Customer Reviews

The Golden Bowl (Penguin Classics)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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!

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.

Reading late James - particularly "The Golden Bowl" - often strikes me as being similar to reading a novel in a foreign language whose vocabulary you have mastered but whose grammar remains partially a mystery. Anyone who has attempted this will recognise the sensation of understanding all the words, yet not understanding how they fit together. You read a sentence two, three or five times, and it is only then that you understand, if at all, the meaning of all the words combined. Sometimes the meaning never becomes clear.

"Late James" is a foreign language, but one in which I have become more fluent over the years. When I first read "The Golden Bowl" some years ago I understood very little and did not enjoy it. The long, convoluted sentences, with so many things only half spoken - and often never spoken at all - seemed a vast and elaborate machine which never seemed to produce enough to justify its own existence.

Yet now, having read most of James over the intervening years, I have become more fluent in his language, and find the circumlocutions, complexities and ellipses of the "late style", if not exactly crystal clear, then certainly much clearer, and even rather comforting and enjoyable. The subtle discriminations, the way James holds up to the light tenuous motives and turns them slowly - very slowly - so that their hidden facets become, fleetingly, visible; the very real portrayal of interesting characters that James reveals; as well as the languorous, unpredictable turns of a Jamesian sentence - all offer the kinds of pleasures that no other writer (possibly excepting Proust) is able to produce.

"The Golden Bowl" consists largely of conversations, some continuing over many, many pages. The content of those conversations would, for most writers, comprise the details between the main actions of the plot; and for most writers, those conversations would occupy, at most, a few pages. But for James, it is the interstices between big events, the dramas, not so much of everyday events, but of the subtle daily manipulations, the unspoken victories and losses of personal relationships, which interest him and which comprise the novel.

The subject of "The Golden Bowl" is the reciprocal marriages of father and daughter, to a pair of former lovers. The novel is about the tensions and deceptions, and the manipulations, that arise as a result. Who knows what about whom? Who is responsible for what actions? Who is deceiving whom, and who has the moral authority as a consequence? Ultimately, who, if anyone, triumphs, and is their victory a hollow one? These are the sorts of questions James is concerned with.

"The Golden Bowl" rates as a great novel - one of the greatest of the twentieth century - because of these qualities as well as its ambiguities. It is also an enjoyable novel, but to enjoy it you must first be sympathetic to the sorts of concerns James is interested in, and you also need to be conversant in his distinctive language. Both of these require - or at least I would recommend - first reading James' earlier and middle period works. For most of us, late James can be a struggle, but one which is justified by its rewards. I don't regard reading "The Golden Bowl" as an exercise only for academics, pretentious aesthetes or literary masochists, but I sympathise with those who do.

Giving "stars" to a James novel seems a little inappropriate (he is beyond these kinds of simplistic judgements), But I have given "The Golden Bowl" four stars, because there are times when it strains the patience even of those who admire the writing style and enjoy the late James novels, and I prefer "The Ambassadors" or "The Wings of the Dove". Nevertheless, "The Golden Bowl" is one of the great novels in English and is highly recommended to anyone who has read and enjoyed James' other novels.

I was glad to read that many find this book a little challenging. Having read The American and Portrait of a Lady, I thought I was losing my mind for a while but I stuck with it and now realize it is James being clever. As a reader, I felt that I was constantly sifting through what I had read. The only problem is that while I'm sifting James keeps shifting things around. Your constantly questioning who knows what. They say the same person can read this story twice and come away with a different conclusion. I don't know many authors who could pull this off.

Many feel this is a story with a happy ending. I will allow that the end is not as devastating as in Portrait or The American, but I feel that Charlotte destroys Maggie's happiness by separating her from her father. As though Adam and Maggie must pay for Charlotte and Amerigo's indiscretions.

My favorite Henry James novel. This book does require patient reading, but the writing is gorgeous and worth the effort. If you like James too, don't miss this one. It's my favorite James novel because of the ambiguity of who the most used/victimized character is, the inexplicit eroticism of Charlotte and the Prince's affair, and the way the symbolic golden bowl nearly dominates the novel.

The last completed novel by Henry James is, like preceding works of his later era ("The Wings of the Dove" comes up to mind first), very hard to read. That's the warning to every unwary reader who happens to think about starting to read Henry James anew.

The plot is simple: its about two couples of people -- Charlotte and Amerigo, and Adam Verver and his daughter Maggie Verver. Charlotte loves Amerigo, who, however, decides to marry Maggie. Soon after that, Charlotte marries Adam Verver, an American millionaire. Still, Amerigo and Charlotte maintain their former relations as lovers until their secret is discovered by Maggie unexpectedly with an advent of a golden bowl, which looks perfect outward, but deep inside cracked. Maggie, who greatly adores her deceived father, in turn, starts to move in order to mend the cracked relations, or secure the apparently happy family life without disturbing the present relations.

As this sketch of the story tells you, one of the favorite topics of the 19th century literature -- adultery -- is staged in the center of the book, but the way James handles it is very different from those of other American or British writers. The meaning is hidden in a web of complicated, even contorted sentences of James, and you have to read often repeatedly to grasp the syntax. The grammar is sometimes unclear, with his frequent use of pronouns and double negatives, and very often you just have to take time to understand to what person James' "he" or "she" really refers to. It is not a rare thing for you to find that a paragraph starts with those "he" and "she" without any hint about its identity, so you just read on until you hit the right meaning of these pronouns. And this is just one example of the hard-to-chew James prose. If you think it is pompous, you surely are excused.

But as you read on again, you find, behind this entangled sentences and a rather banal melodramatic story, something intelligent, something about humans that lurks in the dark part of our heart. I will not pretend that I can understand all of the book, but James clearly shows how we, with a limited ability of our perception, try to act as the characters of the book do, in the given atomosphere of society. To me, this book is about the way of the people's behavior luminously recorded; about the way of our expressing and perceiving ourselves without uttering them aloud.

Gore Vidal says about the book: "James's conversational style was endlessly complex, humourous, unexpected -- euphemistic where most people are direct, and suddenly precise where avoidance or ellipsis is usual (see his introduction of "The Golden Bowl" in Penguin Classics edition. This is exactly the nature of this book, which would either attract or repel you. Unfortunately, I admit, this is not my cup of tea, for I prefer more story-oriented novels. Still, if you really want to challenge reading something really substantial, I for one recommend this book.

There is a sumptuous film version of the book, starring Uma Thurman and Nick Nolte. It might be a good idea to watch it before you start reading the book.

This last completed novel of Henry James, the third of his three culminating masterworks, is not for the reader who doesn't understand that there is a difference between high, difficult, art and pop art--and that the difference has nothing whatever to do with class or politics or social status, but rather with depth, complexity, subtlety, and virtuosity of articulated nuance.

The storyline is fairly simple (easy to look up), but what makes the book most rewarding, read after read, is the way that Henry James brings dramatically to life, with unexpected richness of texture, every feeling of passion, ambivalence, anxiety, and inner conflict of the Prince, his lover Charlotte, her husband (Mr. Verver),the Prince's wife (Mr. Verver's daughter, Maggie), and the Assinghams.

Like "Hamlet" or a late Beethoven quartet, one learns to savor "The Golden Bowl" through repeated performances--except here, the reader must do the performing, a daunting challenge that takes patience and a concentration of intelligence that few enough people are interested in cultivating or even capable of. What is the reward for essaying to make James's visionary work one's own visionary work? In a word, it is the life-enriching experience of what Shelley once called "transforming enlargements of the imagination."

Reading THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James can be either an exercise in frustration or of exhiliration. If after reading a few pages one deduces the former, then one has allowed an excessively convoluted and ornate prose style to interpose itself between a writer with a straightforward theme that is inextricably intertwined with a style that is its polar opposite with a reader who expects the straightforwardness of the theme to link with a parallel style. James uses grammar and syntax in much the same way that Milton does in PARADISE LOST. Reading James and liking James is an acquired taste. For the novels leading up to this one, one can almost argue that James was simply getting ready to write what is generally considered his master work.

The plot is relatively uncomplicated. A father daughter relation is exceptionally close. Their immense wealth insulates them from the mundane trivialities of life. Both are used to acquiring things of value: a painting, a house, and when need be, a husband for the daughter. Adam Verver is the father, a basically decent sort who has Midas type wealth, but is determined to use it to make his daughter happy, a state of mind that is no more different--or more expensive--than acquiring anything else. Maggie is the daughter, also a good hearted woman who has learned from her father that value must be exchanged for value. Enter Prince Amerigo, a titled but impoverished European who is selected to marry Maggie. He is willing to swap values. The difference between his decision and theirs is that he knows what he is contemplating is wrong, but as long as all concerned are upfront, no harm done. Complicating matters is Charlotte Stant, a close friend of Maggie, who is in love with Amerigo and he with her, but both acknowledge that marriage is out of the question. Maggie convinces Charlotte to marry her father--again an exchange of value for value. The two marriages occur and things are more or less normal for a few years. Maggie has a baby, but neither the baby nor her husband are allowed to interfere with her relation with Adam. Maggie, eager to have more time for her father, encourages Amerigo and Charlotte to spend time together. Eventually, Maggie gets suspicious and guesses the truth. The novel ends with Charlotte and Adam leaving for America, leaving a suddenly contrite Maggie to relight the spark in a marriage that was never properly lit in the first place.

The dominant theme is less complex to relate than to analyze. All four spouses are willing to marry as long as each one receives value for value. For Adam, this value is renting/buying (it is difficult to approximate the correct verb) a titled husband that he believes will make Maggie happy. He is quite prepared to pay millions. For Amerigo, this value is getting enough money so that he can make his way in the world. He is prepared to be a probably non-functional trophy husband. For Maggie, this value is fulfilling her biological imperative, and she is prepared to ignore Amerigo or pay attention to him as the case may be. And for Charlotte, this value parallels Amerigo's and she is prepared to pay the same price as he does.

Unifying all these cross-cutting themes is the Golden Bowl of the title. Early in the novel and before any of the marriages, Amerigo and Charlotte plan to buy a suitable gift for his marriage to Maggie: a magnificent golden bowl, with a minute defect, a slight crack. They refuse to buy it for that reason. Later in the novel, the bowl reappears with Maggie's learning that it had been intended as her wedding gift. Maggie sees, perhaps subliminally, that the bowl is symbolic of her life with her father and her husband. As long as she lives with her father, life will be an uncracked bowl, perfect externally but inhuman internally. Maggie's realization that her life with Amerigo must contain that crack comes with breathtaking force. She, Amerigo, Adam, and Charlotte have chosen to live with a cracked bowl. For those readers with the patience and skill in deciphering an admittedly complex text, they can see that in this imperfect bowl Henry James has made a very profound statement about the human condition.

Very dense, oblique language, sometimes maddeningly so (read Henry James's preface and you will want to throttle the man; clearly he was told his every utterance was profound, whether or not it actually made any logical sense). That said, the story is worth it, and the willfulness and wiliness of each of the characters keeps you reading. It is one big game of chess, and the ending is both complex and satisfying. It turned out to be my favorite James novel. (His stories are so seductive, I would read them even if they were written in a foreign language, which they almost are)