Talk:Henry James/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

List notable works?

Wouldn't it improve readability if the notable works et al were in a list, rather than paragraph form? 66.229.182.113 07:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

The reason I used middle-dot format is that James wrote so much, and the list format created lots of white space. Sort of the same reason they use middle-dot format on the featured articles page. This format does make the list a little less readable, but I broke it up into separate sections to avoid as much of that problem as I could. Casey Abell 14:40, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikify tag

I added the wikify cleanup tag because, frankly, even this talk page is better presented than the article. Sections, headings etc need to be added. I'll do it if i get some time. Hamdev Guru 11:12, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Opinionated?

Am I the only one who finds the recent update to the Henry James page (everything after the first paragraph) to be a little bit more opinionated than the usual "neutral Wiki" tone? And also to include specific points of fact that are detailed enough to require either citation or specific indication of the author's knowledge? (in other words, much of this sounds like material from specific biographies/critical works/lectures that would need to be cited as "the opinion of" the source in question). As an academic with an interest in this page and this subject (and who authored the IMO neutral, descriptive paragraph that heads the entry), I'm wondering what other Wikipedians think.

Yes. It needs citation. Also, formatting according to English standards (italics for book titles, etc.). --KQ
Indeed. I note such phrases as "his short fiction tends to be easier to read than his novels", etc. Unfortunately I myself am relatively uninformed with regards to this author, so I cannot comment on the accuracy of other statements made in this article. --KA
Above from Sept02 P. Riis 18:31, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Homosexuality

Also, the statement that he "was a male homosexual" is complete speculation; I remember reading a review of a James biography a couple years ago where the author speculated James and Oliver Wendell Holmes were lovers as young men; the reviewer said there is no proof of this, or that James ever had sexual relations with anyone. What is known is that he proposed to a young lady once, but that she rejected him b/c he had not been brave enough to already enlist in the Union Army (this was during the Civil War) -- jleybov

Above from Feb03 P. Riis 18:31, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Given the uncertainty, should he really be in the category "Gay writers"? Gwimpey 09:02, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)
I think Gwimpey is quite right--a minor change I made to the main text a while ago was meant to correct this problem--and I shall go ahead and remove the "gay writers" categorization. Hydriotaphia 02:36, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

According to Martin Greif in "The Gay Book of Days" [[1]],

"In a brilliant series of articles, endorsed by James's biographer Leon Edel, Richard Hall has shown that James was in love with his brother, the Harvard philosopher William James. This finally puts to rest the speculations that have ranged (honest Injun) from a severe lifelong case of constipation to having been hit in the nuts with a pump handle to explain why the famous writer seems never to have had a sex life. ... Late in life, James seems to have fallen for a sculptor thirty years his junior, but it is doubtful that anything remotely physical occurred." (pp69-70) and
"Walpole called him "my very dear Master" and James responded with "darling Hugh" and "my belovedest little Hugh." Little Hugh, the story goes, once attempted to seduce the virginal James, who promptly broke into tears and cried, "I can't... I can't." " (p53)

--Hugh7 04:56, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Never heard the "breaking into tears" bit. This story gets better as time goes on. The whole anecdote is of doubtful provenance. Edel (Henry James: The Treacherous Years 1895-1901, p.316) traced the story to W. Somerset Maugham, who supposedly heard it from Walpole himself or maybe somebody else...
Maugham was a personal enemy of Walpole's and disliked James' work. You get the idea: don't believe everything you hear. As for the relationship between Henry and William, Edel thought there was a classic love-hate thing going on, with Henry actually more productive and happier when William wasn't around to cause feelings of inferiority (Henry James: The Untried Years 1843-1870, p.240-252). Who knows? Like much of Edel's other armchair psychiatry, this has been sharply challenged. One thing is certain: Henry kept the Atlantic Ocean between himself and his brother for almost his entire adult life. William was never very sympathetic to his brother's work and often dumped long letters on him full of harsh and (IMO) unfair criticism.
On the whole question of James' sex life or lack thereof, all the article and footnotes can do is stay neutral and refer the reader to web and print sources that discuss the issue. Casey Abell 13:00, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Here are a couple of links from a reliable source (The Guardian) that discuss his sexuality:

"But as he points out, James also created some of the most memorable women characters of the period, which makes him fit meat for the feminists; and queer theory gets a look in, too, as gay critics debate exactly how repressed his (probable) homosexuality was."
"James's sexuality has been much discussed; he explained his celibacy by saying that 'to be led to the marriage bed is to be dead.' "

--205.188.116.197 08:16, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I sourced the first Guardian quote—the one used in the article—to Terry Eagleton with a footnote consistent with the other notes in the article, and I added an NPOV tweak about the inherent uncertainty of the issue. By the way, the second Guardian quote is wrong. (So much for the "reliable source.") The statement "to be led to the marriage bed was to be dead" is not by James but rather by Leon Edel in his biography of James (Henry James: The Untried Years: 1843-1870, p.55). Edel's statement is a questionable speculation based on four names in one of the many lists of possible names for fictional characters found in James' Notebooks. Among many other names, the list (dated December 24, 1893) included "Ledward-Bedward-Dedward-Deadward", which gave Edel the idea for his speculation. Again, Leon's amateur psychology in his biography of James has been harshly questioned by other writers. In his Novels of Henry James (p.69) Edward Wagenknecht got particularly exercised about "the many reckless speculations, often presented as less conjecture than fact, by which he [Edel] allowed what might have been a definitive biography to be disfigured." Casey Abell 21:39, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Abacci books links

Also, and more generally, does anyone else object to all these links to etexts at Abacci books? I object because Abacci doesn't actually provide anything other than links to the Project Gutenberg plain texts, and there are better (as in more readable) editions out there on the web (e.g. my own ebooks site). Not to mention that Abacci is somewhat commercial -- when you go there, links to Amazon are prominent. I'd prefer to link users to one of the free etext directories, either the IPL or the Online Books page, both of which are pretty good at indexing available etexts (although neither indexes everything). User:pamplemousse

I've replaced them with a link to the Online Books page. You could have done it yourself.
—Paul A 06:48, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Opinionated tone

I agree that the tone of the piece is unnecessarily opinionated. It contains some statements that many scholars/readers of James would find problematic, including the attack on James' prose style as impenetrable and a preference for the novellas over the novels. Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove, and The Ambassadors are generally considered some of the greatest works in the English language. The discussion of James's sexuality is also a problem. While no thoughtful critic would deny that he had strong homoerotic attachments and in a different age might have been an active gay man, there is no evidence that he ever had a sexual relationship with either gender during his life. The automatic linkage between 'homosexual' and 'feminine' is stereotypical and offensive. --FtLouie

Above 4Jun04 P. Riis 18:31, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

NPOV, really?

The NPOV label was added by an anonymous user on 10Sept04, without comment. It looks like most of the things that people were concerned about previously have been taken care of. At least nobody's talking. The article clearly needs a bit of work, but is the NPOV label necessary? If there's a dispute, it's certainly low-grade. (Or Jamesian in its subtlety?) P. Riis 01:36, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK, it's been over a week and not a peep, so I took it off. If it still is a problem, feel free to put it back. P. Riis 15:12, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

-I've replaced the NPOV because a number of the unsubstantiated comments about James' writing style and the silly way of referring to his sexual orientation remain without alteration. -FtLouie January 1st 2005

I suppose you all know all about Leon Edel and the decision not to discuss the letters that turned up while his multi-volume biography was appearing. No need to confuse anyone with facts.... --Wetman 00:06, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"British American" author!

The latest in the string of Wikipedians working slightly beyond their level of competency here is this recategorization! --Wetman 00:06, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Astounding gender stereotyping

By what act of the gods of wiki can the phrase some of whose tastes and interests were rather feminine be deemed NPOV? Exactly which human traits are to be assigned to the feminine and which are masculine? I'm dying to know. Filiocht 15:55, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, it's pretty bad. I tried to do something about it 6 months ago, but I just looked at my edit and realized I had basically evaded dealing with the problem. I have no idea what the original writer of that sentence was thinking, but let's put the best construction on it: perhaps s/he meant something like, "His tastes and interests were, according to the prevailing standards of Victorian Anglo-American culture, rather feminine." This, I think, would avoid the absurdities of the current version—and has the virtue of actually being true. (See Leon Edel's voluminous biography, passim, for information on how James's habits were—to his contemporaries—a little effeminate.) Hydriotaphia 04:50, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

Additions

I'm the guy responsible for the latest additions to the article. The last six paragraphs cover James' non-fiction and critical reputation. I tried to keep them as neutral and factual as possible.

I also added three sentences to the fifth paragraph on James' style. This has always been a contentious issue, and Edith Wharton's sour comments on James' later books have often been used to attack his prose. I just tried to balance the ledger by pointing out how, even in his later years, James often wrote in a very accessible manner by any standard.

The sexuality issue has been chatted about to an almost ridiculous extent. There's no convincing evidence that James ever had an actual physical relationship with anybody else. His letters to both men and women are often filled with expressions of affection, but it's never been shown that any of these expressions were acted out.

Generally, comments on James' sexuality tend to reveal more about the commenters (and I'm obviously included in their number) than about James. Right now the comments in the article are about as strong as can be supported by the evidence. I thought about adding some more qualifiers, but they probably aren't needed.

Incidentally, one of James' loudest critics for his supposed lack of masculinity was Teddy Roosevelt. James responded by labeling the president "Theodore Rex," a title used by Roosevelt's latest biographer. Wouldn't you know, when the two men finally met at a White House dinner, they chatted amiably and at length, as if they were the best of friends. --Casey Abell 14:18, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Thanks for all the great work you are doing on the James article. I like the way you have organized it. -- JJay 18:22, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

British author?

Is James ever really considered to be a British author? I thought he was pretty much universally considered American. While T.S. Eliot gets included in both the Norton Anthology of American Literature and the Norton Anthology of English Literature, James is included only in the former. It was always my understanding that he is basically considered an American writer. john k 02:39, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Would it make more sense to list him as an "American-born" author, if he spent so much time in the Old World?

More additions

I tossed in three more paragraphs about the autobiography, biographies and published criticism of James. I also edited out a wildly wrong assertion that James dictated his last book while completely blind. Finally, I untangled a sentence on The Turn of the Screw to make the description of the story clearer, and added a few more details to various paragraphs.

A little reluctantly, I have wikified the entry with headings and a table of contents. Some Wikipedia articles seem top-heavy with this apparatus, but the Henry James article looks substantial enough to support it.

And in a trivial change I moved the photograph of James to the top of the page. Might as well have as accurate an image as possible to lead off the article. The Sargent black-and-white portrait is still in the article next to the "Works" section.

I keep throwing in more stuff. I added a brief bio section to begin the article. Can't hurt to have a few details of James' life, travels and career.

Humorous note: my attempted capitalizations of the headings keep getting reverted out. Okay, you win (smile). Casey Abell 15:02, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Correction

I fixed something that bothered me about the article. I don't believe the comment about looking at the world through plate glass was from Verena in The Bostonians - it would be pretty steep for her - but rather from the Princess in The Princess Casamassima:

"Fancy the strange, the bitter fate: to be constituted as you are constituted, to feel the capacity that you must feel, and yet to look at the good things of life only through the glass of the pastry-cook’s window!" Casey Abell 18:43, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Related articles

I'm going to write or revise articles for each of James' works listed in the main entry. There are over thirty of those references, so it'll take me a while. I started today with Roderick Hudson. I'll try to do one a day.

There's no way I can do articles for every single thing James wrote. You could make a book from the full list of James' writings...which is exactly what Leon Edel did with his James bibliography.

Just did a few touch-ups on the article about The Europeans. Didn't have to do much--the article was already substantial and well-written. I only tossed in a few more details, a little dash of criticism (including some of James' own comments), a note on the movie version, and a couple more links.

Tomorrow I'll write an article for The American. This is going to be a long slog. Casey Abell 00:04, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm about halfway through, up to The Sacred Fount on the list of James' works. I was able to use a lot of content from three previous articles: Daisy Miller, The Europeans, and The Turn of the Screw. The other titles either had nothing or just a few lines.

I thought it would be a tedious slog, but it's turned out to be fun so far. I've had to do a lot of rereading and rethinking about many of James' books. And nailing down the external links led to many nice finds, especially the very first publications of many books in The Atlantic and other magazines. Casey Abell 19:15, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Just made the job tougher on myself by adding fifteen additional books to the list of James' works. Six novels: Watch and Ward, Confidence, The Reverberator, The Other House, The Ivory Tower, and The Sense of the Past. Five books of literary criticism: French Poets and Novelists, Hawthorne, Partial Portraits, Essays in London and Elsewhere, and Notes on Novelists. Two books of plays: Theatricals and Theatricals: Second Series. One biography: William Wetmore Story and His Friends. And one book of visual arts criticism: Picture and Text.

I'll get around to articles for all of them. This is starting to look like a lifelong project. Anyway, the main article now shows the complete range of James' writings. Casey Abell 06:46, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

More housekeeping: I broke the "Fiction" list into novels and tales. This is something of an arbitrary distinction. The Turn of the Screw is easily as long as many works by other authors called novels. But Edel sort of laid down the law: James' fiction divides into 22 novels (two unfinished) and 112 tales. The Library of America followed Leon's Law in their editions of James' novels and tales. You can quibble with the classification, but why fight Leon and the LoA?

A contributor put up an article on Paste. That's fine with me, though the article has been (unfairly!) marked for deletion. Paste is hardly one of James' greatest stories, but it's a charming trifle, a clever reversal of Maupassant's The Necklace. If we're going to have lots of articles on James' tales - and we've already got a bunch - we might as well have a separate list for them. Casey Abell 18:11, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Thanks for your great work on the Henry James article. I like the way you have organized it. Ignore the detractors and naysayers below. -- JJay 18:23, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Dude, you should really create a User page. Hydriotaphia 18:20, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Oh, one of these days I'll get around to a user page. But I figure discussion of the Henry James article belongs on the, well, discussion page of the Henry James article (smile). Casey Abell 18:26, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm not a detractor or naysayer! I too appreciate the work you've done here. I'm just saying, you might want to think about creating a user page. Hydriotaphia 21:59, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, I was just kidding. Casey Abell, get a dang user page. -- JJay 22:02, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Done!

Finally got through all the related articles on James' works referenced in the main entry. More than forty of them, and it was a long slog...and mostly enjoyable. Of course, additions, corrections, anything but vandalism are welcome on the related articles.

The funniest thing that happened was a brief NPOV dispute about, of all things, the article on A Small Boy and Others. The second funniest was a near-deletion of the article on Paste, which I still don't understand.

When I say "Done!" I should add a caveat. Sooner or later I'm going to write some more articles about James' shorter fictions. Right now we've only got eight articles, which is a pretty small sample for 112 tales.

But that'll have to wait. I'm written out right now. Casey Abell 16:57, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

More tweaks. Brought all the books I used for the related articles into the Reference section. Makes sense to have them all together for convenience. Also added quotes from James' secretary and two of his more important critics.

And in a fit of egoism, I self-nominated the entry for good article status. We'll see what happens. Casey Abell 00:26, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Looks like Fallout boy (not me, honest!) decided that the article was decent enough for good article status. Thanks for the approval, Fallout boy, and the nice compliments in the edit message! Of course, the whole idea of a "good article" list separate from the "featured article" list is still controversial. But it makes sense to me to have a lower tier of articles that are worth reading if not the very best in the encyclopedia. Casey Abell 18:52, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Just noticed that this article has moved up to eighth place on the Google search for "Henry James." We're still two notches below Henry James investment cast steel lugs. Not too sure what that means.

A halfway serious note: we're two notches above Adrian Dover's superb James site. We probably don't deserve that, but at least both sites are on the first page. Casey Abell 03:37, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

FA status and more related articles

Finally dragged this sucker through the featured article process. It was a genuine effort. The primary result was an expansion of the article with three new sections on the novels, the short narratives and the legacy. Mostly an improvement, I think. Another result was a blizzard of footnotes. I won't express an opinion on them.

I'm also winding up the related articles. I've added eight articles on the tales and will write four more. That will make sixty articles on James's various works. Gulp. Casey Abell 20:46, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

A couple recent edits seem a little strange to me. I prefer to give the titles of James' tales in italics with no quotation marks, but it's not worth fighting over. It does seem weird to clutter up the article with dozens of unnecessary quotation marks. Most web pages on The Turn of the Screw, for instance, don't bother with the punctuation—see here, here and here. And James' Notebooks entry on The Aspern Papers specifies a Shelley devotee (a certain Captain Silsbee) who was interested in papers from both Shelley and Byron. See this article for the gory details. Again, it's not worth fighting over. Casey Abell 15:49, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Things are getting a little strange with the quotation marks. We've now got The Turn of the Screw sometimes in italics and sometimes in quotation marks. Makes no difference to me. If I had my druthers, I'd just put all of James' works in italics and forget about it. But it's hardly worth an edit war. Casey Abell 13:15, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Worst nightmare...and a little hope

Henry James is scheduled as the main page article of the day on May 19. Expect tons of vandalism...and maybe, just maybe some helpful edits. At least the vandalism gets edited out pretty quickly when an article goes on the main page, because lots of people are watching. Casey Abell 13:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Great article

And the photographs are awesome.--Anchoress 00:26, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment. The article has been cooking for a long time with many contributors. If I say so myself, it is one of the better articles I've seen on Wikipedia about literature, where the encyclopedia is sometimes a little weak compared to science and computer technology. Casey Abell 02:16, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Works?

Don't we normally list works by an author vertically as opposed to in a sort of running text?

True, but James wrote so much that an awful lot of white space resulted. I tried table formats, but they looked a little clunky when I previewed them. So I settled on the middle-dot format. At least there's not so much empty space any more. Casey Abell 02:16, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Films based on his works

This paragraph:

In the late 20th century, many of James's novels were filmed by the team of Ismail Merchant & James Ivory, and this period saw a small resurgence of interest in his works. Among the best known of these are the short works Daisy Miller, Washington Square and The Turn of the Screw, and the novels The Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl, The Ambassadors and The American.

is jarringly placed under "Style and Themes." It describes neither a style nor a theme, nor does it belong, as far as I can tell, under any other present heading. I'm not sure it is even germane to the James article proper. Perhaps a Films of Ismail Merchant & James Ivory article is the proper place for this information, with a link from the James article.

In any case, it must find its way under a new section heading.


Actually, this information is somewhat duplicated under "Legacy" as:

Perhaps the most prominent examples of James's legacy in recent years have been the film versions of several of his novels and stories. The Merchant-Ivory movies were mentioned earlier, but a number of other filmmakers have based productions on James's fiction. The Iain Softley-directed version of The Wings of the Dove (1997) was successful with both critics and audiences. Helena Bonham Carter received an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress for her memorable portrayal of Kate Croy. Jane Campion tried her hand with The Portrait of a Lady (1996) but with much less success. In earlier times Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961) brought "The Turn of the Screw"' to vivid life on film, and William Wyler's The Heiress (1949) did the same for Washington Square.

but the top paragraph should still be merged into the lower one.

You're right. The sentences about Merchant-Ivory and the best-known works actually date back to the original entry, almost four years ago. They've gotten stuck in the article ever since. It's a little like how the original anecdote about Howells got stuck in The Ambassadors, as James discusses in the New York Edition preface. I'll move the material to the Legacy section. Casey Abell 12:01, 19 May 2006 (UTC)