Why is Henry James so disliked?

Your uncle is Mussolini?
I fucking love Henry James. Ok, I've only read the Anerican and Daisy Miller, but I have Portrait on the way, and already read the first few pages on Amazon. It looks fantastic and I can't wait to read it.

Read Turn of the Screw

And that's why Twain is a grade school writer.

the daisy miller film is pretty good for those who haven't seen it
m.youtube.com/watch?v=HkCiZPlmH9U

I dont like any of the writers mentioned there where should I start with Henry James?

>And that's why Twain is a grade school writer.
james use dah big wurdz

go ahead and explain the appeal of isabel archer. what was so uniqe about her that a handsome lord, a discriminating snob, an intelligent dying man, etc were all fascinated with her?

>doesn’t like Nabokov
you should probably be less worried about where to start with James, and more with where to start with Dr Seuss.

Kek

Attached: Vladimir_Nabokov_1960s.jpg (220x298, 19K)

It's ok, user. You don't have to like Henry James.
Yeah, when I saw the short Eliot quote in the OP my first reaction was "hmmm that actually sounds like it could be compliment". A lot of authors are too hamfisted with the "ideas" and "themes" in their writing.

I think Nabokov is a great novelist, but he's shallow.

A lot of the comments seem to have been written by il/lit/erates.

Why do you think we should read Henry James user ? What are his most distinctive qualities ? What are his best works ? His more accessible works ?

Same question to any James fan itt. Sell me Henry James.

Substance and shadow was embracing. I can just picture William blushing and changing the topic whenever someone mentioned his father's philosophical work.

Cope

He’s too intelligent, you can always tell who the dilettantes are by the ones who criticize him. Wilde = obviously brainlet, but had good aesthetic taste, Woolf = angry lesbian with a huge ego, couldn’t understand James and hated Joyce for beating her at her own game 4 years earlier than her, Nabokov = self-explanatory

Joyce spoke respectfully of James’ work and admired him.

Where do I start with him?

Joyce had awful taste, though. This is well known. The fact that you have to appeal to Joyce means you can’t even defend your admiration of James

I like James. That's my defense.

My admiration for James down to a couple things
- his sentences, especially in his later work, are impeccably crafted, paragraphs that built like the architecture of a cathedral, but it takes reading his earlier work and becoming familiar with his style to appreciate later stuff
- his psychological insight is borderline inhuman, I’m consistently awestruck by his clarity of vision
- his plotting, there is not a wasted page in Hames, everything weaves in and out of each other and comes together in the climax

Daisy Miller or Portrait of a Lady

Gass liked him

Bump

James will always be a pleasure for an erudite few. As TS Eliot sayd
>it hardly matters that very few people will read James. The ‘influence’ of James hardly matters: to be influenced by a writer is to have a chance inspiration from him; or to take what one wants; or to see things one has overlooked; there will always be a few intelligent people to understand James, and to be understood by a few intelligent people is all the influence a man requires.

As Niezsche says, noble people find warmth in the things that leave the mass of men cold

>Moreover, Eliot and Woolf are pretty much irrelevant writers to anyone who knows what art is.

kys pseud.

This post might not be that objective though. I recently read a collection of essays from Borges where he often mentions Henry James very positively. He considers him highly innovative for bringing realism into literature. So that one quote about him here might not at all been meant as negatively as the post implies, especially when you consider that Borges literature itself really lacks "life". Similarly I am fairly certain that I have heard of Eliot praising James before.

Washington Square or maybe a compilation of some of his shorter works (I really enjoyed The Aspern Papers). A Portrait Of A Lady is also a good entry point.

The main reason to read James is his absolute mastery of the English language. If you are one of those readers that entirely depends upon plot and character, he might very well not do it for you. James does not spell every motivation for every character out and oftentimes leaves some plot elements ambitious. That is the reason why you very often have some readers seething because they think way too much about why one character falls for another or does a certain thing - as if life was even always that simple and neat.
His earlier works are prime example of mid 19th century realist novels while his later works have a very interesting almost impressionistic quality. His late period is notoriously hard to read though and will turn off any brainlet. My post above () mentions what I think are the best entry points.

It takes a refined and lofty mind to appreciate James. Despite all their talents, most of the writers quoted in that link are anything but lofty.

Henry James is one of those boring writers you kind of hate to read but acknowledge the genius of until months later after everything's digested and you convince yourself you actually enjoyed the process of reading and reccomend to your friends somewhat smug for recommending such a dry and boring author and so you pick up another one of his works and get a panicked drowning feeling 15 pages in when you remember how little you actually enjoy reading him.

Based!

the aspern papers isn't dry

Nor is The Turn Of The Screw or Daisy Miller or Washington Square or most of his works. It mainly comes down if you can appreciate language and prose over plot

Christopher Hitchens' look. Seems kinda evil if you ask me.

But he doesn’t possess an absolute mastery. He possesses a few tricks. There isn’tva single a apt description or memorable phrase in any of his books.

First of all I don't think beautiful descriptions are necessary for great prose, they often tend to get too flowery and are more ornamental than anything else. That being said, I still think there some scenes in James's work that are described very intensely. The moment the mistress first encounters the ghosts in The Turn Of The Screw immediately comes to mind. The Aspern Papers also have some remarkable moments like that.
Generally though, James mastery lies in the way he constructs his sentences, especially in his late period. He is in that way comparable to Joyce or Faulkner who are also not great stylists because they use impressive descriptions but because of the way their prose flows.

This is a passage from The Golden Bowl which should illustrate my points:
>It argued a special genius; he was clearly a case of that. The spark of fire, the point of light, sat somewhere in his inward vagueness as a lamp before a shrine twinkles in the dark perspective of a church; and while youth and early middle-age, while the stiff American breeze of example and opportunity were blowing upon it hard, had made the chamber of his brain a strange workshop of fortune. This establishment, mysterious and almost anonymous, the windows of which, at hours of highest pressure, never seemed, for starers and wonderers, perceptibly to glow, must in fact have been during certain years the scene of an unprecedented, a miraculous white-heat, the receipt for producing which it was practically felt that the master of the forge could not have communicated even with the best intentions.

>tfw you BTFO the James haters and also get doubles

Attached: 1538354852861.jpg (500x500, 96K)

What makes his late works difficult?

He writes like a woman

because his prose sucks donkey nuts.

t. delusional female

that comma use makes me cringe. he really needed an editor in this one.

j-dog’s plots aren’t even bad, unless every book you read has to be le ebin goofy spork-riddled pynchonian spazziness

I enjoy reading him. I get very immersed while reading James.

That excerpt made me tear up. Once I finish Tristram Shandy I think I'll take a second stab at The Golden Bowl. I never read any of his early work, so it was too much for me on my first try, but everything I read is increasingly dense, so maybe I'm ready...how do you think I can best equip myself to fully enjoy late James?

Was that supposed to be impressive? It’s a series of cliches. Wow his intellect is like a forge. “Inner vagueness” lol

The envy of lesser writers in some cases, simple distaste in others.

>millerworlds.blogspot.com/2010/06/writers-on-henry-james.html?m=1
Oh, great. Another reason to disdain McCarthy.

Read The Golden Bowl and The Ambassadors.

I tried reading the Ambassadors once. It was fucking hard, I gave up ;_;

I'm with you some of the way.
I like Woolf but I agree that she talked more shit about others than she should have. Especially Joyce.
Love Nabokov, but the same applies to him obviously.

I like James when I'm in the right mood. Someone else in this thread called him laborious and that's pretty much it really. His sentence structure is gorgeous, but it's also hard work. Especially if English isn't you first language and/or you drink too much. Take it from me.

many fags in this topic are doing the following:
>forgetting james's brother was an american philosopher/psychologist
>forgetting james's use of indirect speech
>forgetting nearly every sentence establishes something about the consciousness or subconsciousness of a character
>forgetting late james was all dictated and not written down by him directly so as to produce a less constructed presentation of thought
james is a master and all the linked authors and posters in the topic hating on him are fags

That’s all great, but it isn’t art. Art is originality, beauty, direct conveyanve of a feeling or thought. This is just reasoning oneself into writing characters that aremore than a single trait or shade of demeanor.

Moreover, he doesn’t even do that properly, as Isabel Archer demonstrates.

i think he had a cool look to him

Attached: 1550595403407.png (1199x1578, 1.92M)

WE OUT HERE DOING BAD SHIT NIGGA
>that incel who comes in every James thread and complains Portrait of a Lady didn't make sense to him

Attached: Henry-left-and-William-James-ca-1899-1901-Houghton-Library-Harvard-University-call.png (714x1061, 399K)

Eliot and Woolf aren’t irrelevant writers to anyone who knows what art is... they provide a very concrete example of an Artistic movement through literature. You’re not even close to being right.

And yet you still can’t defend it

i just read tristram shandy, how can you look at that maudlin shit and tear up after reading sterne's genius?

>wonder why people think Henry James was a faggot
>see this picture
It all makes sense.

that's his bro desu

he was shit because he was an american. all american writers are shit.

I started with In The Cage for a class and I love it. Where should I go from here?

Cringe

>he used an amanuensis
no wonder all the god damn commas are fucked up.

Maybe something engendered hobby-horsically.

He started during What Maisie Knew. A keen reader can detect the change from sentence to sentence

I'm talking about that dumb position he's in

Portrait of a lady or maybe a collection of his shorter stories. The one by Oxford publishing that contains The Aspern Papers is really good

Just now starting with The Ambassadors, what am I in for?

Because he was an ugly mf

Attached: 187DC59D-BF5D-47AE-97A3-DDD574306178.jpg (727x1046, 125K)

have an example? regardless it really shows and it's jarring. despite whatever genius he has i'm not interested in formatting my thoughts to an indirect author anymore. hence no longer reading translations either. these flaws are just too much to bear, really.