition by Hemingway since he was by far the most influential novelist of the 20th century.

>>13024683
This post more or less confirms what I say above. I am sure Faulkner probably expressed appreciation for Shakespeare at various points of his career. After all, he has a novel called Sound and Fury. However it would be more accurate to say Henry James was a greater influence on him than Shakespeare.

>>13025067
This is more or less what they teach about the origins of stream-of-consciousness in university. They say it has its origins in authors who use "free indirect speech" in their prose... Austen being one of the earliest examples. The wiki article on the subject fails to mention that prior to the modernists it is also used with high frequency by Henry James and Joseph Conrad.

[Anonymous No.13027154]

>>13025067
Poe actually had a much profounder effect on the modernists. You can trace Yeats and Joyce’s symbolism back to him, as well as that found in some of Hemingway’s short stories.

James is the very opposite. He doesn’t have innovation, only magnification. He intensifies points of focus and stress that havd been there for ages. It’s hard to think of anything less influenced by him than modernist writing. There isn’t a single memorable description in all his works, and the biggest stylistic signs of modernism were the emergence of symbolism and the movement of mental depiction from mere description to direct displays. James flouts both of these in his works. Of course, you could look for anything and say that it’s James influenced. The fact that you’d do so about dubliners, which is almost an anti-james book in its treatment of themes and ideas almost as real phenomena and its complete lack of concern with narrative progress in favor of bringing out the latent interest in small scenes, demonstrates that.
>>13026284
You have no proof whatever and cannot even point out specifics. Your whole claim rests on cheap university assumptions that every writer a man likes must have influenced him heavily...if that were true Joyce’s work would have no real style of its own. I’m not your prof, it isn’t enough to google “who did james influence” and then pull up a bunch of passing remarks.

[Anonymous No.13027375]

>>13027154
I agree with you on Poe's influence... I've read the various essays about Poe's influence on the French symbolist poets who in turn influenced the Anglo-American modernists as I'm sure you have. Ironically though many of the Americans and Britons influenced by Poe rejected him as vulgar and commonplace (unlike the French who saw him as a master aesthete). You are probably already familiar with this if you know about Poe's influence.

Nonetheless, the rest of us, in hindsight, can clearly see Poe's influence on them even if they were unwilling to acknowledge it or failed to recognize it. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," for example, sounds more Poe to me more than any other poet Eliot may have attributed influence to for the composition of that poem. Who can possibly take him seriously when he says he was influenced by Laforgue or some such name?

Why you dismiss Henry James' influence is beyond me. If you want me to compare passages side-by-side and do commentary as "proof," that is well beyond the scope of this board. The remarks I quoted above do give testimony however that many of these writers we are discussing acknowledged Henry James as a profoundly influential figure. Just because they chose not to write direct imitations of him does not in anyway dismiss the fact that he influenced their methods of composition.

You are quite right that "the biggest stylistic signs of modernism were the emergence of symbolism and the movement of mental depiction from mere description to direct displays." However the use of free indirect speech in prose is also a sign of movement towards this; two authors, deeply influential on modernists, who utilized such speech were James and Conrad. Joyce was working within a tradition i.e. his stream-of-consciousness was not born out of his head fully-formed like Athena.

Anglo-American modernism was a synthesis of several elements that were pioneered by earlier writers. You can't have it without certain precursors such as Poe, James, Browning, etc. I would find it hard-pressed to be convinced that Poe was responsible for all of modernism. I would be curious to see you propose a canon of influence for modernism that did not include James.

[Anonymous No.13027385]

>>13027375
why does he always look so T I R E D

[Anonymous No.13027522]

>>13027375
You really think James pioneered good dialogue? Joyce would have got that from continental writers, not Henry James. (Moreover James dialogue isn’t a natural stream, the author is always helping it along with obtrusive displays and comments)
And as Nabokov said, those aspects are the least important in Joyce’s work and were already passe by the time Joyce used them.

[Anonymous No.13027531]

>>13027522
>>13027375
There’s really almost no identifiable influence by Henry James. The only one of those who claimed any influence by him was Hemingway and he also named albrecht durer and hieronymous bosch, to give you an idea of how loosely he thought of influence

[Anonymous No.13027774]

>>13027522
I said nothing about dialogue. Free indirect speech does not refer to dialogue. It refers to a narrative technique. It is when the narrator of a story disrupts realist description of the events taking place to give us a hint of a character's inner thought processes as the events happen. It does not require a great leap of the imagination to see how that is an ancestor of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Nabokov would not disagree with me that what is labeled as stream-of-conscious narration is merely another form of realism hence his reasoning that Bloom's walk about Dublin could be followed in real life, or whatever it was he said.

Free indirect speech: "He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. And just what pleasure had he found, since he came into this world?"

The narrator here suddenly becomes the voice of the burdened man. Realists who used this technique are direct influences on Modernist prose writers.

James certainly does not write this constantly (nor does any other 19th century Realist), because he is indeed helping the narrative along with displays and comments that can seem obtrusive to our modern eyes. However, these displays and comments from the narrator are pretty much standard in 19th century novels... it's nearly impossible to find a writer working in that century who does not feel the need to burden us with constant commentary and assessments of a character's choices and actions. Nonetheless, there are some authors from that time, such as James and Conrad, where we can see that style beginning to break down. Forster and Ford parody the chatty, judgmental third-person narrator in some of their own novels, such as Howards End and The Good Soldier. That is what became passe in the Modernist era, not the free indirect discourse.

[Anonymous No.13027957]

>>13027774
>He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. And just what pleasure had he found, since he came into this world
There is nothing original in this, Flaubert was already far beyond this by the time James started writing.
> along with displays and comments that can seem obtrusive to our modern eyes
The man is a bore whose fiction is a mess of irrelevancy and vagueness.

James was a 19th century bore whose fiction doesn't really contain anything original, and there's no real sign of his influence anywhere. Whenever someone mentions his influence, you can always look to the continent and see it done several decades before, usually by a writer James himself had pilfered from.
>.. it's nearly impossible to find a writer working in that century who does not feel the need to burden us with constant commentary and assessments of a character's choices and actions.
Butler, Flaubert, Maupassant, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dickens, etc

[Anonymous No.13028313]

>>13027154
>>13027957
Other anon here. What you say about perspective and the voice and style of the narrator is in my opinion only partially correct. It is true that the early novels in particular are pretty much just standard realist literature (albeit magnificently written). His later prose is much more experimental though and at times definitely has an impressionistic quality to it. James also tried out different narrative techniques in his shorter works and I would cite The Aspern Papers and The Turn Of The Screw as two novellas/short stories that put a lot of emphasis on perspective and aim to directly display the psyche of the characters. To say James only described the mental processes in his novels and thus couldn't possibly be a precursor of modernist writing shows a lack of knowledge of his work besides novels like Portrait Of A Lady.
I also don't know if there is truly so little symbolism in his work but I can't really refute that just from memory. In that regard the names of his characters come to mind though as James really liked Aptronyms which work in a similar manner as symbols.

[Anonymous No.13028398]

>>13027957
Flaubert certainly uses plenty of free indirect discourse. However more Anglo-American novelists were influenced by Henry James in his use of it than Flaubert. See this >>13016851

Your personal opinion that Henry James is irrelevant and vague doesn't matter. I have quotes from modernists attesting to his reputation. You may not think he is innovative, however, there is plenty of evidence to suggest he was very influential on the modernists.

[Anonymous No.13028418]

>>13021386
>too conservative
No such thing

[Anonymous No.13028516]

>>13027154
>complete lack of concern with narrative progress in favor of bringing out the latent interest in small scenes
>the movement of mental depiction from mere description to direct displays
Normally people complain that James does these things far too much, yet you don't think he does them at all. Did you find the breathless pace of The Golden Bowl left no room for psychological complexity?

[Anonymous No.13028713]

>>13028516
>Normally people complain that James does these things far too much, ye
reread my post guy
>>13028398
> However more Anglo-American novelists were influenced by Henry James in his use of it th
They weren't. Joyce used to recite pages of Flaubert at get togethers. Hemingway was deeply influenced by Flaubert and so were Proust, Nabokov, Fitzgerald...
>I have quotes from modernists attesting to his reputation.
I don't care if a couple of modernists like him. They liked literally dozens of 19th century authors, many of whom have almost no influence then or now. Even when he has any, James' influence more often than not is only someone else's influence using him as a byway.

[Anonymous No.13028836]

>>13026663
>since he was by far the most influential novelist of the 20th century.
Thank God you changed your major

[Anonymous No.13028874]

>>13028836
Who would you propose in place of Hemingway? I'm dying to hear. I don't suppose you're just going to suggest Flaubert again? Was Hemingway just a byway for Flaubert?

[Anonymous No.13029180]

>>13028874
Not that guy

[Anonymous No.13029241]

>>13028836
He’s kinda right. The three influential stylists of the 20th c were Joyce, Nabokov, Hemingway

[Anonymous No.13029262]

>>13029241
I know you're not him, but I'm curious how one could put any writer on the same level as Hemingway in terms of influence. For every Pynchon influenced by Nabokov or Joyce, there are about a dozen writers taking a cue from Hemingway.

I am not saying that makes Hemingway a desirable influence... it's just the truth.

[Anonymous No.13030886]

>>13028836
Hemingway was clearly the most influential writer if we talk about general impact. There are very few writers today or in the last half of the 20th century that write in a manner comparable to Joyce or Faulkner (e. g. use stream of consciousness) while Hemingway definitely changed what kind of sound or voice a "respectable" novel could have. That's in no way to say that he is a better writer than those other names mentioned. He simply appealed to a way bigger group of readers. You still see plebs whining about Joyce constantly on this board, calling him pretentious, unreadable etc. That never happens with Hemingway

[Anonymous No.13031143]

>>13028713
>Even when he has any, James' influence more often than not is only someone else's influence using him as a byway.
Is this true of Banville or Toibin, to name just the two obvious major contemporary who are directly influenced by James?
It seems a rather eccentric opinion to claim Henry James had no influence on modernism. Like claiming Cezanne had none on modernist art, the whole critical consensus of the last 100 years must be wrong.

[Anonymous No.13031298]

>>13015261
Sterne