/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19594198]

Is James worth reading?

[Anonymous No.19594204]

>>19594198
lol of course not. read actually good writers like Joyce, Proust or Nabokov.

[Anonymous No.19594215]

>>19594198
If you enjoy the prose stylist, then yes.

[Anonymous No.19594222]

>>19594215
James' prose is pretty terrible and awkward. Only read this novel if you enjoy the period.

[Anonymous No.19594236]

>>19594222
>semi-colon hard

[Anonymous No.19594257]

>>19594236
If you can endure 400+ pages of this kind of awkward, autistic language, then go ahead by all means.

[Anonymous No.19594283]

>>19594257
That is most likely Wharton having some fun with satire, and doing a wonderful job at it. A very simplified version of his prose which emphasizes the maze like quality but removes meaning. Do you read at all? Or just meme?

[Anonymous No.19594298]

>>19594283
Maybe, but this is a good example of what reading James' prose feels like. Meandering, awkward, autistic. Read it at your own discretion.

[Anonymous No.19594338]

>>19594298
I take that as a no, you don't read.

It serves a purpose in his writing, which that satire does not show, just implies to those who have read and took the time to understand and unravel his syntactical mazes. Few accomplish representing the ambiguity of life as well as James did. Once you have taken the time to unravel a few of his meandering sentences and learn the sense to his madness, his style becomes quite easy and enjoyable to read.

[Anonymous No.19594351]

>>19594298
>being filtered by Jamespeak
You are in grave danger of not making it

[Anonymous No.19594355]

>>19594338
I do read. I just don't enjoy reading James prose when I could be reading something better.

[Anonymous No.19594360]

>>19594204
>Proust
>good

Cormac McCarthy would like a word

[Anonymous No.19594363]

>>19594355
By "read" I implied comprehension. You proved a lack of comprehension with your representing satire as reality.

[Anonymous No.19594384]

>>19594363
Honestly, it's an accurate representation of what reading James' language feels like. I've already said this.

[Anonymous No.19594485]

>>19594384
It is accurate only if you ignore meaning, there is no payoff in Wharton's satire, it is an in joke and nothing more. I am not a fan of James either (prose stylist in general), but reducing him to such a superficial interpretation is ridiculous.

[Anonymous No.19594519]

>>19594485
Yet you continue to reduce him to such a superficial interpretation. His prose sucks. Its why its so forgettable and nobody ever mentions him.

[Anonymous No.19594542]

>>19594222
>>19594355
checked

[Anonymous No.19594567]

>>19594198
James obviously had a professional writing technique, but I found his stories are very passionless. Homeboy really needed to have some sex.

[Anonymous No.19594598]

>>19594198
>male jane austin
hell no

[Anonymous No.19594601]

>>19594519
>Yet you continue to reduce him to such a superficial interpretation.
What? You are just lashing out in futility now, that is the exact opposite of what I have been saying.
>>19594567
Standard prose stylist, too fixated on technique to consider anything else.

[Anonymous No.19594625]

>>19594198
Read Thomas Hardy or Anthony Trollope instead. They're better.

[Anonymous No.19594703]

Ah, good, it's time for /lit/'s monthly Henry James thread. I was worried we would miss it.

[Anonymous No.19594725]

>Shocks, however, from these quite different depths, were not what he saw reason to apprehend; what he rather seemed to himself not yet to have measured was something that, seeking a name for it, he would have called the quantity of confidence reposed in him. He had stood still, at many a moment of the previous month, with the thought, freshly determined or renewed, of the general expectation—to define it roughly—of which he was the subject. What was singular was that it seemed not so much an expectation of anything in particular as a large, bland, blank assumption of merits almost beyond notation, of essential quality and value. It was as if he had been some old embossed coin, of a purity of gold no longer used, stamped with glorious arms, mediaeval, wonderful, of which the “worth” in mere modern change, sovereigns and half crowns, would be great enough, but as to which, since there were finer ways of using it, such taking to pieces was superfluous. That was the image for the security in which it was open to him to rest; he was to constitute a possession, yet was to escape being reduced to his component parts. What would this mean but that, practically, he was never to be tried or tested? What would it mean but that, if they didn’t “change” him, they really wouldn’t know—he wouldn’t know himself—how many pounds, shillings and pence he had to give? These at any rate, for the present, were unanswerable questions; all that was before him was that he was invested with attributes. He was taken seriously. Lost there in the white mist was the seriousness in them that made them so take him. It was even in Mrs. Assingham, in spite of her having, as she had frequently shown, a more mocking spirit. All he could say as yet was that he had done nothing, so far as to break any charm. What should he do if he were to ask her frankly this afternoon what was, morally speaking, behind their veil. It would come to asking what they expected him to do. She would answer him probably: “Oh, you know, it’s what we expect you to be!” on which he would have no resource but to deny his knowledge. Would that break the spell, his saying he had no idea? What idea in fact could he have? He also took himself seriously—made a point of it; but it wasn’t simply a question of fancy and pretension. His own estimate he saw ways, at one time and another, of dealing with: but theirs, sooner or later, say what they might, would put him to the practical proof. As the practical proof, accordingly, would naturally be proportionate to the cluster of his attributes, one arrived at a scale that he was not, honestly, the man to calculate. Who but a billionaire could say what was fair exchange for a billion? That measure was the shrouded object, but he felt really, as his cab stopped in Cadogan Place, a little nearer the shroud. He promised himself, virtually, to give the latter a twitch.

[Anonymous No.19594896]

>>19594198
Of course my dude

[Anonymous No.19594903]

>>19594896
What's in the notebooks?

[Anonymous No.19594907]

>>19594896

[Anonymous No.19595762]

>>19594703
>monthly
There were 2 the day before yesterday. Daily would be more appropriate.