Customer Reviews

Beast in the Jungle

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If you're prone to lazy reading this is not the book for you. Henry James "late style" of writing is challenging at best, forcing the reader to pick through agonizing sentences in order to uncover the meat of the story. But the reward, especially the final chapter, is worth the work. The conclusion is so beautifully phrased and poignant that your heart will ache. Maybe you'll wonder, as I did, whether or not you've made the most of your life or if you've been held back by fear. James insight into the human psychy is almost scary. He's able to analyze, then present, with great accuracy the way we work in our heads and most especially in our hearts. Tuck yourself up by the fire and give "The Beast in the Jungle" a couple of hours of your time. It will be worth it.

Henry James is an extraordinary writer (as is his brother, William). His themes are interior, and the psychological development of characters is acutely and penetratingly drawn. For the very young (generally of limited life experience), Henry will be a colossal bore. For readers with serious tread wear, Mr. James is a pleaseure to be tasted again and again.

I am going through James for the third time. It has not been (nor was it ever) a disappointment. I read James in my 20s, again in my 40s, and now again (hopefully not for the last time!) in my mid 60's. There is this singular great thing about good books: whatever your stage in life, you get something illuminating from them, and as your life's perspectives change, new things are found in even the most familiar work.

For someone now batting in the 8th inning of life, "The Beast in the Jungle" offers me a particularly apt (and painful) lesson. It hurts, and it hurts big. Few people under 40 (perhaps even 50) would feel the full measure of poignancy that this story so tellingly and so convincingly portrays.

One does not glide through Henry James without effort. His works do not read like pop fiction, so if you are a little short on attention span or a little apathetic in taking the time to stand back in awe of a magnificent literary edifice, then you'd better stick to the top 20 fiction bestseller lists for your entertainment. James is also entertaining (if you like to laugh and cry at the tragic, sad, flawed, but often exhilaratingly upbeat human spectacle), but James' entertainment demands (and reveals) a great deal more than from the "standard" popular authors.

Do yourself a favor and read this short story.

Readers who know Henry James but can't take him are unlikely to be converted to him by The Beast in the Jungle. Those of us who adore his way of writing are in consequence their polar opposites, James's style being one that could have been designed to polarise opinions. Whether there is much middle ground, and whether many readers occupy it, I have no way of knowing, but I doubt it -- I guess if you know his work in the first place you are likely to be either with him or against him.

I suppose my reason for writing a review, even such a short one as this, is to try to flag up this extraordinary piece of work by an extraordinary genius to any newcomers on the block who have an inkling that it might be their cup of tea. I don't propose to 'sell' The Beast in the Jungle to anyone at all, but presumably I can at least say that it is hardly more than a short story in length, and that if you lose your investment you will not be losing very much. I need to say something about the style, quite obviously after what I have just said above; and then draw attention to the story itself and its denouement, which for me is powerful in the extreme.

James's sentences are like great elaborate sculptures, worked on with patience and concentration. There are other things in English prose that they resemble to some extent, but not many. Mr Gladstone's orations come to mind, but what I am most reminded of is no less than Paradise Lost in the length and the 'periodic' structure of the sentences with their elaborate subordinate clauses. However I can reassure you that James's idiom is at least 'genuine' English. Samuel Johnson and T S Eliot both alleged that the diction of Paradise Lost was nothing of the kind. Whether they were right or wrong, you will at least not find that kind of Beast lurking in wait for you. Long ago the study of classical Greek was still not uncommon, and any who can still read the speeches in Thucydides will probably get the same experience as I did, having to retrace, both there and here, the clauses in their elaborate relationships to check what follows on what.

I only identified the Beast at the same instant as John Marcher does in the story, and I was hardly less torn apart by it. I could have been another of its victims if things had not gone right. The whole story with its unspecific allusions flashed back through my head, and I had to reflect what great storytelling I thought it had all been. The ending could not have been what it is but for the way the earlier story is told in those great convoluted pronouncements. How does it sound as if it might appeal to you or at least excite your curiosity? If you miss an experience that might affect you in the way it affects me and others, you risk the vengeance of another (albeit lesser) Beast.

"The Beast in the Jungle" is the most effective sleeping pill you are likely to find anywhere. I challenge any reader to go through this text in one sitting and not falling asleep or, at least, not to experiment a tremendous mind-numbing feeling. Of course, I haven't read all the books in the world, but I dare say that this is the most boring piece of writing ever conceived by anyone. I find it very hard to imagine something more awful than this. It's absolutely impossible, unsurpassable.

Henry James' style is so artificially conceited and pompous that you have to ask yourself if the trash he used to write wasn't a very calculated joke after all or if he's just trying to take the reader for a ride (a ride into a world of dullness and boredom, that is). The supposedly "psychological insight" of James is just a mere exercise in nothingness, the highest form of pretentiousness in its purest expression.

In this short???-story (James wasn't very strong on things like "precision" and "conciseness"), the terrible fate that seems to be in store for the main character after pages and pages of monotonous text, turns out to be that "nothing is to happen to him". Pathetic and childish. In my opinion, "The Beast in the Jungle" is the greatest proof that James was a dreadful writer (not to say "an insipid donkey").

Actually, James is so comical as to excite parody. In the old days H.G. Wells likened his prose to an hippopotamus pushing a pea and Ambrose Bierce said that James' work would benefit if someone took the pain to translate it into English. I personally agree with the two of them but, you know, many things that in the past have been judged as "ridiculous" or "stupid" are considered today, through some arbitrary process known as "reassessment of literary figures", as something pretty relevant and sophisticated. That's life, isn't it?.

"The Beast in the Jungle" is a poor story that serves James as an excuse for writing a lot and not to say anything significant. Completely worthless. In case I had to choose, I'd prefer to read a telephone directory instead.

Of course, this prime example of literary incompetence is regarded as a masterpiece by many scholars.

Well, each to his own...