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56 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A crucial book at a crossroads in American letters, 1905, December 23, 1998
By A Customer
By Ilan Mochari
Sandwiched in American literary time between The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby, The Golden Bowl is plainly influenced by the former and an influence on the latter. In all three books, the plot hinges on an act of adultery. More importantly, in all three books, the act of adultery is never explicitly narrated to us. We learn somehow that the infidelity has occurred, and judge the subsequent behavior of characters in light of the infidelity.
There is a tendency in book reviews and literature classes to "boil down" complex works of art into manageable chunks. Suffice it here to say that The Golden Bowl resists reduction marvelously. It's Henry James at his finest, refusing to sugarcoat "love" as an innocent pastime and blessing us with brilliant characters who fully analyze their sophisticated insecurities. Book one (of two) opens with its protagonist, Amerigo, in deep reflection about his imminent marriage to the wealthy Maggie Verver. Why exactly does a rich American beauty who could have whatever man she wants purport to love a penniless, defrocked Italian "Prince?"
Make no mistake: The Golden Bowl is not light reading, and any reader who treats it as such will find him or herself backing up and rereading each sentence to capture what was lost. You can't speed through the book, looking for what "happens." You won't find it. Or at least, Henry James won't tell you straight out. James challenges the reader with the onus of judgment. Is your husband having an affair? Chances are that, rather than ask him straight out, you'll beat around the bush and judge whether he is or not by his behavior. No one conveys such tacit social jousting quite like Henry James, and in The Golden Bowl the old master is in peak form.
Divided into two books, The Golden Bowl provides a neatly segmented picture of life for a romantic couple both before (Book 1) and after (Book 2) an adultery takes place. Now the book's narrator never actually reveals that Maggie Verver, the second book's protagonist, is "on" to her husband's faithless behavior. Instead, it's something the reader must gather through subtle, nuanced shifts in the comportment and dialogue of the involved characters. One can even make a cogent argument -- based strictly on textual evidence -- that no affair has taken place.
The canonical beauty of the book is as much in its narrative style -- one of implicit revelation rather than an omniscient chronicling of events -- as it is in the actual storyline. Where Henry James has evolved from his "Portrait of a Lady" days is in the delivery of the tale. It is as though he is saying, here in his final novel (1905), "Any author worth a grain of salt can give you a straightforward, nineteenth century plot. Here is a different, more elevated manner of story-telling that departs dramatically from anything I've done before."
What we get is a work that straddles artistic boundaries, anticipating the oblique narratives of American modernism while subverting the 'and then...' style typical of the previous century's bildungsromans. On top of that, The Golden Bowl is a character-driven masterpiece, whose six characters possess distinguished Shakespearean personalites -- they are hilariously eloquent and fiercely intelligent. But that's de rigeur for a James opus. The whole book, in form and content, shines with what Harold Bloom calls James' "aesthetic eminence" -- stunning turns of phrase that you wish were yours, along with a deft narrative cadence that seamlessly unites scene upon scene into a layered and cohesive whole. The crown jewel in James' vaunted career, The Golden Bowl is a journey in American letters that no accomplished reader should fail to make.
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41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
James' finest, in my opinion..., April 10, 1999
By A Customer
How does one choose between Henry James novels? Can one really put the feminine insight of The Portrait of a Lady above the moral conflict of The Wings of the Dove? I loved both those novels, and thought that The Ambassadors was quite good as well. But The Golden Bowl, for me, was another experience altogether. First of all, I found "Bowl" to be the most difficult of James' novels to read. Actually, it was one of the most difficult books I have ever read, period. One must reread many passages to make sure they have the right meaning because the prose is so austere and almost impenetrable. But, once you get to the conclusion, it's more than worth it. You have to stick with this novel right to the end in order to fully appreciate its brilliance. The characters are realized with an intelligence that is rare to find in literature today, and they are written about in such a wonderfully restrained and subtle way. Don't miss this literary triumph, and please don't shy away from it because it is considered a "classic" or because of your possible misconceptions of Henry James. Also, I read that it is being developed for an upcoming film version by Merchant Ivory. If that's true, then moviegoers are in for a treat!
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36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterpiece and its betrayal, July 1, 2001
I discovered James in college and read all his full-length novels before reaching age 30. The only one I had real trouble with was The Golden Bowl. I recently reread the novel and reveled in its elegant complexity. (It would be nice to think that the passage of 20 years has brought wisdom and insight that made me a better reader, but the credit belongs to Dorothea Krook's illuminating discussion in The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James.) The Golden Bowl is the last, the most demanding, and the most rewarding of James's major novels. Even its immediate predecessors, The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove, do not reach its deep examination of the mixed motives, the tangled good and evil, that drive human action and passion. Although he presents his characters' acts and much of what goes on in their heads, James manages in such a way that while Krook believes Adam and Maggie are on the side of the angels, Gore Vidal (who introduces the current Penguin edition) believes they are monsters of manipulation--and (as Krook acknowledges) both views are consistent with the evidence. Much--too much--of these riches of doubt and ambiguity is lost in the Merchant/Ivory/Jhabvala translation to the screen (2001). The movie has some good things, but it could have had many more. Surprised by extraneous material (like the exotic dance), heavy-handed symbolism (the exterior darkness on the day Charlotte and Amerigo find the golden bowl), and needless oversimplifications (Amerigo's talk of "dishonor" to Charlotte, which exaggerates his virtue and his desire to be done with her), I got the sense that nobody involved in the production had read the novel with the care that it requires and rewards. Had they done so, their version could have been really fine--both as a movie and as an invitation to the novel.
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