Forging an Art

Yes, this is science fiction.  Time travel, or maybe not.  Is Ralph just a bit off, or has he really stepped through time, a trip of ninety years that should be a dream come true for a history scholar?  I have always understood Ralph as a true time traveler and have never questioned his sanity, unlike critics such as J. Hillis Miller, who raises such questions in his latest book, Literature as Conduct: Speech Acts in Henry James.  Miller even considers that Ralph might be a ghost haunting the Midmores.  I think not.

 
I am rather fond of this unfinished book, which James began in 1900 after the completion of The Turn of the Screw and The Awkward Age and before the works of his major phase.  His concerns about the work are documented in his notes, where his thought processes are revealed and he becomes so much more than the polished gentleman of photos and interviews.  Worry over his characters mimics a parent’s watchful eye over his children, and James, childless, his affection lavished over close friends, family, and his adored dogs, finds his fatherhood here in the care with which he forms the fates of the figures he creates.  Obviously, this does not only apply to this specific work, but the immediacy of these notes makes his presence felt, well, immediately.  Looking at this during the same time that I was re-reading Beyond the Dreams of Avarice, I am struck again by the involvement that paintings of ancestors have on the lives of the characters.  The painting in The Sense of the Past is the vehicle of Ralph’s supernatural adventure and becomes his adversary in his struggle to find his place in time and within the relationships he is attempting to forge in his present, and extract himself from in the past.  And what about the ancestor who has replaced him in his present, what is he up to, and to what changes will Ralph return, if he does return at all?

Wendy Lesser‘s first novel is actually three novellas, the first of which is amazing and wonderful and I wanted it to go on and on.  The second wasn’t bad, but the third was wretched and I wondered if Lesser had been smoking crack after she completed the second.
As a James fan, I was obviously entranced by the first story, which does not name James but the implication is clear, as is that of characters in the steads of Wharton, Fullerton, and Andersen, along with the James butler and his drunken wife.  Lesser’s speculation on Wharton’s thoughts are engaging, and I was disappointed when they came to an end.  I adore my Henry, and one of the many important lessons I have learned from him and his work is that love has no expectations.  Hopes, most certainly, but not expectations – that would be another feeling altogether.  Lesser captures this quality in the love James holds for those dear to him, while her Wharton double furiously struggles to understand this.
I am looking now at a ridiculous review by Lucy Ellmann of the NYT, published on October 9, 2005, in which Ellmann states that Lesser “coyly never admits that these two are based on Edith Wharton and Henry James,” which is a rather silly thing to say.  Of course they are Wharton and James, and there is nothing coy in the portrayal that would leave any room to question this.  Ellmann goes on to claim that the characters (in the entire book, not just the first novella) are “emotionless.”  Ellmann must have completely missed the James/Wharton piece.  She complains that “well on the way to her third orgasm” is an “icky” description, but laments Lesser’s “promising disquisition on menstruation” that does not, to Ellmann’s disappointment, continue.  So – Ellmann wants to read about the heroine’s menstrual troubles but not about her amazing sexual experiences?  That doesn’t work for me.

It’s not Edith Wharton or Henry James, but the setting sure is.  Anna Godbersen’s teen soap set in Gilded Age (1899) Manhattan is an easy read, unlike Wharton and James, and the story isn’t original, but there is something about that cliffhanger that had me putting the sequel on hold as soon as I got in to work this morning.  I really don’t care about Elizabeth or Penelope, though – I want to see what Diana (who reads du Maurier’s Trilby behind her mother’s back – what is up with that?) and Henry are up to, and Lina, well, Lina is in quite a situation herself and we don’t know what she really thinks of it.
Four days and the sequel later – the drama continues, as there promises to be another in the series.  The story proves more predictable as it moves on, and the glittering details are only so entertaining.  There are a few too convenient plot twists that seem a bit contrived, but that is true soap opera fashion (unlike James, of course) in the same vein as Dynasty or Dallas.  The part that is hardest to accept, and perhaps I am just old and jaded and here is where it shows, is early on when Elizabeth’s new life in California is described as so different from her past.  In spite of the difference, she was happy, because she “had followed her heart, and no one ever regrets that.”  I haven’t snorted so loudly in many days, I can tell you that, after reading that line.

Only a couple of hours ago, I was standing in front of the stove, frying up a batch of beer battered bluegill for my dad, and, having just come from swimming and water sliding, was still in my swimsuit with damp hair and sandy toes. The cat was completely unaffected by the fish, which is strange, since she gets very excited over chicken nuggets and other processed animals. She is a big slug of a cat.

Now that things have settled down a bit for the night, I am looking through Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West by Schmidt and Rendon. This is very fun, and practical if one is really planning a trip with a theme based on a book or author. Of course, I had to turn to page 137 first to see what was said about James, who adored Venice and traveled to Paris, lived in London and Rye, and summered in Newport, while maintaining ties to his birthplace of New York City and customary haunts in Cambridge. Lamb House, his final home in Rye, is open for visits (oh, if I only had a spare thousand dollars for the plane ticket) and some of the hotels in which he slept in Italy are still open for business. The flat in London in which he died, at Carlyle Mansions on Cheyne Walk, is privately owned, so admirers have to stand on the street and gaze longingly through the windows. His many travel writings practically offer itineraries themselves, so a look through English Hours or Italian Hours might be helpful for those contemplating a trip to those places loved most by the Master.

One of the chapters, “Literary Walks and Tours,” offers information on guided tours in the big cities. I am not a big fan of guided tours in general, but I had a great aunt Gladys who was crazy about them. She took holidays in Scotland and Venice on such tours with her friend Ethel (she was always referred to in this manner by Gladys and her sister, my grandma – “my friend Ethel”) and were very pleased. My great aunt Gladys and her friend Ethel, however, were not interested in stopping at every playground on Fifth Avenue to play for a half hour or so with the local children (unlike me and my brood), so the usual haunts at a pleasant pace were fine for them, while I think I would be kicked out very quickly and blacklisted with all the travel agencies.

If you’re looking to drink up in the pubs of the London literati, look no further. It’s all here. Steinbeck, Lee, Hemingway, Austen, Joyce, Dickens, Kafka, Alcott, Hawthorne, Fitzgerald, Twain, and Wharton are all given special attention as well. Mystery lovers can find direction to Hammett, Doyle, Sayers, and Christie events and tours. Even if you aren’t planning a trip now or in the near future, this book is fun to browse, and if you are seriously working towards a holiday it should be very helpful in saving time and effort finding places that will satisfy your affection for your favorite author or book. James might be long gone, but standing in Washington Square, and taking photos of my daughter at the James family graves in Cambridge were thrilling to one who adores him as I do. I can not imagine visiting Rye and standing in the home where he felt most comfortable, where he wrote his great masterworks of the early twentieth century; but it will happen someday. If you really love a writer, getting to know them as a person is very satisfying, and seeing where they lived, where they socialized, wrote, or died, are important to developing an idea of them as a man or woman first, before the writer who created characters and stories you love.