James the Modem Novelist — ‘The Beast in the Jungle’, The Golden Bowl

Abstract

Henry James’s early twentieth-century achievement, containing three great long novels and several masterpieces of shorter fiction, constitutes a challenge to all readers of literature. The paucity of incident and the narrowness of social range put some people off late James, and his imperfections of manner, amounting at times to preciosity, can be wearying during the long build-ups to the point. But for many devotees of the Novel, the late works are the ultimate reward, intriguingly revisitable, sure to yield pleasure and satisfaction in increasing amounts the more often they are read. No one need be surprised that Barbara Pym, for instance, when she was asked what book she would take to read on a desert island, chose The Golden Bowl.¹²¹