Henry James, a Life

I second Mr. Friedman's assessment -- the only bio of a novelist I can think of that so gets inside its subject is Gerald Nicosia's bio of Jack Kerouac, Memory Babe. I read Edel's abridgement/expansion of his 5-volume doorstop in my late '20's, and was inspired to then read a dozen or so James novels sequentially in chronological order; many people find HJ's later novels impenetrable, but between the Edel bio as a guide and working my way through the canon, when I closed James' finale, The Golden Bowl, the book seemed like a graceful, weightless bauble, lighter than air in its serene perfection. As to the bio, who knew that the 70 years of a man who a)traveled through Europe and the UK incessantly, a compulsive tourist; b) attended 1000's, possibly 10's of 1000's of rich people's dinner parties; c) attended galleries and theater openings; d) spent the rest of his available hours locked away writing (or later dictating) -- and that's it, the sum total of HJ's activities -- could be the matter for one of the most scintillating lives ever written. It's like Proust -- the map of an exceptionally refined mind. If you don't believe me, look at any photo, or better, JS Sargent's painting of the Master, and look at the penetrating, kind, inquisitive gaze. HJ had some of the most impressive eyes I've ever seen. The man saw things others did not, with regards to the interaction of self and society, and drove his observations home with a prose style as precise as a scalpel. He was also, like his brother William, the promulgator of a non-Freudian psychology that looked into our ethical and moral choices, distinct for each of us, rather than our appetites and sexual selves, which are monotonous in their similarities - i.e., as an artist he was concerned with what makes his people unique, not the same: everybody does the same stuff in bed, we all make totally different choices in our lives. This makes him MORE, not less modern, than most Modernists, who rejoice in atavist barbarism and call it progess. His is one of the greatest wholly secular imaginations ever, he was the last writer of the 19th century and the first writer of the 20th. He shared, with his antipode Freud the belief that civilization was all-important, while acknowledging the cost of its repressions; he saw that civilization was precarious and ultimately worth saving, yet clear-sighted about the price convention exacts on men and especially women and children. His style was complex, because his world-view was sensitive and complex. Among his greatest accomplishments was his efforts to explain the Old World and the New to each other. Both our current and our last president could benefit greatly from a perusal of his so-called international fictions. James knew as early as 1874 that while America was a crass, philistine bull in a china shop,she was also easily duped and hungry for European approval, while Europe was a sinkhole of cynicism and depravity, capable of bamboozling America within

This is one of the great literary biographies . Edel labored on the James biography for over twenty years and has great sympathy and admiration for his subject. In a sense the work has something of the quality and intelligence the character of James' writing itself. It is the story of a life devoted to art a life in which experience seemed to less exist as value in itself than as material for its artistic transformation and elaboration. One of the great moving parts of the work is the story of James' tragic failure as a playwright. And the story of his recovery from it and his going on to produce the New York edition of his works is a story of a kind of determination and courage displayed by this most dedicated of artists. As to the relationships of James to the other members of his remarkable family including the philosopher who wrote like a novelist his brother William Edel is instructive but not exhaustive. It was nonetheless touching to read how these two great figures of American intellectual life came towards the end of their days to show a brotherly caring and respect which overcame the inherent ambivalences of their somewhat rivalous relationship. The reader needs patience and a feeling for Jamesian abstraction and complexity. But this work will help the reader know well, if not completely, the great American novelist who wrote as if a philosopher.