Henry James—like venerable Ralph Waldo Emerson, TS Eliot, and Ezra Pound—was too important to review works of fiction.
James, Emerson, Eliot, and Pound dropped epigrams, but were too busy, no doubt, for close-reading.
We know, for instance, from his “Art of Fiction,” that HJ admired Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (the two men were friends), but it’s a passing judgment in which James asserts novels of mere character alone—without the exciting and curious incident and adventure of a book like Treasure Island—can be equally good.
There’s no “art” of fiction, really, for Henry James. As Emerson—a James family visitor—loftily maintained, “experience” is the real thing, not “art”—which is more for jingly drudges of “taste” like Edgar Allan Poe.
James was free of specifics—which the good reviewer traffics in—and this sums up Modernism: open and non-judgmental; we write whatever we want.
The epigram fever of the Modernists allowed them to escape grounded judgments; it is also telling that the Modernist epigram is typically open and empty. The most famous, “Make it new,” contains no meaning, since “it” obviously refers to “the old,” and therefore “new” is the whole of the epigrammatic thrust—“make the new new” makes no sense; of course “the new” comes out of the old. The epigram merely shouts “new” emptily.
This is really what the Modernists (and this denotes an actual clique of actual persons, not just a word) wanted to do; this was the whole project: leave the old behind. In a flurry of—epigrams.
Time was on their side, just as laziness and sin were on their side. No need to control the classroom and teach the class. Chaos is OK. Lip service to empty literary or academic phrases was all that was needed. They didn’t need to assert what was good. All they needed was the old to fade—secular modernity’s loosening in all aspects of society was their wave—the moral and the material which did not belong to them and had nothing to do with their “literary” or “artistic” aspects.
The simplicity of it has fooled us all—who thought more was going on.
Emerson didn’t need to review books or poems.
All Emerson had to do was write essays (sermons) about the spiritual sublimity of The Poet (as if he were a Marvel Comic Book Hero) in the vaguest possible terms and heave one epigrammatic insult (“the jingle man”) at poet-critic-reviewer (Poe). Poe had done real work in the trenches to elevate young American Letters. Shame on him! Bad Poe! Silly “macabre” man!
Literature takes a great deal of work. Poe dove into the plot intricacies of works he reviewed; Poe took apart his “Raven” piece by piece in “The Philosophy of Composition;” printed out poems he admired in “The Poetic Principle;” Poe’s “Rationale of Verse” is a thorough investigation of the quantity of verse; Pound’s ABC of Reading (bombing with the public, this was Pound’s mid-life attempt at a textbook), by comparison, treats the whole question of quantity in verse with a few remarks which impugn the very idea of a thorough investigation. Pound makes it clear that music in poetry means a great deal to him; but all Pound has to say on the subject which makes any sense is: read Homer in the original Greek and “listen.” Thanks, professor.
We don’t generally think of Pound as an academic. Pound was booted from U. Penn. He knocked around in London (where he swatted Amy Lowell) and Italy (where he swooned over Mussolini).
More than Pound fans will admit, however, there’s evidence that Ezra wished, and failed, to “wear the Ivy.”
For instance, not only did Pound try to pen a text book, which included student exercises (ABC of Reading), on more than one occasion he asked Penn to give him an honorary doctorate. (They told him to get lost.)
Fortunately for Pound’s general fortunes, Pound’s allies, the New Critics, possessed the work ethic (Pound was a lazy bitch) to come through with Understanding Poetry, the successful poetry textbook (praising him and Williams, attacking Poe) published shortly after the ABC of Reading’s loony failure.
Pound’s desire to write a textbook forced him to be more specific than Modernists like to be—the earlier “How To Read” (an article, not a book) made nutty reading suggestions which were roundly criticized by the few who read it.
Pound’s aristocratic “economic problem” which he asserts in ABC of Reading—the book in some ways a vague defense, or apology, for “How To Read”—is absolutely hilarious. Pound really thought (which is perhaps why he abandoned the United States) he was an aristocrat. He bemoans the fact that hour-long lectures (a professor or lecturer paid for the time he puts in) are necessary, and is enraged that it is necessary for him to write more than a few words, when a few words is all he needs (so great is his genius.) He actually says this in his textbook. Pound was seriously crazy. Here are his words, slightly excerpted, on page 83 of ABC Of Reading:
“The teacher or lecturer is a danger. He very seldom recognizes his nature or position. The lecturer is a man who must talk for an hour.”
“I also have lectured. The lecturer’s first problem is to have enough words to fill forty or sixty minutes.”
“The man who really knows can tell all that is transmissable in a very few words. The economic problem of the teacher (of violin or of language or of anything else) is how to string it out so as to be paid for more lessons.”
The American foot-soldier Modernists, the New Critics, were disciplined enough to put in the work and amass the necessary words for pay that resulted in their wildly successful textbook Understanding Poetry—one that did not frighten away its young readers by telling them, as Pound did, that Greek, Latin, French and Italian poetry (as well as prose—Flaubert, for instance) needed to be understood before any English poetry might be appreciated, and further, according to Pound (the genius), all English works worth reading existed almost entirely in the 17th century (Browning and Henry James the exceptions.)
The New Critics (they were somewhat mad themselves) along with TS Eliot, were the (relatively) sober salesmen to Pound’s utterly rascally, Henry James-besotted, madness.
Pound made it clear that he could tell his truth “in a very few words” rather than work for his wages, like a mere commoner, actually earning his living (like poor Poe).
The “economic problem” did not exist for converted Englishman Henry James (his father was one of America’s richest men) or Ralph Waldo Emerson, author of “English Traits” (whose traits are supreme, according to E.). Waldo married a dying woman with a fortune—though, ironically, these two men—James and Emerson—could waste words with the best of them. TS Eliot did alright, once he settled in England (Pound and Eliot were both supported by family money—unlike Poe, forced to write for pay, but Poe had a purpose, so that helped.)
Pound didn’t worry about being specific. Like a good Modernist, he just wrote anything.
This, from Pound, in ABC Of Reading, is typical:
“This doesn’t mean that the reader can afford to be ignorant of the best work of either period. He can look for real speech in Shakespeare and find it in plenty IF he knows what to look for.”
This after ranting in general: “the Spaniards and English imitated the Italians…I suspect that Marlowe started to parody himself in Hero and Leander. He had begun with serious intentions. I recognize that this suspicion may be an error.”
Pound is just stringing sentences together. (The emperor really has no clothes.) Pound never elaborates or gives examples of “real speech” in Shakespeare, or “what we need to look for.” He is just saying things.
Here is Chapter Seven of the ABC of Reading in its entirety:
“It doesn’t matter which leg of your table you make first, so long as the table has four legs and will stand up solidly when you have finished it.
Mediocre poetry is in the long run the same in all countries. The decadence of Petrarchism in Italy and the ‘rice powder poetry’ in China arrive at about the same level of weakness despite the difference in idiom.”
That’s it. Chapter Seven. A table. And a cut on Petrarch.
The table analogy (you got that? it doesn’t matter which leg you make first!) is stunning in its brilliance, but why Pound dismisses Petrarch—and connects the great Italian poet’s “decadence” to China (Petrarch apparently really disappointed Pound) will probably never be known.
That’s Chapter Seven of Pound’s “textbook.”
It makes about as much sense as those white petals on that black bough—or The Cantos. But carry on, avants!
Modernism never needed to make sense. That was never the intention.
The novels/prefaces of Henry James were high on Pound’s list—the only modern writer in English he recommended. Imagine “bad boy” Pound (he reportedly had a handshake like a dead fish) with his most urgent piece of advice: “never use too many words!” choosing as his favorite modern author…Henry James. Smells fishy, doesn’t it?
I bet you didn’t know Henry James (he also sneered at Poe) belonged steadfastly to the Modernist clique of Pound and friends.
Emerson joins the group as the godfather of William James—(Henry’s illustrious older brother) as the friend of TS Eliot’s grandfather—with his own slapdash, wordy, modernist, literary style—and his dismissal of Poe (join the club!)
Now let’s turn to the wordy Henry James, one of Pound’s favorite authors.
Pardon the verbosity. From Art of Fiction:
“Only a short time ago it might have been supposed that the English novel was not what the French call discutable. It had no air of having a theory, a conviction, a consciousness of itself behind it—of being the expression of an artistic faith, the result of choice and comparison.”
“…there was a comfortable, good-humoured feeling abroad that a novel is a novel, as a pudding is a pudding, and that our only business with it could be to swallow it. But within a year or two, for some reason or other, there have been signs of returning animation—the era of discussion would appear to have been to a certain extent opened. Art lives upon discussion, upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt… The successful application of any art is a delightful spectacle, but the theory too is interesting…”
“The old superstition about fiction being “wicked” had doubtless died out in England; but the spirit of it lingers in a certain oblique regard directed toward any story which does not more or less admit that it is only a joke.”
“…It is still expected, though perhaps people are ashamed to say it, that a production which is after all only “make believe” (for what else is a “story”?) shall be in some degree apologetic—shall renounce the pretension of attempting really to represent life.”
“…The old evangelical hostility to the novel, which was as explicit as it was narrow, and which regarded it as little less favourable to our immortal part than a stage-play, was in reality less insulting. The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.”
“…as the picture is reality, so the novel is history. That is the only general description (which does it justice) that we may give of the novel. But history also is allowed to represent life; it is not, any more than painting, expected to apologize.”
“I was lately struck, in reading over many pages of Anthony Trollope, with his want of discretion in that particular. In a digression, a parenthesis or an aside, he concedes to the reader that he and this trusting friend are only “making believe.” He admits that the events he narrates have not really happened, and that he can give his narrative any turn the reader may like best. Such a betrayal of a sacred office seems to me, I confess, a terrible crime; it is what I mean by the attitude of apology, and it shocks me every whit as much in Trollope [novelist] as it would have shocked me in Gibbon or Macaulay. [historians]”
James calls it a “crime” to admit fiction is “make believe.”
There being no difference between reality and fiction, James is left with little to say. Extremism cuts our own throats. He did perfect that style in which he uses a thousand words when one will do, after all.
It is the great Modernist experiment: “Experience” and “sincerity” (and eventually the latter, too, becomes suspect) is all one needs. James advanced it. Aristocratic, blank-check Modernism, without apology.
It reminds us of Pound’s impatience in his “textbook.” Why lecture on literature for an hour, or even fifteen minutes? Let us admit that there are no rules and we will know something good when we see it.
Art is a pudding–or let’s add “theory,” or something, it doesn’t matter. Maybe a table with four legs?
If my reader thinks I am being disrespectful, here is how James treats “the question of morality” at the end of his “art” of fiction essay:
“In the English novel (by which of course I mean the American as well), more than in any other, there is a traditional difference between that which people know and that which they agree to admit that they know, that which they see and that which they speak of, that which they feel to be part of life and that which they allow to enter into literature.”
“The essence of moral energy is to survey the whole field…”
“To what degree a purpose in a work of art is a source of corruption I shall not attempt to inquire; the one that seems to me least dangerous is the purpose of making a perfect work.”
“There are certain things which it is generally agreed not to discuss, not even to mention, before young people. That is very well, but the absence of discussion is not a symptom of the moral passion.”
Henry James, full of “moral passion,” is allowing for all sorts of things, and he is not shy about it.
The perfect work of “experience” is desired.
Opiated, we can only do with a very few words. Make it new.
Delicately drop what you “see”—and don’t normally put into literature—into the ears of “young people.”
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law?