Sheldon M. Novick portrays Henry James as a man of great emotional depth--powerful, confident, generous, and above all, courageous. This landmark life follows the author's exceptional biography of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, of which Edmund Morris said in The New York Times, "masterly . . . perfected to the point of art." of photos.
Henry James: The Young Master
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle.
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In this shrewd, scrupulous biography covering the life of Henry James from his birth until the threshold of his greatest work, Sheldon Novick steers away from the notion that James was a man of sublimated desires, the very figure of the repressed artist who observed life rather than living it. Novick, in fact, argues that the object of James' earliest expression of love was none other than the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes. Whether one chooses to believe that thesis or not, this is a refreshingly frank discussion of James' early life that sheds new light on his astonishing capacity for literary creation.
From Publishers Weekly
Opening in self-consciously literary fashion, Novick's life of James takes him into 1881, when he is an expatriate of 38 and The Portrait of a Lady establishes the novelist's transatlantic reputation. Novick (Honorable Justice: The Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes), a law professor, abjures the psychoanalytic approaches of Leon Edel and Fred Kaplan and is more explicit than his predecessors in seeing suggestions in James's fiction of an "audacious" eroticism. To Novick, it may not be merely authorial imagination that generates James's exploitation of the theme of "the moral correctness of a love that may be contrary to convention; and the... immorality of loves that are perfectly conventional." By the close of this first part of a two-volume life, James has focused in his fiction on a "spontaneous moral sense that would be the distinctive American trait in the stories and novels." To give it reality, he developed his formula of the encounter of America with Europe: "the testing of the new type against the older races." Concurrent with the international theme, James himself became a confessed "cosmopolite" comfortable in European capitals and a committed "amiable bachelor." Novick sees these convergences in James's professional and emotional life as leaving the writer confident rather than neurotic, settled rather than imperiled. Not nearly as contrary to Kaplan's 1992 one-volume Henry James as some pages imply, Novick's biography will nevertheless stir controversy about the relationship of James's personality to his creativity. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Certainly worth the read,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Henry James: The Young Master (Paperback)
This biography addresses, for the first time, what has been obvious to readers of James and biographies of James who have not been afflicted with homophobia. Because he was not flamboyant as, say, Oscar Wilde, and because he never received what homophobics see as his "condign" punishment, scholars, I think, were reluctant to have a key element of the "canon," certainly not The Master, stigmatized with this accusation. Instead, it was acceptable to allow the stigma of repressed feelings and keep James properly closeted. Lest one think that this makes Novick's book bawdy and lurid, one should know that it merely restores to James his likely, vibrant and active life. In addition, one should know that this volume, of the two, is probably the more helpful for those who need or want foundational information about not just James' upbringing but also on the sources of much that occurs in his works including thematic tendencies. I found the book most enjoyable. It is thoroughly documented with only the periodic typographical anomalies (for example Zora Thurston). Having graded "The Pupil" at a recent AP reading, I was quite interested in Novick's comments on James' very strange educational history and its influence on that particular story.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Most Readable James Biography,
By Arnold H. Chadderdon (North Haven, CT United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Henry James: The Young Master (Hardcover)
This first volume on James's life in relation to the writings brings us up to 1881 and The Portrait of a Lady. Novick can be more daring than Leon Edel was, especially about James's love life, as there are now more letters available. It's also nice not to have Edel's over-the-top psychological readings of the works and his Literary-Guild style of narration. Readers may well have overlooked this important book, as it got little press when it came out--the NY Times Book Review gave it two paragraphs in their "Books in Brief" department! But when vol. ii comes out, we will have the most balanced and readable biography of James to date.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An enjoyable biography, but lacking in depth,
By Kirk McElhearn "Freelance writer and translator" (A town in the French Alps) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)
This review is from: Henry James: The Young Master (Paperback)
I read this bio of my favorite author, Henry James, with much interest, but I have to admit that it just doesn't grab me. I think the problem is that Novick, who wanted to separate himself from Edel, spent too much time on tiny details of Henry's life, taken from letters and other documents that Edel did not know. Because of this, the book reads like a list of details and minor events, rather giving the reader any feel of what Henry's inner life was like. He doesn't give much coverage to the actual writings, but rather what Henry did, when he did it, where he did it, and who he did it with. Since this first volume was published, Fred Kaplan's bio of James was released, which, I feel, was much more balanced and less pointillist. Edel's is still the more interesting - while the writing style takes getting used to, if you're an assiduous reader of Henry James it won't be any problem. But if you're a real fan of Henry James, and if you're interested in his life, you'll probably want to read all three of them. Just don't choose this one first.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
