Henry James--The Awkward Age (1899)

The literary editors of the Illustrated World Encyclopedia write in their introduction to this book that "To the student of the novel almost no novel can be more important than The Awkward Age." This book is widely considered to belong to the transitional phase of James's later career that culminated in the three final masterpieces of the first half-decade of the twentieth century, The Wings of a Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl. It seems to me after reading it that it can be characterized pretty safely with this group, all of which I have at least read through, with varying degrees of success, The Golden Bowl being the one I would consider to have been the most satisfactory experience, in that it is the one I found the least wearying to get through. Given my longtime aspirations to be acceptably well-versed in literature above any other area of study, these great late Henry James novels have always been something of an obstacle to my satisfaction on this point. I have been convinced by enough of those Who Really Know of the importance, masterful construction, and, perhaps rarest of all, the highly satisfying mature intelligence at work in them, that to not be fully immersed in the experience of all of these qualities in the course of one's reading is to be dogged by a persistent sense of failure that one is ultimately unable to overcome. It is like keeping up in a difficult course at school. The determination may be there at the beginning and the persistence may not flag entirely, but once you lose the thread in any part there is no keeping up and it is impossible to fully rejoin the pursuit with any degree of mastery because everything significant in the story is dependent on and follows precisely from the various difficult and opaque scenes that have accumulated before it.

Keeping in mind that James's high seriousness and maturity are the qualities his fans admire above all, I nonetheless felt compelled to make a note that this was an actual paragraph in the book (p.91):


"The old man had got up to take his cup from Vanderbank, whose hand, however, dealt with him on the question of sitting down again. Mr Longdon, resisting, kept erect with a low gasp that his host only was near enough to catch. This suddenly appeared to confirm an impression gathered by Vanderbank in their contact, a strange sense that his visitor was so agitated as to be trembling in every limb. It brought to his lips a kind of ejaculation--'I say!'"


p. 96 Another classic Henry James sentence:


"Poor Mitchy's face hereupon would have been interesting, would have been distinctly touching to other eyes; but Nanda's were not heedful of it."


The prominent blogger Tyler Cowen once opined that Dostoevsky had become tiresome to read in our time because his concerns were not our concerns (though I don't think I personally qualify as part of the collective "our" referenced here). I often find myself having to ask "Are Henry James's?"


p. 173 On the salon-like atmosphere at Mrs Brookenham's:


"The men, the young and the clever ones, find it a house--and heaven knows they're right--with intellectual elbow-room, with freedom of talk. Most English talk is like a quadrille in a sentry box. You'll tell me we go further in Italy, and I won't deny it, but in Italy we have the common-sense not to have little girls in the room."


It certainly seems as if our time is suffering for a lack of "intellectual elbow-room".


p. 281 "The pause she thus momentarily produced was so intense as to give a sharpness that was almost vulgar to the little "Oh!" by which it was presently broken and the source of which neither of her three companions could afterwards in the least have named. Neither would have endeavoured to fix an indecency of which each doubtless had been but too capable."


My comment on the above passage: "Subtle, oh yes, but at some point you wouldn't mind seeing a neutron bomb detonated in the middle of these people."


p. 309 "Edward's gloom on this was not yet blankness, yet it was dense."


I am groaning at this point.

As I have mentioned somewhere in these blogs, I was afflicted by a kidney stone around the middle of this book, and the accompanying abdominal pain made it impossible to read for several days until I was put on some opioid pain medicine, which I actually found to be a great aid to concentration on the book during the days I was on it leading up to my operation. I don't know what it says for Henry James however that the optimal conditions for enjoying his later work in the 21st century may be to be hopped up on painkillers and largely confined to bed for the better part of a week.


I have not generally found editions of most Henry James novels from my preferred 1920-1970 period to be especially thrilling, so I opted to go with a fairly recent (1993) reprint from the Everyman series. This included a 25 page introduction by Cynthia Ozick which I read about a page of before determining that I was not going to find it helpful to understanding the book any more than I actually did.


By completing this I have now come to the end of the literary classics selection for volume 2 of the encyclopedia, as well as finally coming to the end of the "A" titles. It took slightly more than four years to accomplish this, though the "As" do represent about 10% of the entire list. I am still on pace to not finish the entire list until I am 83 however, so eventually I am going to have to pick it up a little. I believe once my children are older--I still have a two year old at the moment--that I will be able to do that.

The Challenge


1. Joe Hill--Twentieth Century Ghosts...........................................................474
2. Father Jonathan Morris--The Promise........................................................146
3. Michelle Paige Holmes--Yesterday's Promise...........................................116
4. Arthur Conan Doyle--The Return of Sherlock Holmes................................88
5. Petra ten-doesschate Chu--Nineteenth Century European Art....................28
6. Steven Levingston--Kennedy and King.......................................................26
7. Elizabeth Bowen--The Hotel.........................................................................7
8. Henry C Dethloff & John A. Adams--Texas Aggies Go to War...................1
9. Genderuwo (movie).......................................................................................0
10. Eric Harrison & Kendall Johnson--Critical Companion to Henry James...0
11. Henry James's Europe: Heritage and Transfer (ed. Harding).....................0
12. Miss Desirable--A Little Bit of Taani...........................................................0


1st Round


#5 Chu over #12 Desirable


I'm not sure if Desirable is an actual book or not.


#6 Levingston over #11 Henry James's Europe
#7 Bowen over #10 Harrison and Johnson


It's tough to earn a win coming in with 0 points against any kind of remotely serious book.


#9 Genderuwo over #8 Dethloff and Adams


Genderuwo is a 2007 Indonesian film that is all accounts quite dismal, but it has an upset on reserve in its account for this tournament.

Final 8


#1 Hill over #9 Genderuwo
#7 Bowen over #2 Morris


Father Morris is a regular contributor to Fox News, mainly as an authority on religious matters. He is also a campus minister at Columbia University, for what it's worth. Bowen's book, though not exceptionally well known, at least in this country, seems to be considered to have literary value. A handsome edition of it was published by the University of Chicago press in 2012.


#3 Holmes over #6 Levingston


None of Holmes's books are carried by any libraries, presumably because she is a romance novelist. But she had an upset coming in the tournament.


#4 Doyle over #5 Chu


The literary blue blood Doyle prevails over the game art expert in a well-played match.


Final Four


#1 Hill over #7 Bowen


The 45 year old author Joe Hill, a native of Bangor, Maine, seems to be the relatively incognito son of mega best-selling author Stephen King. My inclination would have been to favor Bowen's neglected-but-in-some-quarters-respected novel here but those designated upsets come into play.


#4 Doyle over #3 Holmes


Amusing coincidence in the name of Doyle's opponent.


Championship


#1 Hill over #4 Doyle


In overtime. Doyle does have at least two books on the official list, The Hound of the Baskervilles and A Study in Scarlet, so he will not be neglected. The main purpose of the whole "C" list being to expose myself to more contemporary or neglected literature and authors where plausible, Hill seems plausible enough to get the victory here.