Still working on Shelley's "Triumph of Life" and I am less and less convinced that it is greater than "Ode to the West Wind." To me the poem seems to revert to stodgy philosophizing in ways that the ode does not. I think that tendency is one of Shelley's less interesting characteristics, as Byron's flippancy is one of his less interesting characteristics. Still, both of them knew how to write, which is a topic in itself: the way in which quality of writing and handling of subject matter can diverge so widely.
I am also rereading James's Portrait of a Lady, which strikes me on this reading as unexpectedly accessible and much funnier than I remember. Also, I'm realizing that Isabel is kind of a prig. But perhaps my adjusting attitudes about her are a function of age. I used to love her so.
Dinner tonight: steak au poivre, Yorkshire pudding, roasted onions, shredded carrots with radish sprouts.
2 comments:
My observation of Henry James has been that he doesn't paint his heroines in a very flattering light. I was hooked on "Washington Square" last summer, and all the women- with the exception of Mrs Almond- are foolish/ scatterbrained in some way. If only they'd just listen to wise old Henry, I mean, Dr Sloper! It's not until the ending of the book that Catherine Sloper comes into her own,and her ultimate rejection of all that was important and dear to her is the perfect anti-Austen antidote.
Have you read Joyce Carol Oates's "Wild Nights?" There is a vignette of what she imagines James' last days were like, working in a veterans' hospital in England during WWI. I'm not much of an Oates fan, and I didn't like all the vignettes, but this one- and the one about Edgar Allan Poe- were memorable.
I haven't read the Oates; in fact I haven't read any Oates for a long time. I'm not sure why. The idea of imagining James is intriguing, however. I've read the Leon Edel biography a couple of times, and there's no question but that HJ was an inscrutable man. And then those sentences . . . talk about inscrutable.
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