Book #13 of 2020: Alice James A Biography by Jean Strouse

My first encounter with the James family was William. As a teen I'd discovered Joe Campbell and Carl Jung and I'd just finished Campbell's The Masks of God: Complete Four Volume Set when I stumbled upon The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature . A few years later I was in a seminar on American Realistic Fiction finishing my senior year in college, and had discovered Henry James via The Ambassadors. That novel tumbled me down a decade dominated by Henry and his serpentine sentences. The most intense and delightful year was my first year at Temple U in grad school, and another seminar focused entirely on James. We read I believe 7 or 8 of the novels and a couple dozen short stories in that class.

Strouse's biography of Alice is a loving and critical examination of the James family and its social milieu with Alice its central focus. The portrait of Henry Sr. is sensitive and illuminates how a pseudo-mystical Swedenborgian with somewhat retrograde ideas about the place of women in society managed to raise up a cluster of young intellectuals who would play no small part in challenging those views. Alice grew up in a house where her dad had long regular conversations with Emerson and Thoreau and other Boston Brahmins, where the Howes and Adams family were neighbors and friends, Edith Wharton and William Dean Howells were guests, a house filled with art and literature and Transcendentalism and philosophy, a home where Abolitionism and the beginnings of Women's Suffrage were a few of the real-world topics of discussion. Henry Sr. was restless and curious and afflicted by sufficient fortune to drag his family back and forth to Europe several times on whims. He hoped to expose his young brood to as much of Western culture and ideas as he could, and to give them a strong grounding in languages.

William and Henry of course benefited substantially from this life and went on to careers in science and literature respectfully, Both are regarded as among the top tier of American writers and thinkers. And both had "obscure hurts" and regular bouts of depression and unexplained physical ailments. Alice also suffered these, and to a much more debilitating degree. But Strouse brings full attention to Alice's rich social and intellectual life despite her physical and emotional suffering, and analyzes her treatments and relationships with different physicians, and situates her in a phenomenon of upper-crusty women undergoing similar long-term and unexplained prostrations and complaints. But Alice is never merely a symbol of women born too smart and too soon into an age where their gifts had no place--women at the cusp of a new age where their options were about to flourish. Her own individual experience is brought forth brilliantly. Her relationships with her brothers--a flirty, pseudo romantic one with William, and a deep, sisterly bond with Henry Jr.-- are attentively rendered, and there is ample attention to the affects of Alice and her reality on William's psychological theories and Henry's female characters, in particular Millie Theale.

The Diary Of Alice James was preserved by her long-time friend and nurse Katherine Loring, who had copies printed for her surviving brothers and for herself, and who then had the Diary published (much to Henry's chagrin--"OMG," he WhatsApped to William. "What if Ms. Loring includes all the shit I said to Alice in confidence about folks in our circles!?"). Immediately it was a smash, and was accounted as important a document as any other James family production. Alice was revealed as much more than a sad invalid whose misery inspired her brother's medical and artistic success--she was a daring independent spirit who had a ferocity for experience and making sense of it with a voice all her own.

Kudos to Strouse, who did the research necessary for biographies of multiple James family members in order to distill down this moving portrait of Alice.

Drawing of Alice James by Henry James, Jr.

Book #10 of 2020: House of Names by Colm Toibin

I believe my first encounter with Toibin was The Master: A Novel. His pitch-perfect recreation of Henry James was historical fiction at its best, and on top of the deep scholarship and research supporting the novel was a keen sensitivity to James and his emotions and passions and intellect. Where Toibin had to "fill in" gaps in the record, he did so as someone who knew James, and I appreciated that.

Over the past two decades I've read his other novels with great pleasure, as well as perhaps a couple dozen essays here and there (most in the New York Review of Books). Most recently I began reading a biography of Alice James re-issued by the excellent NYBooks imprint and there was Colm Toibin writing the excellent Introduction.

House of Names is something of a departure for Toibin, who typically focuses on one consciousness through which the rest of the action is perceived and filtered. Sort of like The Master himself, I might add, who was a stickler for point of view, but an innovator at the same time. Toibin writes about the Virgin Mary through her eyes only, or Brooklyn entirely from the protagonist's POV. But here we shuffle through different characters and get their experience.

House of Names is drenched with Greek thought and Greek imagery and Greek tragedy and Greek belief. It is also drenched in blood. Clytemnestra is completely aware that she is wrapped in a dark net of Fate, but thinks her actions will free herself and her family moving forward. Alas, that is not the case, as her revenge is only part of the pre-woven fabric. Toibin masterfully guides the bob and weave through this delicious and delirious retelling.

I'm on a roll with these Greek-inspired novels--maybe I should keep it going! We can all use a little catharsis right now.

Book #9 of 2020: The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault

Recently I read Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones and Literature and the Gods. These sent me spiraling down a path back to the Ancient Greeks. Mendelsohn's book contained an elegant and touching reminiscence about his teenage infatuation with Mary Renault and her novels. This infatuation blossomed into a long-term correspondence with the author. As a result of that essay I read The Last of the Wine, which just happened to be be free on Amazon Prime.

What a timely read, finely tuned to our current reality. There was at that time in Greece a conspiracy of oligarchs to recruit foreign influence in the overthrow of the democratic government in Athens. Sparta was the recruited foe and the oligarchs successfully returned to power with their aid and support. Renault's depiction of the catastrophe is vivid and really captures what I imagine the Greek experience of the world was like. Along the way the reader gets to hang out with several characters we know well from Plato's dialogues.

Now I've moved on to House of Names: A Novel and I'm sure I'll have much more to say afterward. Toibin is a fantastic writer and I've already fallen deep into this retelling of Iphigenia, told from Clytemnestra's point of view. All of this is great, because I'll be teaching Ancient Greece to 8th graders next year and I need to brush up and put my own spin on the material. I'm already churning ideas for teaching the unit. Wonder if I'll be teaching it from quarantine? Toibin's Clytemnestra sees the world pregnant with omen and curse and wonders at the malignant power of her family's blood, but at the same time doubts the Gods are real and wonders how to mollify them and/or recruit them into her vengeful scheme. We all feel disturbing and discomfiting emotions at this time, and the Greeks somehow charted courses through them all for us.

PS: As I was typing this entry the Mrs. came in and interrupted me. I turned around and did a teasing Jack Torrence in The Shining impersonation. She was not amused, given we have not left the apartment in six days due to quarantine.

#43

I don't know much about Colm Toibin. I know he writes exceptional articles for the NYRB now and again. I also know he wrote one of my very favorite novels about one of my very favorite novelists. The Master was worthy of its subject, and after finishing it I decided to check out more Toibin.

But strangely, I didn't until his newest came out. Brooklyn is not so challenging nor so sophisticated as The Master, but it is an exceptional and beautiful little book. Toibin writes Eilis Lacey in a manner of which the Master would approve. She's as light in some ways as Daisy Miller, but has Isabel Archer profundity after moving from Ireland to Brooklyn. She's also got some issues with pride and prejudice, but makes up for them with sense and sensibility. Eilis finds out that small-town Irish gossip has world-wide repurcussions: even in the 1950's, it was a small, small world. I'll read this one again some day, and must again commit to reading more Toibin. Anyone who writes women this real has it going on.