Customer Reviews

The Master: A Novel

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I bought and read this novel, not so much because it's about Henry James as that is is written by Colm Toibin, one of my favorite contemporary writers. I am certainly no authority on Mr. James, having read only two of his novels-- many years ago-- both required in an English course, THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY and THE TURN OF THE SCREW. Having finished this fine novel, however, I'm encouraged to read more James, particularly his letters and maybe a biography about him. Mr. Toibin's novel has the flavor and nuances, as best I can recall, of a Henry James novel, no small accomplishment. Toibin's James, though a bit like Eliot's Prufrock, is nevertheless a likable person and not so different from a lot of people I know. His sexuality is repressed, he has friendships with women whom he doesn't want to get too close to, he is the second child in a family of brilliant people-- William James being his older brother-- his father drinks too much, his beloved sister Alice suffers from emotional problems, he is attracted to men but doesn't act on his feelings, he is cowed by alcoholic servants, and he has a pushy woman friend from whom he has to hid a tapestry he has bought for his home because she told him he shouldn't purchase it. On the other hand, Toibin's James takes comfort in writing, in decorating a new home in Rye-- and while he sometimes may be lonely-- often enjoys solitude, something altogether different. "He loved the glorious silence a morning brought, knowing that he had no appointments that afternoon and no engagements that evening. He had grown fat on solitude, he thought, and had learned to expect nothing from the day but at best a dull contentment."

James through Toibin has poignant observations about life and death. "He realized that he did not even want the past back, that he had learned not to ask for that. His dead would not return. Being freed of the fear of their going gave him this strange contentment, the feeling that he wanted nothing more now but for time to go slowly." About his cousin Minny Temple who dies at an early age, James says that he "could control her destiny now that she was dead, offer her the experiences she would have wanted, and provide drama for a life which had been so cruelly shortened. He wondered if this had happened to other writers who came before him. . ." What a wonderful way to become immortal, to be fictionalized by a great writer. Near the end of this novel James tells Edmund Gosse that "'I am a poor storyteller. . .a romancer, interested in dramatic niceties. While mly brother [William] makes sense of the world, I can only briefly attempt to make it come alive, or become stranger.'" The same can be said of Toibin, himself. In this finely wrought novel, he has make Henry James, the master, come alive.

Colm Toibin's fine novel THE MASTER is an act of art in and of itself. This is a well-researched biography of one of America's greatest novelists but it is also a novel, a great work of literature that sifts through all the extant data found in the copious letters between Henry James and his brother (the equally famous William James) and others of his family and acquaintances, other biographies, and the vast writings about this extraordinary family . But what Toibin has achieved is more a dissection of the mind of a man who produced so many great books, showing us the gradual development of influences that, once digested, became such great books as 'The Turn of the Screw', 'The Portrait of a Lady', 'Washington Square', etc. THE MASTER opens with the expatriate James' embarrassing failure as a playwright ('Guy Domville') while his compatriot Oscar Wilde is enjoying tremendous success in another nearby London theater. This parallel plays significantly throughout the novel as a point of reference for James' periods of self doubt, fear of his own like sexual longings that ended Wilde's career in a famous trial, his odd transplantation from America to the United Kingdom and Italy, etc. Toibin's novel (by inference of his chapter titles) takes place from 1895 to 1899, but using the flashback and flash forward technique we are privy to the whole history of the James family (the premiere intellectual family in the latter 19th century), Henry's childhood and avoidance of serving in the Civil War, and all of the famous people who surrounded him (and at times slept with him in the case of Oliver Wendell Holmes). In a sensitive way, Toibin addresses the ambiguous sexuality of Henry, touching reverently and yet sensually on his platonic relationships with a manservant Hammond, his houseboy Burgess Noakes in Rye, England, and his magnetic attraction to the Norwegian sculptor Hendrik Andersen. Yet Toibin devotes equal energy to exploring Henry's long-term friendship with the writer Constance Fenimore Woolson who committed suicide in his beloved Venice, his sister Alice who dies young and has a suggested lesbian relationship, Lady Wolseley who decorates his home in Rye, and his own brother William. Along the way are hints and digressions about novels in gestation and in final form. And as if this tome of information weren't enough to satisfy the reader, Toibin writes with such magnificent prose that the book literally sings. "As an artist, he recognized, Andersen might know, or at least fathom the possibility, that each book he had written became an aspect of him, had entered into his driven spirit and lay there much as the years themselves had done. His relationship with Constance would be hard to explain; Andersen was perhaps too young to know how memory and regret can mingle, how much sorrow can be held within, and how nothing seems to have any shape or meaning until it is past and lost and, even then, how much, under the weight of pure determination, can be forgotten and left aside only to return in the night as a piercing pain." And in the final chapter: " 'The moral?' Henry thought for a moment. 'The moral is the most pragmatic we can imagine, that life is a mystery and that only sentences are beautiful, and that we must be ready for change, especially when we go to Paris, and that no one,' he said, raising his glass, 'who has known the sweetness of Paris can properly return to the sweetness of the United States.' "

Erudite, elegant, and sensual. Colm Toibin has mastered it all in this exceptional book. Read it slowly - to absorb over a hundred years of history and the development of the intellect, and to savour the seeds of genius in a great mind. Highly Recommended.

The Master is one of those books you just hate yourself for not liking more. There's the guilt of not enjoying a book about a "Great Writer", the guilt of not enjoying a book despite its beautiful writing, the guilt over not liking a "year's best" book, etc. But the truth is, The Master, while an enjoyable read, wasn't a particularly enjoyable story.
I love books where "nothing really happens", but in this case, it really felt like nothing was happening, in the book or in the reader's mind. I could appreciate the book on all sorts of intellectual levels: it is beautifully written in many places, the structure (an episodic tour of James' relationships that never became relationships) is well-paced and well-balanced, Toibin himself is a "master" at the small, quiet scenes of character and poignant action (or inaction). And I like the whole setup of revealing a man's character through a web of interactions with others, especially one whose interactions are so passive. But emotionally the book never had an impact. And the story never grabbed me, or even tugged at the sleeve. It was, admittedly, a struggle to finish it and I read several other books while doing so.
One needn't have read James' to follow the book, though certainly it adds a richness to the text if one has some familiarity. For those who do not, Toibin does a decent job of giving thumbnail sketches of stories and novels, though sometimes it feels a bit clumsy, especially in the repetitive pattern of James seeing something, than telling himself, "I will write a story about . . . " and the reader plays "I can guess that story in X words." There is also something a bit too mechanical and clinical in how James' creative process is presented.
If one hasn't read James and has little interest in him, then the book does work as a wonderfully surgical character study, focused on many quiet moments, a book filled with hints and implications and undertones and half-starts and no-starts. But it worked only as a character study for me and while I didn't need a car chase, I did need more than James' repeated pattern of hesitant passivity to keep me wanting to read on. If anything, the book slows even more at the end, when it begins to focus a bit more on his immediate family, all of whom captured my interest even less than James' non-familial relationships.
The Master is certainly not a bad book, it is in many respects an excellent book, but for me, it was not an interesting book, and so I just can't recommend it despite its writing strengths. More guilt to deal with.

After giving this book to myself for Christmas, I finally finished it this afternoon, having read, as is usual, the last two hundred pages in two days. It took the three months to read the first hundred pages.

The book is a fictionalized biography--it describes itself as a novel but I think it's too close to the truth to be called that--of an aging Henry James living in London and then in Rye, England, and visited by his friends and family. The most wonderful part of the book is the narration of Henry's interior monologue--his acid descriptions of frivolous people at parties, his sensual gazes at young men, especially servants, and, most important, how he forms his characters, his plots, and the situtations and dramas that people his novels and short stories. This last description of the process of writing novels is wonderful, not only because it's very particular to Henry James, but because it's the most precise and feels the most accurate description of the process of writing fiction yet expressed.

This book has gotten many detailed rave reviews, and I'll rave about it also, but I'd like to make this a more practical and useful review. I loved the book, but Henry James is one of my favorite authors. I've read several of his novels as well as seen the films and PBS versions. The American is one of my all time favorites. Colm Toibin brings James to life and takes you into his time. I really felt a part of the James family when they were going through the Civil War. He gave me a vivid feeling of the ghastly poverty in 19th century Ireland and the behavior of the English as an occupying army. He takes you from Newport to Boston to Paris to London to Dublin and proves that with good research and ability, an author can write convincingly about a time he never lived in and countries not his own.

However, I feel not everybody will find this book as appealing as I did and I'd like to try to save those people some time and money. First, this book is written in the 19th century style, with a slow-moving story, more description and less dialogue and graphic action. After all, life was slower-paced in those days. If you prefer contemporary literature, with a fast-moving plot, you may not care for this book. People who are not familiar with Henry James or haven't read his books may not be interested. The exception is people who are always meaning to read his books, but haven't gotten around to it. This book will be a good introduction for those readers and they can decide which of his novels they want to start with. Finally, there are people that don't like James's writing and I can't see them wanting to read this book. The Master really boils down to each reader's personal taste. I'd recommend it in a heartbeat, but it's a good idea to give some thought to what you like to read.

Much as a movie is more exciting when the cast is well known to the viewer, this piece of literature must appear riveting for one who is familiar with the lives of Henry James, his Family and other famous men of the 19th Century such as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Oscar Wilde. Having not read much of Henry James and knowing virtually nothing about his life I was unfamiliar with the names of James family and wasn't able to instantly appreciate them as no doubt others were. This is not to say that this book has no literary appeal to anyone who is not well read in James' writing or unknowledgeable of his history, as the novel is crafted with such literary excellence and is truly a piece of art. Aside from any historical significance Colm Toibin does an excellent job at entering the mind of the writer and although the story is not written from James' point of view Toibin is able to capture his subtle thoughts, insecurities and observations about his family and society around him. One of the most intriguing aspects of this novel is the relationship between Henry and Constance Woolson. One can immediately draw the connection between this relationship and that between John Marcher and May Bartrum in the novella, "The Beast in The Jungle", by Henry James--by far the greatest short story I've ever read. It seems that the theme of a life never lived played an immense role in James' life as it caries through all of The Master's questionable sexual encounters with men in the story. Although similar to "The Best in the Jungle" in the sense that it forces the reader into the story making him experience the emotional ups and downs of the protagonst, "The Master" is written in simpler yet equally beautiful prose and is an easier read. Altogether, Toibin offers incredible insight into the mind of Henry James, one who withdrew from intimacy and life, and leaves the reader with the lesson that it is a mistake to live life that way. Having been utterly captivated By James' short story and sure that his other writings are of equal caliber I only wish I had been able to see other such connections between James' and Toibin's writing- This book will have to be read again to experience it to the fullest degree!

I'm not a stranger to James but far from knowledgeable about his life and work, and I picked up this book in hopes of gaining a glimpse inside the man whose novels I have always found somewhat difficult. And Toíbín certainly provides that. Yet a glimpse into a mystery points to more mysteries, and one is left at the end of this novel with a conviction that no creative person - perhaps no person - can ever be really known.

There are many ways to read this novel, because there are so many ways Toíbín chooses to reveal James. Fascinating for me was how James' experiences and the people he knew or knew of found their way into his stories and novels. The various threads of real-life drama that weave together into the idea that becomes "The Turn of the Screw," for instance, make an intriguing study. It's doubly interesting that this process is explored by a storyteller gifted in his own right.

Toíbín also explores the moral dimension of transforming real lives into fictional ones. He looks rather hard at how James' apparent emotional neglect of the people nearest him didn't prevent him from appropriating their vulnerabilities for his own ends as a writer. We see him as much as abandon those who need him. Then after their deaths, he gives them life again in his stories, where he can control their fates. The ironies of this process double-back on him as he finds himself playing a role in a scene he sees as imagined by a novelist friend who has committed suicide. And again, he recognizes his relationship with a young sculptor as similar to that of two men in a novel he wrote long before - only to discover that his actual life does not take on the narrative shape he has hoped for.

Readers eager for revelations about James' sexuality will be disappointed. Toíbín represents James as fiercely defended against anything so inappropriate as erotic attraction between men. Even his estimation of Oscar Wilde, whose plays he dislikes, is based on the man's disregard for the impact of his behavior on his wife and children. In an age when such self-closeting is considered almost pathological, it's hard to accept this portrait as anything but dishonest. But I suspect that it's close to the truth, and the interplay between James' insight into character and motive and blindness to his own adds a dimension to this novel that makes it a richly rewarding read.

This quietly elegant biographical novel about Henry James opens in 1895, when James is in despair over a disastrous and humiliating career move; his theatrical production, "Guy Domville" has debuted to catcalls and jeers in front of a crowd filled with his friends and fellow writers. The novel ends four years later, after he has published one of his most popular stories, "The Turn of the Screw," and just before James finished two of his best and most successful novels, "The Ambassadors" and "The Wings of the Dove."

Yet Toibin, wisely, doesn't limit his novel's domain to the last four years of the nineteenth century--a tranquil period of transition that James largely spent at his newly acquired pastoral estate, Lamb House. Instead, many of the chapters serve as a launch for flashbacks to earlier periods of James's life: his brothers' enlistment in the Union Army during the Civil War, the death of his sister Alice, and, most effectively, his friendship with the doomed Constance Fenimore Woolson. Along the way Toibin suggests people and events that served, obviously or subtly, as inspiration for James's fiction.

Toibin also explores the aspect of James that has received the most scrutiny in recent decades: his confused and repressed sexuality. A number of set pieces and suggestive episodes portray an artist who is alternately troubled and paranoid and melancholic: his reaction to Oscar Wilde's scandalous trial, an ambiguous relationship with Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr., an invitation to write a tribute to the aesthete John Addington Symonds. Yet, in the end, he triumphs over adversity, and this is nowhere more powerfully portrayed than in the account of a tense and combative visit by his brother William, who always treated Henry as an undisciplined and flighty younger brother.

As faithful as it is to James's biography, Toibin's work is, above all, a work of fiction: there are some purely speculative episodes and, of course, James remains an enigmatic figure. In addition, a number of events, such as James's perversely funny experience with his alcoholic servants, occurred well into the 1900s and are collapsed into earlier years for dramatic purposes. Some readers have complained that, even as fiction, "The Master" is not that compelling if you are not acquainted with James's massive oeuvre. Although I'm familiar with James's career and his influence, I've read only three or four of his shorter works (and none of them very recently)--yet I found that the novel had the opposite effect: I now want to read much more of his fiction, particularly the novels and stories he wrote during this period and afterwards. And, in this respect, I think, Toibin's effort succeeds not only as a memorable re-creation of a memorable writer but also as moving appreciation of his literary achievement.

Most novels about the life of an author (or other artist) fall into the "Lust for Life" trap: they focus on the more sensational aspects of the author's life; and they portray artistic creation as a temporary madness, during which the author is taken out of him/herself into the exalted state in which a work of art is produced. James, by contrast, dealt in nuance and restraint, small gestures with enormous meaning, and unexpressed desires leading to endless regret. I felt that Toibin captured James' voice perfectly, both in his own writing style and in what he chooses to tell (and not tell) about the author. James was exquisitely sensitive and kind, but both his New England upbringing and his homosexuality (which, if expressed, could have had serious consequences, as the chapter about Wilde makes clear) combined to turn his warmer impulses inward. His personal life may appear to have been a series of (mostly) dead ends, but that's the tragedy that he turned into art. (And, having always thought of James as an effete man-about-town who happened to be a good novelist, I was surprised to learn how extremely hard-working a writer he was, generating a constant stream of essays, reviews, and stories.) The conversion of life into literature happens, not because of a visitation by the Muse, but by the continual gathering of small impressions and linking them together to form a coherent, compelling whole. James, an inveterate journal-and-notebook-keeper, gave his biographers a lot of material to work with, but this novel is far and away THE most convincing depiction of the creative process that I've ever read. A master as seen by a master.

Henry James made his reputation as a sophisticated observer of 19th-century society. His books, such as PORTRAIT OF A LADY and THE TURN OF THE SCREW, provide detailed psychological studies of his characters and their motivations. In THE MASTER, the observer is himself observed. Colm Tóibín turns Henry James into a leading character in this spectacular achievement of literary fiction.

When writing about historical figures, the writer must choose which events will best illuminate his chosen subject. Colm Tóibín shows us Henry James at moments of intense emotional stress, experienced or remembered during the last years of the nineteenth century. One such incident is his wounded brother's return from the Civil War, a conflict Henry James passively allowed his parents to protect him from. He must ask himself why he declined to fight, while unable to help absorbing his family's distress. Henry James can't stop seeing, can't stop feeling and understanding, which makes intimacy with other people impossible for him.

When he draws near to a street in Venice where a close friend and fellow novelist committed suicide, he murmurs, "I have come as close as I could, as near as I dared." This is at once a refusal to visit the scene of her death and an admission of his acute awareness that his friend expected more of him and he disappointed her. These multiple layers of meaning are common throughout the book and add greatly to its sense of depth and complexity. Is Henry James the Master because he is able to channel the upsetting incidents of his life into his work, or because of his aloofness? Terrible things happen to other people; Henry James is rarely directly involved. He watches and remembers.

It's hard to escape a sense of competition between the writer and his subject. Colm Tóibín is also an accomplished novelist and his powers of psychological observation are no less highly refined. His portrayal of Henry James's acute discomfort during Oscar Wilde's trial is particularly well done, as is his description of Henry James's drunken butler as "a cross between a ghost and someone who has seen a ghost." The story develops internally for the most part; it takes a writer of extraordinary skill to infuse Henry James, a very private man, a thinker and a worrier, with the same narrative impetus found in more dynamic characters.

THE MASTER will never be mistaken for light reading; like Henry James's own novels, it is dense and complex and worth every word. Colm Tóibín has given us a great gift: he has empowered us to see, to feel and to understand, along with one of the world's best.

--- Reviewed by Colleen Quinn