One hundred and sixty-five years ago this glacial man of genius was born:
Let’s hope that he was somewhat cuter or my condolences to his mother, Alice James, who, incidentally, was also a noted diarist of her own. That and most of my bio information about Henry James comes from Wikipedia, that source of all truth and insight. Don’t believe me? Read the entry yourself.
Anyway, let us briefly consider, my brethren, Henry James. Let us dwell upon the fact that he was an expat who favored England over his New York City address, a circumstance that must have endlessly fascinated him, as he proceeded to write a slather of books about Americans in Europe and what all that could mean in symbolic terms. He liked symbolism, which probably makes sense as his father was a theologian and his brother became a psychologist. It’s apparently all in the fam.
Shan’t bore with long factoids, but apparently the grand deal with James is his psychology and realism. Dunno about that. I’ve read Portrait of a Lady and The Ambassadors and have to say: if this is realism, sign me up for reality. Should love to swoon about Europe with endless money and no problems but the convoluted turns of my own self-consciousness and regret. Sounds brilliant to me.
The man wrote like a banshee, howev. Check out this list of his major works:
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That doesn’t, of c, count his novellas, tales, travel writings, memoirs, literary criticism, plays, or biographies…
Here are a few of my fav quotations:
“I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.”
“I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.”
“Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what have you had?”
“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.“
“The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.”
“I’ve always been interested in people, but I’ve never liked them.”
And there you have it. Happy birthday, Mr. James. Shall go out and live the most painfully conscious, most convoluted, most emotionally repressed, most idealistic in the morning and crushed but renewed at night day I can possible cram into my small, sad, thoroughly-American life.
