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Book Review It is difficult to give a low review to one of your favorite authors. And I've read this book twice. But it barely changed me upon a second read. Somewhere between a 2 and a 3, this book has many great moments; however, it's also very disconnected, almost as those there are several stories consolidated in a single book with at unmatched effort made to weave them together properly. The language -- great and consistent. The characters -- strong and memorable. The plot -- con
The Golden Bowl is certainly characteristic of James’ oeuvre as a whole—stylistically, structurally, and thematically. In typical James fashion, the prose is very meandering. It can feel, at times, excessively, even insufferably so, particularly to readers who are accustomed to the clarity and succinctness that have become the hallmark of modern American literature. Many of us are used to evaluating writing based on its ability to convey the most amount of information in the fewest words possibl...
ETA: Well, Henry James was either a freaking genius totally beyond the praise or criticism of lowly, unworthy readers, like yours truly OR a self-indulgent, pompous ass and I, for one, am still yearning for a chance to be able to travel back in time and throw this book at his self-indulgent, pompous head! Even though I am presented with the subconscious of the characters to an almost painfully detailed degree, yet I feel totally detached from them. Whether it is the language or the literary te...
Henry James - you are awful. I will spend no more of my life reading you. What is the point?
I am re-reading the mature James right now and have found The Golden Bowl an ethereal experience. James' use of words as well as his deliberate failure to say things and still communicate epiphany after epiphany is staggering. The sentences fall into one's mind like honey and their sense is as gall. All within the formal right-acting of the drawing rooms of the very well to-do. I feel, reading these books as if I am under a spell. It hurts me that there is only one more of this period of his wri...
So far typical James plotting and manipulationEven if James' opinion of women wasn't well know, it would easily be determined by the behavior of his female characters-conniving, meddling, shallower The most enjoyable chapters include the discussions of the guilelessness of the couples between Colonel and Fannie Assingham. The ambiguous use of pronouns, the constant need for clarification and the backtracking makes for entertaining reading. I'm really torn over the ending. I have strong feeling f...
"Well, what I want. I want a happiness without a hole in it big enough for you to poke in your finger." "A brilliant, perfect surface—to begin with at least. I see." "The golden bowl—as it WAS to have been." And Maggie dwelt musingly on this obscured figure. "The bowl with all our happiness in it. The bowl without the crack."
He tried, too clearly, to please her – to meet her in her own way; but with the result only that, close to her, her face kept before him, his hands holding her shoulders, his whole act enclosing her, he presently echoed: ‘ “See”? I see nothing but you.’ This late work (1904) of James is one replete with echoes: on the local level characters repeat each others’ words, giving significance to changes of emphasis within repetition; on a meta-textual level, this book replays themes and relationshi
Although The Portrait of a Lady will no doubt always be Henry James' most read and most loved novel, I think The Golden Bowl is his masterpiece. Published in 1904, The Golden Bowl, along with The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove, constitutes James' final, and most complex, phase as a novelist.The Golden Bowl, set in England and in Italy during 1903 to 1906, is the story of four people, two men and two women, and two marriages. Two marriages whose core holds the same secret, the same unackno...
