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The Aspern Papers (Large Print)

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Such is his facility with the essentials of theatre - concentrated narrative action; lengthy, dramatic scenes of dialogue; vivid characterisation; pointed use of interior space, exits and entrances, and the revealing image - you wonder why James failed as a playwright.

Of course, there is a defining element of James' art that is impossible in the theatre - narration. The nameless narrator of 'The Aspern Papers' is one of the greatest monsters in James' teeming gallery of inglorious masculinity - the editor of a revered American literary poet, who tries to wheedle important documents from a celebrated lover, the now-decrepit Juliana, by installing himself as a lodger, and flattering her aging spinster niece. Like most James heroes, who treat life like a selfish game, he has no idea what emotional havoc he is wreaking on the woman.

The tale has all the drive and tantalising delay of a crime story - the hero is both detective and criminal, and the suspenseful climax suggests what a great genre writer James could have been. As with Stendhal, just as exciting are the intricate, agonising dialogues between the narrator and the niece, each wildly misunderstanding the other.

But if 'Aspern' is a crime story, than the the criminal is of the order of Freddie Montgomery in Banville's 'The Book of Evidence', a brilliant, charming, frighteningly amoral man, whose check of social scruples is dicarded with shocking ease. His seemingly over-detailed account is full of gaps, self-defence, self-pity, evasion, vagueness, misremembering, disarming honesty and wild misinterpreations of others' characters and motives. He is a man who can't see beyond his own narrow goal, behind whom we always sense an unseen, all-seeing eye.

He is the forerunner to a second modern anti-hero, 'Pale Fire''s Charles Kinbote, another literary editor whose devotion to his subject has become mad and murderous. In a Victorian age full of cant about the ennobling power of art, James asserts, disturbingly, the opposite - repeated exposure to sublime poetry (and the book is full of ironic references to religion and glorious war) has only made the narrator emotinally dead, unable to respond to the humanity of others. This 'portrait' of an aging muse, malevolent and concupiscent is a stark warning to literary idealisers, and a sad study of human decline, but should also be seen as a reflection of the narrator's own desires.

'Aspern' is incidentally THE great Venice story, its watery decay somehow seeping through the narrator's blind egotism.

Henry James, The Aspern Papers (Laurel, 1888)

One of James' shortest novels, and one of his least-known, The Aspern Papers is a (supposedly based on a true) story about a young biographer of famed poet Jeffrey Aspern (based, depending on to whom you talk, on either Browning or Keats) who contrives to get his hands on the love letters Aspern wrote to a mistress by presenting himself at the now-ancient mistress' Italian villa and passing himself off as a wealthy traveller and author looking for lodging. The mistress lives with her spinster niece, whose age is never given (one assumes mid-forties, a few years older than the narrator), and the two are impoverished. Things go as planned until the narrator finds himself starting to like the niece a bit more than he bargained for.

The novel runs a bit over a hundred pages, which makes it an excellent introduction to James' extremely dry wit; it's much lighter-weight than the ponderous tomes he's known for. The prose here has an agility which is absent from works such as The Bostonians or The Wings of the Dove, but still manages to convey emotion quite well with only a few words and a gesture. The novel's last pages are a triumph of minimal writing, and probably deserve closer scrutiny than the works of James' that are normally assinged in English classes around the globe.

Oddly, the one major failing of this novel is that James abandons the minimalism every once in a while, and his characters go overboard with hysterical crying and the like so common to Victorian literature. In a book that's otherwise so controlled, these episodes-- never longer than a few sentences-- seem absurd more than anything; perfectly composed people suddenly collapse into tears as if shot with pepper spray, and then within the space of a paragraph are back to their cool, collected selves once again. These intrusions are minimal, and while they detract from the scenes in which they're placed, the novel overall is still a worthy one. If you've been turned off by James through exposure to one of those million-page drawing room comedies, you may want to give him another try with this. *** 1/2

This story of an unnamed narrator ingratiating himself into the household of a elderly lady, once the mistress of a famous poet with whom the narrator is obsessed, and her middle-aged niece, in order to obtain papers written by the poet is superbly written and psychologically astute. As often is the case with the works of Henry James it is an exegesis on how people use other people. Often times it isn't exactly clear who is using whom more. The Aspern Papers is an excellent introduction to Henry James for those first approaching The Master's work. It is a novella, approximately 100 pages in length. The writing style is elegant and clear, unlike his style in later works like "The Wings of the Dove" and "The Golden Bowl" which tend to be convoluted and vague.

"The Aspern papers" is a surprisingly short, sexy and suspenseful novel. It will completely change your opinion of Henry James; he shows himself to be an master of suspense and well played out drama instead of the ambiguous pussyfooting plodder that most people think him to be. There is a definite touch of evil in this novella. It takes place in a stuffy interior world dominated by an old sinister woman in a green shade. The narrator's intentions are quite amoral and evil. The narration is deftly created through sure touches of insecurity and self pity. The trick of the unreliable narrator is used to great effect. And at no point does it seem anything other than a seamless and effective method of narration.

Or maybe I change my mind? (Thanks and apologies to Meatloaf for providing me the ideal title for my review, even if I had to do some violence to it!)

Graham Greene had the habit of calling some of his fiction `entertainments'. I read somewhere, recently, that he did not see himself in the same league as Conrad and Henry James, whom he considered first grade novelists, which he was not. I agree with Greene's self-assessment, but it made me think about James. I find that I prefer James's long stories over his novels. I also find James much more amusing than I expected from his reputation. (I will re-read Greene to update my opinion on him.)

Look at James' brilliant 100 page novella The Aspern Papers: what a witty, elegant, and even suspenseful piece of fiction! And it is pure entertainment. Don't expect any pretensions for higher or deeper meanings.
The narrator is a weasel of a man, who targets 2 ladies living alone in an obscure run-down palacio in Venice, for some kind of literary heist. He is the editor of a deceased poetry superstar, Jeffrey Aspern. Improbably, the nameless narrator and his co-editor have found a living witness to the great man: a woman who had an affair of an unclear kind with the star, when she was 20, in 1820. All that the 2 men know about it are vague speculations based on lines in Aspern's poetry. The editors presume that the now old lady must have letters and maybe even poetry manuscripts. One of them had asked her in writing and caught an outright refusal: she had nothing and would not share it anyway. And she wanted to be left alone.
The other one, the narrator, is now trying a different approach: he manages to enter the palacio as a lodger, pretending to need a place with a garden during the summer. He is willing to pay outrageous prices for rent. He tries to enter the lady's confidence. After a long waiting period he manages to get closer to the old lady's niece, also not young any more....
The suspense comes from 2 angles: will the weasel make it? One rather wishes not.
And: what will we learn about the old lady's past? What kind of affair did she have with the great man? What papers does she actually have?
An example of James' nicely twisted language. Talking about his man servant, the narrator says this: `I was conscious he had fantastic private theories about me which he thought fine and which I, had I known them, should have thought offensive.'
Can it get any better? An entertainment of the best sort.

All the stars came together when this audiobook was produced! The material is superb; just the right amount of action and description (some would say a feat for Henry James!) And as a long-time audiobook "reader", whether a "book" is good or not hinges on the reader. In this case, Jonathan Epstein is brilliant -- his phrasing is perfection.

A fine novella by Henry James. In the closing decades of the 19th century, an unnamed narrator travels to Venice from the United States under a false pretext, in order to ingratiate himself to an elderly woman living there, so as to get possession of papers that once belonged to a famous poet, who decades ago was the lover of the old lady. The papers are, of course, to use an apt anachronism, a McGuffin for this story. While at the beginning, it looks like the American gentleman is using and exploiting the lady, soon it will seem the opposite situation is taking place, as the lady seems to know more about his intentions than the narrator originally believed. Very well written, it helds one's interest to the very end, and it shows a fine and somewhat corrosive sense of irony that was uncommon in the literature of the time. Very elegant work, yet fairly easy to read. It's quite a modern book, as well, as its obsession with texts is somewhat reminiscent of many 20th century novels.

I have had trouble getting through some of James books -- like The Golden Bowl. But this book is well written in a simple fashion -- that is, for James, and moves along at a quick pace. And things do happen, unlike in some of James books. It is the story of a man obsessed with getting some intimates letters that a famous poet once wrote to a woman whom he loved. He wants these papers so badly, that he finds the now old woman living in Venice and rents rooms in her house. He also meets her niece. Then he begins scheming and planning-- how shall he go about getting these Aspern papers. The question is: does he succeed?

The two previous reviewers have superbly praised the quality of this spoken word production -- it is flawless. The story itself is perhaps my all-time favourite tale by Henry James -- although I am also partial to THE SACRED FOUNT. I love when James is strange -- and this tale of obsession is very weird. It effects different people in a diversity of ways. Sheldon M. Novick, in his fascinating if eccentric two-volume biography of James, writes rather stuffily of the story thus:

"The story was a cruel joke, and it concerned people who were still living; but the story was a great success. The atmosphere of Venice is beautifully evoked, much of the action occurs in an improbably garden, and narrator's evil deception is at home in the atmosphere of mingled innocence and corruption."

I recently purchased, from Amazon, the excellent DVD of James's tales, AFFAIRS OF THE HEART, and "The Aspern Papers" was one of the tales featured. This televised production shewed the real tragedy of the tale, the fate of poor Miss Tita, to whom was waved a phantom promise of romance, merely to have the spectral promise sink from view, like the clothes of Constance that James tried to drown after her unspeakable suicide (if such her death may be proclaimed). This magnificent story is so much more than a "cruel joke," as Novick unimaginatively complains. It is human drama of a rare kind, deeply felt and superbly expressed by a Master of his Art. The dramatic reading of the story here offered is a fine representation of a classic of its kind.

"When I listen to Jonathan Epstein read the Aspern Papers, it's clear
that he has one of the few great Shakespearean-quality voices of our
generation, as well as the brains and talent to carry off the lyrical
quality of Henry James. Mr. James would be immensely gratified to hear
this CD."
- Susan Arbetter
Host/Producer of WAMC NPR's The Roundtable Show"