8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why Did Nobody Mention ..., June 22, 2010
This review is from: The American (Norton Critical Edition) (Paperback)
... when I was served a full course of Henry James in college, that his novels were deliciously funny? Satiric thigh-slappers! In his early novels like The American and The Bostonians, James's wit is sharper than Mark Twain's elbow or Oscar Wilde's tongue! I suppose my dear professors of literature were entranced and bemused by the subtleties of James the Old Pretender, in The Golden Bowl or The Ambassadors. The late Henry James had his merits, I will grudgingly admit, but the mere beginner James -- The American was only his third novel, and in his century 'three' was barely a start on a career of writing -- was a formidable genius.
The title-character of The American, Christopher Newman, is introduced, with sly condescension, as an awkward American, a westerner who has earned 'quite a bundle' in manufacturing and stock-jobbing. He's a caricature of the brash self-made democrat, confident and in fact intrepid, but aware of his own astonishing naivete and shallowness of culture. He's cashed in his chips, at age 38, and come to Europe knowing that he's looking for something more than 'success in business' but totally ignorant of what that something might be. In the course of things touristic, he sets out on the Grand Tour, a summer chasing culture from Amsterdam to the Alps to Venice, at the end of which he has little more insight than he started with. When he returns to Paris, it comes back to him "simply that what he had been looking at all summer was a very rich and beautiful world, and that it had not al been made by sharp railroad men and stock-brokers."
There are several other American stereotypes for James to make mockery of, in the early chapters of The American, but eventually our fledgling novelist gets down to story-telling. Mr. Newman discovers, rather to his surprise, that what he really needs to complete his successful life is ... a wife! Being a practical man, he determines the parameters - the job specs - of the woman he would choose to marry, and, since of course this IS a novel, he finds her promptly, in the guise of a Countess of the proudest French aristocracy, a woman whose family is staunchly Royalist and snobbish to a degree incomprehensible to a parvenu American millionaire. The novel picks up steam as it depicts Newman's bluff American 'shoot-out' with class-conscious Europe society and the romance of the manufacturer and the countess. As for the denouement of that romance, I'll leave you in suspense. Suffice it to say that, after all the Victorian 'novels of manners' -- Austen, the Brontes, Trollope, Eliot -- the possibility that such a novel might NOT end in the proper marriage adds a good deal of suspense and subtlety to the tale.
A caricature at first, Christopher Newman develops, or rather Henry James develops him, into a rather likable chap, someone for whom the reader cheers in his enterprise. And the more you like him, the more you'll like the book. He is, in the long run, the epitome of the best America has to offer in terms of honorable character. Henry James was seldom so generous with his male characters or with his American compatriots.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Noble savage and savage nobles, December 8, 2010
This review is from: The American (Norton Critical Edition) (Paperback)
This satirical novel is the most fun that I have had so far on my cruise through the early works of famous American, later English humorist Henry James.
Maybe it is not on par with some of his masterpieces as far as psychological depth is concerned, but the light, easygoing mildly sarcastic portraits of American tourists and expatriates in Europe, in contrast with their old world contemporaries, is a continuous delight. What we get here is not a portrait of a gentleman, but a caricature of a Western Barbarian, a likable one. I would even suspect that James never knew, personally, the kind of man that he satirizes here very well on a social level. One might even consider the possibility that the man as a homo dollarensis is rather far besides the point of truth.
Our hero is Newman, Christopher, so named after Columbus by his patriotic parents. He is a new man, a naïve rich Westerner. Boston counts as Europe for him. He has made so much money with commodities like nickel, that he has no worries. He has taken time out, and now, in his mid thirties, he wants to marry, even if to a foreigner. He has high standards and finds few women up to his great expectations. He also wants to educate himself. We first get to meet him in the Louvre, looking at a Murillo. He tells people that he is keen to learn about music. He considers himself entirely uneducated and is keen to repair that shortcoming. His friend Mrs. Tristram suspects him of having no feelings and wonders if he is very simple or very deep. (She is one of the main characters in the story. She can express displeasure, volubly, in two or three languages. That characterizes her as an intellectual, in her husband's view.)
Newman is a creation of Parzivalian simplicity. The original Parzival is described by his biographer, Wolfram von Eschenbach, as "a brave man, slowly wise". Parzival's initial flaws are his youthful ignorance and selfishness. He gets to grow though, in the course of his adventures and his grail quest. Newman gets to grow too, a little. He begins to see the French noble abysses. James decided not to use the name Percival for Newman, probably in order not to be too obvious. He couldn't leave the name out entirely though and teases us by calling another character Percival. Ha, we can see through your little tricks, Mr. James!
The novel was written in 1875/76, when James was visiting Paris. The book version came out in 1877. The story is set in 1868, at the tail end of the 2nd Empire. Haussmann's beautification of Paris figures large in the story. James and Zola knew each other. I wonder how the two got along and what James thought of Zola's political stance against Napoleon III. The little Napoleon is never even once mentioned in James. The only political references that I found at all are tiny and negative: Newman's aristocratic friend Bellegarde explains that he can't go into politics because the Bellegardes do not accept the Bonapartes socially. Bonaparte supporters don't get invited to Bellegarde parties. The Bellegarde daughter in law dreams of sneaking into a Tuileries ball.
The story abstains from real politics, which is in itself curious, given that the main protagonist ended the civil war in the rank of a Unionist Brigadier General. That was probably an accident and ranks in terms of achievement with his acquisition of wealth from nickel. The man is just a leader by nature. North or South, nickel, wash tubs, or leather, these are all one to him. (I once had a boss who declared proudly that as an entrepreneur he didn't mind whether he produced marmalade or children's coffins.)
But is Newman a `typical' American of his time, to justify the book title? In the view of a temporary travel companion (a Unitarian minister from Dorchester, MA), Newman has a `want of moral reaction'. In that sense he is a pleasant deviation from the ranting missionary kind. On the other hand, another temporary fellow traveler, an Englishman, thinks that Newman moralizes too much. What is the truth? For sure, Europeans take him as an easy prey, he gets cheated and exploited and despised, depending on social status and commercial interest. Much of the fun in the tale comes from James' exposure of the process of `loss in translation'.
I might need to add, for better understanding, that the core story of the plot is Newman's attempt to marry a widow from a somewhat run down aristocratic family. Truth be told, his chosen flame may be a great girl, but she is a little too smooth to be a real personality. She may be a beauty, but she is bland. That's the main shortcoming of the Newman character too: too flat, no fissures, crevices, cañons, loops, ditches. He is also entirely sexless, it appears. Might that have been his spiritual father's problem?
For real life people we have to look at the other staff of the tale. However there are also quite a few caricatures among them... Should I deduct a star? No way, too much fun to be had here.
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