Today I've been enjoying an unexpected one day holiday, awarded because the school is the top school for sport in the nation, or something along those lines. However, 'enjoying' is a bit of an exaggeration as I've spent the day so far working (though at home), and this will be continuing into the evening, though we do intend to pop to the fitness centre for an hour or so after breaking the fast.
All this means that I'll manage barely a glance at The Ambassadors in which I'm following Strether's progress after his arrival in Paris. That progress, as it is in the rest of the novel, I'm sure, is slow and measured. I mean extremely measured. To the tiniest fraction of an inch.
Now I don't mind slow-moving novels. I enjoyed Proust's In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past, however you want to translate it. That took me months, but the rewards were obvious. The problem I have, and always have had, with James is that I have little or no idea of what the rewards are. This goes back a long time over several novels and short stories. I remember watching the movie of The Turn of the Screw (I think directed by Jack Clayton, from the fifties, I guess) and being genuinely spooked - though I was only a kid at the time. The actual text was a severe let down. A great story shrouded in a lot of words that sometimes, for me at least, just didn't cohere. The Portrait of a Lady, What Maisie Knew, The Aspern Papers, The Europeans and other stuff I'm too lazy to recall at the moment have all been and gone for me, and I still don't get it.
So why persist? I don't think I would have had it not been for reading David Lodge's Author, Author last year, a brilliant account (sort of novelisation, I suppose) of James's experience in the theatre as a playwright. Basically his plays (or rather the key one) stunk and the poor guy suffered a really bad time. Lodge, one of my favourite writers, managed to convince me that James really does live up to his reputation and is well worth the time spent on him. So here I am trying to find that time.
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