Customer Reviews

Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, A Biography

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I've read a considerable number of Fred Kaplan's articles,
and am impressed by his insightful writing. I always come
away with the sense that here is not only a thoughtful
writer, but also a good guy. So I bought his biographies of
Dickens and Henry James, and read James first.

It took me until page 387 to finally get hold of what was
the matter with this biography. If I'm on, it's very
simple. Kaplan doesn't like James. He doesn't like the
man. He doesn't even seem to like James's works
particularly, or certainly as much as a Professor of English
would be expected to like them. Or if he does, he's hiding
it pretty well. Only occasionally does one see any real
appreciation of James's works. There is relatively little
positive discussion of the luminous language, the
intertwined subtleties, the profundity of empathy and
insight, the remarkable evocation of time and place.
James's various stories, and even the great novels, are
dealt with largely in terms of how much money James made
from each, or which of his family or friends are
characterized there.

But the problem isn't one of weak or wrong-headed literary
criticism. It seems, rather, to be one of personal
antipathy. That is pretty odd, to say the least, since it
is difficult to imagine someone deciding to write a major
work on a major figure without at least a reasonable degree
of admiration and personal regard for the man. Here,
instead, there is a strange undercurrent of resentment that
colors and shapes the slant, the emphasis, the
interpretations of a range of James's experiences and
choices. It isn't the resentment of envy for the genius of
James's work. It doesn't seem to be about the work at all.
Rather, it seems to be about the way James chose to
live his life. There's no room here to carefully document
it, but I think a reader can readily see it by watching for
quotations from a letter or note of James, and then looking
for Kaplan's tiny, very slightly jarring negative spin, each
tiny distortion piled on top of the last until, after a few
hundred pages or so, what's going on becomes clearer.

I had read Toibin's graceful novel on James, which made me
want to read next a scholarly biography that told more about
the life of this gentle, refined man whose beauty of
language reveals, with brilliant precision, what is actually
happening beneath the surfaces. I wanted to be able to see
more clearly what James saw. Kaplan's book isn't that
biography. I'm reading the classic work by Leon Edel, and
things are much better now.

I hope Kaplan likes Dickens.

Fred Kaplan is a determined Freudian. His greatest joy appears to be linking James's novels, stories, and plays to his quasi-sexual relationships with his family. This is not entirely implausible, given the sexual oddness of most of the James clan. However, Kaplan could have written a much shorter and more engaging book had he refrained from prurient speculation that rarely adds anything to the elegance of James's work. He ought to have played to his strengths -- a devoted scholar of James's correspondence, he's pulled many amusing and enlightening bits from the great volume of letters James left behind. Particularly good fun are James's judgments on fellow writers like George Eliot and Flaubert. Who knew the creator of such beauties as Isabel Archer was so good at describing ugliness? For celebrity snark, circa 1910, check out "The Imagination of Genius." But for a decent biography, stick with "Henry James: A Life" by Leon Edel.