12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
They did not call him "The Master" for nothing..., January 25, 2009
This review is from: Henry James: A Life (Paperback)
I second Mr. Friedman's assessment -- the only bio of a novelist I can think of that so gets inside its subject is Gerald Nicosia's bio of Jack Kerouac, Memory Babe. I read Edel's abridgement/expansion of his 5-volume doorstop in my late '20's, and was inspired to then read a dozen or so James novels sequentially in chronological order; many people find HJ's later novels impenetrable, but between the Edel bio as a guide and working my way through the canon, when I closed James' finale, The Golden Bowl, the book seemed like a graceful, weightless bauble, lighter than air in its serene perfection.
As to the bio, who knew that the 70 years of a man who a)traveled through Europe and the UK incessantly, a compulsive tourist; b) attended 1000's, possibly 10's of 1000's of rich people's dinner parties; c) attended galleries and theater openings; d) spent the rest of his available hours locked away writing (or later dictating) -- and that's it, the sum total of HJ's activities -- could be the matter for one of the most scintillating lives ever written. It's like Proust -- the map of an exceptionally refined mind. If you don't believe me, look at any photo, or better, JS Sargent's painting of the Master, and look at the penetrating, kind, inquisitive gaze. HJ had some of the most impressive eyes I've ever seen.
The man saw things others did not, with regards to the interaction of self and society, and drove his observations home with a prose style as precise as a scalpel. He was also, like his brother William, the promulgator of a non-Freudian psychology that looked into our ethical and moral choices, distinct for each of us, rather than our appetites and sexual selves, which are monotonous in their similarities - i.e., as an artist he was concerned with what makes his people unique, not the same: everybody does the same stuff in bed, we all make totally different choices in our lives. This makes him MORE, not less modern, than most Modernists, who rejoice in atavist barbarism and call it progess.
His is one of the greatest wholly secular imaginations ever, he was the last writer of the 19th century and the first writer of the 20th. He shared, with his antipode Freud the belief that civilization was all-important, while acknowledging the cost of its repressions; he saw that civilization was precarious and ultimately worth saving, yet clear-sighted about the price convention exacts on men and especially women and children. His style was complex, because his world-view was sensitive and complex. Among his greatest accomplishments was his efforts to explain the Old World and the New to each other. Both our current and our last president could benefit greatly from a perusal of his so-called international fictions. James knew as early as 1874 that while America was a crass, philistine bull in a china shop,she was also easily duped and hungry for European approval, while Europe was a sinkhole of cynicism and depravity, capable of bamboozling America within an inch of its life. Remember that every time some prime minister rebukes us in the name of "Peace" -- no human being on earth is more self-interested than a Euro-politician, they make Dick Cheyney look like Bernadette of Lourdes, and their constituency knows it.
And yet James was constitutionally incapable of returning to America, and died a British subject.
I truly believe that when World War One broke out, the climax of Edel's book, no-one was less surprised or more heartbroken then James. Edel's depiction of James' response to the war, the last 2 years of his life, makes this book tragic, even more than the lonliness of this life-long "bachelor" who sacrificed home, sexual relations, and family to the altar of his artistic creed.
If you you were bored to tears by James in high school or college, I recommend reading this book, and then James's turning-point masterpiece "What Maisie Knew," a shockingly modern look at the sexual gamesmanship of grown-up divorcees from the POV of a little girl caught in the crossfire of a custody battle. This is the book where James the anatomist of Victorian society was replaced by James the cartographer of the mind, and where the early-mid period style slides into the densities of the complex late style, without falling completely into abstraction. (Not coincidentally, at the novel's midpoint he gave up writing for dictating, due to Carpal Tunnel).
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the great literary biographies, January 9, 2005
This review is from: Henry James: A Life (Paperback)
This is one of the great literary biographies . Edel labored on the James biography for over twenty years and has great sympathy and admiration for his subject. In a sense the work has something of the quality and intelligence the character of James' writing itself. It is the story of a life devoted to art a life in which experience seemed to less exist as value in itself than as material for its artistic transformation and elaboration. One of the great moving parts of the work is the story of James' tragic failure as a playwright. And the story of his recovery from it and his going on to produce the New York edition of his works is a story of a kind of determination and courage displayed by this most dedicated of artists. As to the relationships of James to the other members of his remarkable family including the philosopher who wrote like a novelist his brother William Edel is instructive but not exhaustive. It was nonetheless touching to read how these two great figures of American intellectual life came towards the end of their days to show a brotherly caring and respect which overcame the inherent ambivalences of their somewhat rivalous relationship.
The reader needs patience and a feeling for Jamesian abstraction and complexity. But this work will help the reader know well, if not completely, the great American novelist who wrote as if a philosopher.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
You can learn a lot from this book., February 24, 2011
This review is from: Henry James: A Life (Paperback)
For one reason or another, I was on a Henry James jag, so I thought it might be entertaining to read his biography. Turns out, it's hard to go wrong writing about James. The man had a fascinating life, and he was a fascinating person.
Having said that, in certain ways, Edel is a reverse Rumpelstilskin-sometimes he manages to spin this gold back into straw. For example, Edel repeatedly links a particular mental state that James may or may not have been experiencing at a certain period of his life with the themes he concurrently wrestled with in his work. The problem is, he doesn't give much in the way of concrete evidence to support these assertions. I did that in college as an undergrad and got B's.
Likewise when he psychologizes- for example, about James's sense of inadequacy in comparison with William James, his elder brother. Edel may have hit the nail right on the head, but it's hard to know because there's not much evidence. Maybe that's the product of the fact that this book's been chopped down from a many volume biography. Who knows what was edited out?
As the book wore on, I started to stumble under the weight of incident after incident, dinner party after dinner party, visitor after vistor. It's true that Edel did capture an evolution in the nature of James's social relations, for example, his acquaintances with younger people as the Master aged. Still, I didn't feel a sense of a living person under the drifts of material. Beyond the simple facts (James went motoring with Edith Wharton) I didn't read with a sense of the deeper nature of these friendships. It's odd for a writer who analyzes so far beyond his evidence in one way (linking life stages to themes in his books) to present so much detail and so little interpretation in another.
An endurance athlete, I slogged through to the end. I wanted to learn the literary history of the era, and I enjoy James's novels. In that sense the book was a worthwhile read, but it's definitely not the best literary biography I've ever come across.
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