Customer Reviews

House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been reading books by and about the various Jameses for years and this is one of the absolute best for its range, wit, compassion, and modernity. The author isn't afraid to look openly at the dark side of this remarkable family, but he also doesn't overdraw conclusions. What I like best is that Fisher gives you a profound sense of the fault lines in the James clan, the allegiances, the jealousies, the ways in which they depended on one another and undermined each other. And the family exists in each historic period it passes through, so that the impact of technological and cultural shifts is always present. His grasp of the material is flawless, his insight sharp, and his writing is so good I read some passages aloud. This book marks a new era in James studies, but you don't have to know anything about the clan to be riveted by this complex story of wealth, ambition, despair, defeat, genius.

This is not the type of book I would normally read but I absolutely loved it! I am not a scholar and I knew nothing about the James family but it was a real page-turner. What I loved most about it was the family dysfunction, scandal and complicated relationships. I thought that people just spent their time painting china and doing needlepoint during this era and I was shocked and delighted to learn that this family struggled with many issues and challenges that we struggle with today! The book was funny, moving, informative and I learned a lot about the period. Looking at this family through a contemporary lens was really fascinating. It is a great book and a lot of fun to read.

Mr. (Dr.?) Fisher is obviously well versed in late 19th Century American Literature. He reads like he would be fun to spend an evening with,arguing out some of the issues he raises.

It might be an opportunity to "wring out" the hyperbole from his overwrought
prose.

In the words of Hermine Lee's NYT review of his book ( July 6, 2008):


"My main problem with Fisher's book is its tone of voice. To make the Jameses popular, accessible and relevant, and to keep his narrative surging along, Fisher goes in for a relentlessly sprightly, up-to-the-minute headline style. This does come as a change after R. W. B. Lewis's rather stuffy prose, or Edel's leisurely psychoanalyzing of James's books. But it rapidly becomes wearing. Favorite adjectives are dysfunctional, crucial, insecure, conflicted, fateful, weird, iconic, groundbreaking and signature (as in Henry Sr.'s "signature enthusiasm"). Henry eats bland "comfort food" in Britain and Alice is a "career invalid"; Mrs. James is an "icon of domesticity" and Thomas Carlyle has made a "real estate steal." Everything is made racy, dramatic and vivid, as in: "Grief was evidently far from Harry's mind as he hurled himself into the gaiety of the national capital." Or: "Deadly contagious illnesses roved the Victorian world with impunity." There are lashings of travelogue: "The sunshine was cold but the shadows even chillier, as Harry walked into the deep narrow streets of the old city Rome." "Morning coffee was a glorious business at the famous cafe of Florian's on the Piazza San Marco in Venice." Climaxes are loudly signposted: "Little did he know what kind of heiress was waiting for him!" Minor characters are briskly brought to life, with a slightly worrying emphasis on facial hair: "the black-eyed, mustached Friedrich Nietzsche," "the tubercular and long-mustached Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson," Henrik Ibsen "the lion-whiskered Norwegian iconoclast." The book's historical aim -- a confused one -- is to persuade us that the Jameses were typical Victorians yet also exceptions to every Victorian rule: "strange and florid paradoxes of passionate unconventionality and Victorian restraint." Every condescending historical cliché about Victorianism is duly trotted out. We hear repeatedly of "the monumentally repressed 19th century," the treatment by Victorian men of women as "second-class citizens," the eroticism of Victorian sickbeds, Victorian starchiness, double standards, conventions, self-hatred and "ingrown ... convolutions." These stereotypes rush past entirely unexamined."

So says Hermione Lee.

To my mind, his reference to the "eroticism of Victorian sickbeds" is especially egregious, as he references Jane Austen's 'Sense and Sensibility'.

If Mr. Fisher (Dr.?) had bothered to check his reference, he would find in the book no heroine in sweaty/sexy dishabille. What he is remembering is the MOVIE by Emma Thompson, featuring Kate Winslet.

Too many such assumptions give this book a great deal of 'attitude', which may be great for lectures to uninformed undergraduates. As a portrait, it gives a view
of the James Family OBSCURED by Fisher, who stands between us and his subjects.

I loved this book. It is a great read. I could not stop turning the pages. Fisher is an amazing storyteller. I am impressed by his ability to capture scenes and characters.Not only did I learn about the James family, I also learned about this period in American history. Fisher weaves incredible details into his narrative. This book is a delight.

this is one of the best biographies ever. The story of 8 members of the James family, plus vignettes of friends and of the national life of the country during their lives. This should win one of the major prizes for biography.

I love this biography. I grew up in the Albany-Saratoga area, lived in New York for many years and now live in Boston. Paul Fisher brings these places alive through his beautiful writing of this complex, troubled yet lovable family. It's a great book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Fisher presents detailed, compassionate portraits of seven (plus) dauntingly complex individuals, as well as providing a highly textured sense of time and place. This biography goes far beyond recounting pedigrees and achievements to convey a real sense of the individual human being (in this case, each individual in the James family). I particularly enjoyed Fisher's careful attention to the less prominent family members. The "intimate" point of view (rendering events from the perspectives of family members) is compelling and effective in recreating this fascinating family. The author's opinions are presented respectfully and provide much food for thought without reducing the complexity and ambiguity of real people and events. This book--its rendering of a generation, its stories, its wonderful photographs--is a gift.

This biography is an ambitious undertaking. First, a biography of one person is project enough, and Paul Fisher is taking on a nuclear family of seven plus Aunt Kate. Second, Fisher is also promising a fresh look at the James family incorporating modern views of psychology, addiction and the role of women.

Fisher succeeds as much as can be expected given the large volume of material to wade through and analyse. Given limitation on the author's time and a feasible size for a book, something had to give, and does.

The author's strength is clearly in description. The depth of his knowledge of this period makes the portraits of cities, steamships, expatriate life abroad, etc., the best parts and far richer than the portraits of the human subjects.

More links were needed to help the reader understand the people. For instance, Henry Sr.'s devotion to the work of Swedenboug is frequently cited, but the philosophy and why it pulled on him is not explained. Alice (Miss), like so many women of her day is said to be marginalized within the family. Fisher does a good job with the results but how this played out in the formative childhood years is never explained. Wilkie and Bob are defined as self fulfilling prophesies of their parents expectations, but how the two young sons were marginalized is not shown. Similarly, the title implies that "wit" will be a central theme of the book, but the first example of wit comes somewhere around page 100.

This is a big ambitious book. While the people portraits could have been stronger, they were very good. The portrait of the period, the interpretation of the literary work of Henry Jr., the role of women as defined through the life of Alice and the general substance of the presentation are excellent.

Dr. James Fisher is a professor of American Literature at Wellesley College in Boston. He is an expert on the family of Henry James Sr. His new volume of over 600 densely written pages is a detailed exploration into the lives of this important nineteenth century family of authors, oddballs, soldiers and scientists.
Henry James Sr was a Princeton Seminary dropout who was wealthy due to a huge inheritance from his father. The James came from Albany, New York where HJ Sr. was born. He lost a leg during a horrible childhood accident in which he was attempting to assist in the extinguishing of a fire. James was a scholar of Swedenborg and his philosophy. He wed the plain but rich Mary and they embarked on a long marriage filled with traumas enought to keep psychiatrists busy for aeons!
James Sr. was an alcoholic but gave up John Barleycorn in his later years. He was in the transcendentalist circle of Concord intellectuals counting the eminent Ralph Waldo Emerson as among his friends. James traveled widely in Europe where he got to know such luminaries as the crusty Scots philosopher Thomas Carlyle and the novelist William Makepeace Thackery, author of "Vanity Fair." Mary was a longsuffering wife as she put up with his dalliances with other women (none of which was probably consumatted) and his minor fame on the periphery of literary and lecturing fame.
What a house of wits was produced by these two midcentury New Yorkers!
The five children were:
William James-the eminent Harvard doctor who was the leading proponent of the pragmatism philosophy. He was the author of "The Variety of Religious Experiences". James married late and was neurotic always being worried about his health (as were all the James!). William had an intense rivalry with his younger brother Henry though the two loved each other.
Henry James-Born in 1843 he was the author of over 20 novels, essays, short stories and travel pieces which have won him literary immortality. Among his novels are "The Wings of the Dove"; "The American"; "The Ambassadors" "The Golden Bowl"; "What Maisie Knew" and "The Portrait of a Lady." Henry was a homosexual who had many close relationships with men. His closest female friends were two authors: Constance Fenimore Wolston and Edith Wharton. Henry lived in England for over twenty years becoming a British subject in 1915. He was angry with the USA for its refusal to enter the war. James won the Order of Merit. He was secretive, quiet and kind. He became disillusioned with his failure as a playwright and the loss of his parents and sibilings who all preceded him in death. It is impossible to understand him without examining his family. Fisher has done this!
Wilkie and Bob were the two James brothers who saw combat in the Civil War. They were failures in marriage and in life. Bob died as an alcoholic and Wilkie never made a success of himself living in Wisconsin in a number of boring job.
Alice died at 38. She was a woman who had major health problems though she has won a measure of fame for her diary. She never wed. Alice was known for her intelligence and wit. She was a lesbian who lived with a woman. Alice was brilliant but was restricted by the second class citizenship meted out to women in the Victorian era.
The James family was dysfunctional but produced geniuses in William and Henry. The Fisher work allows us to get a better understanding of them and their time. Boston, New York, Paris, London, Venice and other locals of the James travels are well described. The James were constant travelers as they sought to flee their restricted lives of study and literary labor. It is often hard to make the lives of intellectuals interesting but Fisher has succeeded in an outstanding book of biographical inquiry and insight. This book will become essential in the study of any of the James.

Trying to encompass the entire James clan is an awesome undertaking and one that is ably completed by Tamily but one that leaves the reader with little sense of the person that each James' was. We get the details and the main events, but it seems like there is a heart and soul missing that might have been more developed in an autobiography dedicated to an individual. Or, perhaps it is just that the James' were complex and reserved such that their inner selves were never revealed publicly.

The biography of the family does attempt to stay with the available evidence of the family with some speculation. Clearly, Tamily concludes that Henry was homosexual and very uncomfortable with that label. Alice, he indicates, probably was gay as well. The whole family is such a stew of neurosis, one wonders how they survived as long as they did.

The development of such a long pattern of neurosis across all five children is not complete. I keep wondering what was really happening to those kids as they grew up and/or what were the parents really like? Clearly, Henry Sr. passed on his own problems, but his wife is simply a shadow, not surprising given the era and the James passion for privacy.