Reading Henry James

"He was burdened, poor Strether--it had better be confessed at the outset--with the oddity of a double consciousness. There was detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference." ('The Ambassadors' by Henry James, Book First, p.18).

It's a strange thing to say about a writer, but I'll say it about Henry James: his writing is all about language; if he has a choice between saying something in five words and saying something in ten he'll take the ten and then double, triple, or quadruple however many words he started with.

There's a link from James to Joyce--I wouldn't be surprised if there were a trove of doctoral dissertations – as Joyce is a meta-Jamesian who encouraged us to admire his prolixity and who loved to write as much as he could about things, rather than less.

I admit, I'm sinking into "The Ambassadors" in a way I haven't sunk into a book for many years. I read from the bottom up when I read James: that is, I am so slowly involved in the story presented that I must seek for it somewhere deep beyond the veil of mere words. The story, such as it is, is always down there someplace, always made of words and much more than words.

Last night, reading "The Ambassadors" somewhere between 3 and 4 AM, I wondered if the world could be remade if everyone in it was proscribed, by law, to read nothing but good books for at least 50 years; that such an act might slow things down enough for us to understand our situation, or at least keep us so busy that we'd be much less likely to harm one another. A group of well read businessmen, intelligent and benign, would be appointed to oversee economic matters, leaving the rest of us to read. But only good books, made of real language.