Customer Reviews

Author, Author

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The writer's life, the artistic temperament, and the world of the English stage are bought to life in this beautifully written, complex novel of history and ideas from author David Lodge. Author Author, while totally succeeding as an intricate recounting of Henry James's halcyon days as one of England's most famous men of letters, is also a vividly creative tale of penmanship, literary irony, the collision of values, and the transformation and courage it takes to reinvent oneself artistically.

The novel also works as a sprawling account of Edwardian England, from the pastoral countryside, to the quaint seaside towns, to the gas lit and foggy London suburbs, to the stuffiness and sense of moralistic propriety of the upper-class drawing rooms. Lodge paints a portrait of a society and a culture that is undergoing profound social and artistic changes. It is amidst these changes, that author Henry James is radically trying to reinvent himself as a playwright.

Framed by two deathbed scenes, the bulk of the story involves James's life-long friendship with George du Maurier, and his cautious relationship with the writer Constance Fenimore Woolson the one most influential woman in his life, who later commits suicide in Venice. James was frustrated and vexed by his dwindling book sales, and rather jealous of du Maurier who had recently achieved fame with the runaway success of his novel, Trilby. Seeking to redefine his work, James stakes his professional reputation and five years of work on a series of plays, the crowning achievement of which was to be Guy Domville. The centerpiece of the story recounts his humiliation and mortification at being savagely booed at the London premier when the lower classes nastily laugh and jeer at the silliness of the leading lady's plumed hat.

From his years dining with the literary and artistic society in London to his self imposed sequester at Lamb House, Rye where he enacted his instinct for bachelorly self-preservation, Lodge paints a picture of a man who was totally devoted to a philosophical and literary life. James, through his work, wanted to refine, intensify and preserve human consciousness believing that consciousness was a type of religion. He understood that the author of fictional narratives should represent life as it is experienced in reality, by an individual consciousness, and he developed a firm faith in the superior expressiveness and verisimilitude of the limited point of view.

James with his "his bushy beard, balding pate and incipient paunch," comes across as sexuality ambiguous, and his attitudes to sex "and the spilling of one's seed" were to him extremely distasteful. His views on sexuality were formed in childhood when he saw a male nude posing for a portrait and the image haunted him for days afterwards "with disturbing effects that were physical as well as mental." James also actively distances himself from Oscar Wilde and his aura of sexual scandal. And it is almost a relief when he reaches the calm waters of middle age having survived all the perils and problems, the vague longings and physical disturbances, associated with sex in early manhood.

Lodge has fun with introducing us to such famous figures as Compton Mackenzie, the son of the actor- manager Edward Compton, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and Agatha Christie, who James bumps into on a cycle-ride from Torquay. Author Author is a sprawling, ambitious, and hugely entertaining novel. And Lodge, with a keen biographer's eye, doesn't hesitate to expose the complexities of James's life, involving his friendships, sexuality, and the ever changing demands of his art. Mike Leonard December 04.

This novel takes the life of Henry James as its subject and interpolates fact with fiction without losing its energy. Lodge does a wonderful job of lighting up the things that we do know about James and adding some conjecture. His rendering of the opening night of "Guy Domville"--James's flop of a play--is both comic and tragic, and would itself be worth the price of the book. Unlike Colm Toibin's "The Master" (another fictionalized biography of James), Lodge doesn't succumb to saccharine or sentimental devices to close the book, but remains sharp from beginning to end.

"Author, Author" is a well researched and entertaining novel about the novelist, Henry James. Its a must read for James'fans. Interestingly, his writings are remembered, studied and reprinted while more popular novels of his time ('best sellers') have been forgotten.( There is a lesson in that fact somewhere!) Beginning and ending with the deathbed scene of James the novel focuses on his later years and his time in England, and especially with his relationship with Constance Fenimore Woolson and George DuMaurier. At the book's end, author Lodge, specifies what details he has made up. I found this book to be a page turner.

An excellent book: perceptive, passionate, meticulous, and intelligent. Lodge accompanies his subject wisely, sympathetically, but never indulgently. He's especially good at showing how literature can never transform itself into a performance art, and what makes the theatre a precursor to the book, an implacable mechanism. The novel is an entire education in taste, literacy, fashion, and the essentials of fiction.

Lodge's account of literary friendships and of the curse of Envy is spot-on. James himself would have blanched at its accuracy.

I have a question. The UK edition (paperback) is printed in 8-pt type, virtually unreadable to those over 24, which is surprising, since people under 24 don't read books. And especially novels about dead white American-Victorian Anglophiles. So how about it? Is there any edition, anywhere, printed in something bigger than 9 points?

I have been a fan of David Lodge for a long time. I like his choice of subjects and his witty style. I have also admired the novels by Henry James for about two years now, but I know little about his life, except dry facts. "Author, Author" seemed a logical following.

I was spellbound from the very beginning of the book, which starts in 1915, with James bedridden after a second stroke. As we get more and more convinced that his death is imminent, the author travels back in time, to the period in James's life when he desperately tried to become a successful playwright, at the same time not abandoning his ideas for novels and novellas. The psychical torment associated with the creative process, combined with extraordinary sensitivity and shyness covered with a mask of ever proper behavior are depicted by Lodge with exceptional ability, evoking the image of James as very complex human being. James's financial struggle and his yearning for success, his perfectionism, his high hopes and constant disappointments make his life not dissimilar to the lives of talented authors, artists and scientists of today... Clearly, HJ, as he was called by friends, was not free from vices, but at the same time his imperfections made him real to me, a man of flesh and blood, not only an admired author of perfect novels. He had intense passionate feelings, and although he might have appeared cold to the outside observer, he was capable of great care for his family and friends. The descriptions of the people connected with James, especially, of course, George du Maurier and his family, as well as Edith Wharton and Constance Fenimore Woolson, are very perceptive. The mention of other famous characters, who at some point were in contact with James (to mention, as an example, Oscar Wilde, James Lowell, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells; I particularly like the encounter with Agatha Christie) are very stimulating for imagination.

George du Maurier is almost as important for the novel as James and his life, work, constant worry to provide for his family and utter astonishment when, after the success of his popular novel "Trilby", George does not have to worry any more, are reconstructed in detail. After his death, and the death of many other people dear to James, Lodge takes us back to James's deathbed, to expect the end together with his family and faithful servants.

As Lodge admits in the preface, he tried to be as accurate as possible with the facts (which he researched well, judging after acknowledgements at the end of the book, which were for me an excellent source!), but the dialogues are, obviously, his own invention. The prefect rendering of the spirit of the era and the theater adds to the novel's charm. It is not so easy to categorize "Author, author" so quickly as pure biography, because it reads as the most exciting fiction. And although (as Lodge also admitted himself at the end of the book) Henry James attracts more and more biographers (Colm Toibin's "The Master" and Emma Tenant's "Felony" are on my "To read" list now, and very high), this is certainly an valuable position and a remarkable achievement of Lodge's who managed to venture out of his usual domain of academic comedy with absolute success. I would like to end with a paraphrase of his own words: "David, wherever you are - take a bow".

In this novel David Lodge makes his first foray into historical fiction, and the results are a disappointment.

I should preface this review by saying that I am a huge David Lodge fan, having read nearly all of his novels. And both he and I are huge Henry James fans. But Lodge made a far better tribute to James in Thinks..., where one of the protagonists enjoys quoting James and emulating his writing style, than he does here. In Author, Author, Lodge turns James into a Lodge stock character - fumbling, neurotic, not self-assured, though inwardly arrogant. Worse, Lodge's James thinks in Lodge's vocabulary - even to the point of incorporating Lodge's signature Catholic perspective, though James was Protestant. I certainly learned a lot about Henry James's life from the book, but I learned nothing about James's character, since I found this portrait disturbingly similar to Lodge's contemporary characters.

The book begins as a straightforward historical novel, one that begins at the end of the author's life, but then jumps back in time to a period when the author failed. Lodge makes the fatal mistake, one third of the way through the book, of slowing his pace down and devoting approximately fifty pages of the book to one day in Henry James's life - a day that Lodge deems particularly important, though as a reader I was not convinced of the day's weight. It is a ridiculous conceit in a historical novel, made even worse by the fact that James suddenly tries to bring in the points of view of other characters in the novel - characters about whom the reader could care less. The attempt at weighty character study disappears as Lodge has fun imagining what an evening at the theater might have been like at the turn of the century. It's a betrayal of the reader's trust, and it's boring. Lodge returns to his original style for the final third of the book, but it was too late by that time for him to regain this reader's respect.

A sympathetic and interesting historical novel about the great novelist Henry James. This book is somewhat different from most of Lodge's prior work, which tends towards relatively gentle satire and irony. Lodge's James is an outsider, an aesthete dedicated to his art while simultaneously constrained by what appears to be a real streak of prudery. A man whose only passion appears to be his artistic vocation, James' disinterest in a good deal of normal human life at a personal level is accompanied by real dedication to psychological understanding and careful description of human relationships. To a great extent, this book is an effort at a Jamesian description of James and a rather sympathetic one at that. Lodge focuses on 2 major episodes in James' life; his death and his unsuccessful attempts to become a popular playwright. The latter episode, which resulted in tremendous disappointment and an episode of actual humiliation, occupies much of the book. Lodge shows the interesting way in which aspects of James' life are mirrored in some of his work. I suspect also that aspects of the organization of book and some of the different stylistic devices used in different parts of the book mirror the different ways in which James approached his work over the course of his career. The climactic sequence showing the failure of James playwriting attempts, for example, is presented in a series of play-like scenes. A number of other interesting figures pass through the book, including members of James family, the popular writer and artist George Du Maurier, and friends of James like the now largely forgotten writer Fenimore. Some notable individuals, like the young HG Wells and Bernard Shaw, make small appearances. Like all of Lodge's books, this novel is written very well.

I'm not a huge fan of Henry James, but David Lodge does a fair job of channeling him in this somewhat fictionalized bio, written in a formal, Jamesian style. It focuses mainly on two aspects of James's life--his failed attempts as a playwright and his friendship with George Du Maurier, a more successful but less gifted writer. James struggled between good will toward his friend and jealousy of Du Maurier's popularity. He could never have imagined that The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove would be made into major motion pictures later in the twentieth century. Lodge characterizes James as a celibate homosexual, married to his art, who never realized commercial success during his lifetime. On the other hand, although Du Maurier created the character Svengali whose name has entered the lexicon, his work has not stood the test of time, but his granddaughter Daphne's has. There are several other well-known writers of the period, including Edith Wharton, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and H.G. Wells, who peripherally figure into James' life. It was especially interesting to me, though, that Du Maurier's grandchildren by his daughter Sylvia were the boys who inspired J.M. Barrie to write Peter Pan. Also, James's agent's daughter married Rudyard Kipling. What a small, interconnected, and talented world Henry James inhabited.

Certainly not the most hilarious David Lodge but quite stylistically interesting. The book will give a glimpse of the life of the Henry James and it did make me read some works of Henry James !

David Lodge has long been one of my favourite authors. For some reason I find that I can easily identify with his protagonists who I suspect are not too far removed from the author himself as they question the absurdities of life with pathos and humour.

Author, Author, however, reveals a different David Lodge who with great charm and sympathy transports us back to a world standing at the starting line of modern technology all ready to go; a world bursting at the seams with creative talent. He lets the writer Henry James hold stage as he paints vivid pictures of England of the time, introducing us to many literary giants and makes them come alive for us again as a backdrop to Henry James's struggles with his ambitions, creativity and his claim to fame and fortune.

This novel is so very good and enjoyable and works perfectly on many different levels. It is painlessly educational; it is intriguing with a slow pastoral eloquence that one savors until it suddenly turns into page turning frenzy. This novel is good at the beginning; it is excellent in the middle and that oh, so eloquently written end which I had to reread for the sheer pleasure of it. I must thank and congratulate the author, come on David take a bow.