B List: Anna Karenina...179/950
C List: R.R. Palmer--Age of the Democratic Revolution, Vol 2: The Struggle...512/578
I am rather enjoying The Aspern Papers, a book about which I knew nothing beforehand. I would say it was a good introduction to Henry James, akin to The American, but I am not sure anything qualifies as a good introduction to Henry James (though I don't think I would recommend starting out with Wings of a Dove). Most people who had an interest in what the fuss was about would probably just have to jump in somewhere. This is one of his sparer efforts, set in a decaying palace in Venice where an ancient lady and her niece have been living in seclusion for many years, scarcely ever even leaving the grounds. Obviously their food is either delivered to the house or their servants go to the market for them, though Henry James never concerns himself with these kinds of practical details. The old aunt was in her faraway youth a celebrated beauty and the lover/muse of Aspern, a Byron-like poet, and is believed to still possess letters and other mementos of the great man, which are coveted by literary scholars. The attempt of one of these latter to infiltrate the house and gain access to/possession of the papers forms the plot of the story. I am guessing the book is a meditation on the futility of trying to experience/gain possession of an atmosphere of artistic genius from outside, or at second hand/distance in time. Anyway I am finding it interesting, and while many would probably find the pace and claustrophobic life depicted in it excruciating, it suits my own present mood.
The book is a little longer than the 87 pages I record it as being would suggest. The copy I am reading it out of is in an old Norton Anthology, which like to fit a lot of text on a single page.
Anna Karenina we will get to later. I read it once sometime in my early-mid 30s when I was going through my mid-life crisis and literature was not working for me as it had in much of my life up to that point, and the book did not leave much of an impression on me; indeed, I had mostly forgotten it. So it is almost like reading something for the first time now.
I am finally winding down with the Palmer. The C-list I only read a short snippet of each day, which is why I generally favor shorter titles for it. I just finished the section on how the British ruling class managed to contain and suppress revolutionary movements or even expressions of discontent in that country, and especially in Ireland, during the upheavals of the 1790s. While I have not traced his family history, Palmer comes off as belonging to the Wasp-y professor/historian class of men that historically predominated in the Ivy League and other of the more venerable northeastern colleges. He betrays an admiration, as if out of personal identification, for the manner and ease with which the British elite handled their unrulier elements, though most of these latter seem to have been concentrated among semi-educated workingmen rather than disaffected aspiring bourgeois, the more of able of whom I suppose have been traditionally co-opted enough into the rituals and institutions of the top people to limit the fervency of their unhappiness. If anything these books have given me a stronger realization of how heavy-handed and brutal the policies of the British ruling class often were during the heyday of their national power even compared with other European countries traditionally regarded as less progressive and more vicious, which truths, while they have been more emphasized in recent years, are usually done so in a provocative and confrontational manner that practically begs one to be suspicious of the author or speaker's motivation in bringing them up. In such instances a relatively dispassionate record of the facts by a writer who is if anything favorably inclined towards the people in question is more likely to have an effect on me.
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