Portrait of a Lady

[Vance Maverick]

Partly because of the coming movie, I read _The Portrait of a Lady_ a
few weeks ago. To my surprise, I found it quite a bit less
interesting than other James. The narrative mode, in particular, was
duller than in either earlier or later work; but I also had problems
with the way the story was presented. (For example, James appeared to
count on surprise at a couple of points where I already knew what he
was revealing.)

Has anyone else had this experience? The opposite?

Vance

PS. This is a second try: my first -- very long, opaquely titled, and
badly timed -- drew no response.

[Patrick Foley]

In article <x6ubub3...@deodar.CS.Berkeley.EDU>, Vance Maverick
<mave...@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:

I wanted to respond, honest I did, Vance, but it's been too long since I
read it. One complaint I had: there is a crucial point in the book where
we are shut out of Isabella Archer's mind, so that we don't know what she
is going to do, and that seemed like dirty pool to me. James has to do
something to make it a story, withhold some information in the
time-honored way, but he had been using her as his central organising
consciousness up to that point and does so again after that. There's a
lapse of only -- what? thirty pages? fifty? (Do you know what I'm talking
about?)

And much as I've enjoyed reading him now & then for the last several
years, oh & I like him, I don't seem to have read nearly so much as you. I
remember in the first post you indicated examples earlier and later that
you preferred. This is sort of a non-conversation, since I haven't much to
contribute, but what do you think the problem is? Just an off day, so to
speak? Is it the treatment, as James might say, or was it really a problem
with the material, do you think?

Pat (who really just doesn't read a tenth as much as he oughta)

[David Christopher Swanson]

In article <x6ubub3...@deodar.CS.Berkeley.EDU>
Vance Maverick <mave...@cs.berkeley.edu> writes:

> Partly because of the coming movie, I read _The Portrait of a Lady_ a
> few weeks ago. To my surprise, I found it quite a bit less
> interesting than other James. The narrative mode, in particular, was
> duller than in either earlier or later work; but I also had problems
> with the way the story was presented. (For example, James appeared to
> count on surprise at a couple of points where I already knew what he
> was revealing.)
>
> Has anyone else had this experience? The opposite?
>
> Vance
>
> PS. This is a second try: my first -- very long, opaquely titled, and
> badly timed -- drew no response.

Yes. The same. You shouldn't be surprised that people skip a thread
with a dull title like the current one.
DCS

http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~dcs2e

"The delight of the urban poet is love - not at first sight, but at
last sight." Walter Benjamin

[Vance Maverick]

In article <E3LBu...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> dc...@faraday.clas.virginia.edu (David Christopher Swanson) writes:
> In article <x6ubub3...@deodar.CS.Berkeley.EDU>
> Vance Maverick <mave...@cs.berkeley.edu> writes:
> > Has anyone else had this experience? The opposite?

> Yes. The same.

Sounds like I should just have looked it up in the Encyclopedia of
Received Wisdom.

> You shouldn't be surprised that people skip a thread
> with a dull title like the current one.

Hmm: you're responding now, though this title is duller.

Vance (thinking he should have tried begging for
response on USENET before)

[Vance Maverick]

In article <pfoley-0601...@cust97.max13.washington.dc.ms.uu.net> pfo...@earthlink.net (Patrick Foley) writes:
> I wanted to respond, honest I did, Vance, but it's been too long since I
> read it.

That's right, grovel. ;-)

> One complaint I had: there is a crucial point in the book where
> we are shut out of Isabella Archer's mind, so that we don't know what she
> is going to do, and that seemed like dirty pool to me. James has to do
> something to make it a story, withhold some information in the
> time-honored way, but he had been using her as his central organising
> consciousness up to that point and does so again after that. There's a
> lapse of only -- what? thirty pages? fifty? (Do you know what I'm talking
> about?)

I did notice that sometimes James records thoughts attributed to her
and sometimes he doesn't -- we're "shut out" around the time of her
marriage -- but I never felt we were "admitted" at all in the sense
his later modes (especially) allow.

> [...W]hat do you think the problem is? Just an off day, so to

> speak? Is it the treatment, as James might say, or was it really a problem
> with the material, do you think?

I thought the material was potentially quite strong. There should be
plenty for a filmmaker to work with (and should have been plenty for a
novelist). But it seemed as though he chose deliberately to treat the
material simply, which threw him back on the resources of the
"straight" novel as it came to him from e.g. Eliot, and he didn't make
that work for him.

Vance

[Vance Maverick]

In article <pfoley-0601...@cust54.max13.washington.dc.ms.uu.net> pfo...@earthlink.net (Patrick Foley) writes:
> You begin the next chapter and it's
> like you're reading a different book. Rather like what Phil Dick does
> halfway through _Radio Free Albemuth_ -- you read that one, Vance?

Don't know that one. Hank James is more my line, I'm afraid.

> Doesn't James say that he wanted to portray a type, the sort of young
> women he (thought he) saw not living up to their potential, etc. He may
> have thought a plainer style was appropriate for such realist, reportorial
> aims -- perhaps forgetting that his gifts were not the same as say
> Balzac's. This might be why you feel the whole thing is more external than
> his later works where (by all accounts) he decided once & for all to let
> James be James, as the saying goes.

I think this is right. Some readers apparently respond more strongly
to this direct style, and I was hoping to flush them out here. Leavis
is one: in _The Great Tradition_ he compares Isabel Archer very
favorably to Milly Theale of _The Wings of the Dove_. Milly isn't
presented directly at all, and Leavis finds this leaves her absent
from the book; but the two characters most intent on her (Kate Croy
and Merton Densher) are intensely exposed to the reader throughout,
with the effect of presenting her, very affectingly I found, as a
predicament.

> One thing though -- when I read it a few years ago I certainly enjoyed it,
> and what I remember of the story was fascinating, despite a gripe here &
> there. I don't suppose it's a perfect work, and maybe it isn't among his
> best -- I'm in no position to judge -- but did you like it at all Vance?
> Mediocre James can be pretty darn good. It has some measure of his usual
> virtues, hasn't it? Might not be the book of his you'd recommend before
> all others, but it's not _bad_ is it? Is it a good story told so badly as
> to ruin it, or a good story told not so well as it might have been.

I made it to the 2/3 mark only because I'm a James completist. From
there, I did get hooked by the story. So I can't in good conscience
maintain it's *bad*.

Vance

[Patrick Foley]

In article <x6uafqm...@deodar.CS.Berkeley.EDU>, Vance Maverick
<mave...@cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> I did notice that sometimes James records thoughts attributed to her
> and sometimes he doesn't -- we're "shut out" around the time of her
> marriage --

Bingo. It's quite abrupt, as I recall. You begin the next chapter and it's

like you're reading a different book. Rather like what Phil Dick does
halfway through _Radio Free Albemuth_ -- you read that one, Vance?

> but I never felt we were "admitted" at all in the sense

> his later modes (especially) allow.

I've hardly read anything of the fabled late James but the prefaces, and
those in snatches. A few stories at one point, the first third maybe of
_The Ambassadors_, none of the novels later then that I don't think. (They
gather dust, but they're there, and I'll get to them.)

> > [...W]hat do you think the problem is? Just an off day, so to
> > speak? Is it the treatment, as James might say, or was it really a
> > problem with the material, do you think?
>
> I thought the material was potentially quite strong. There should be
> plenty for a filmmaker to work with (and should have been plenty for a
> novelist). But it seemed as though he chose deliberately to treat the
> material simply, which threw him back on the resources of the
> "straight" novel as it came to him from e.g. Eliot, and he didn't make
> that work for him.

Doesn't James say that he wanted to portray a type, the sort of young

women he (thought he) saw not living up to their potential, etc. He may
have thought a plainer style was appropriate for such realist, reportorial
aims -- perhaps forgetting that his gifts were not the same as say
Balzac's. This might be why you feel the whole thing is more external than
his later works where (by all accounts) he decided once & for all to let
James be James, as the saying goes.

One thing though -- when I read it a few years ago I certainly enjoyed it,

and what I remember of the story was fascinating, despite a gripe here &
there. I don't suppose it's a perfect work, and maybe it isn't among his
best -- I'm in no position to judge -- but did you like it at all Vance?
Mediocre James can be pretty darn good. It has some measure of his usual
virtues, hasn't it? Might not be the book of his you'd recommend before
all others, but it's not _bad_ is it? Is it a good story told so badly as
to ruin it, or a good story told not so well as it might have been.

Pat