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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 5926
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 17, 2007 - 11:40 am: | 
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Why does this asshole merit so much praise?
I just got through, over the weekend, got through trying for the umpteenth time to get through some James, this time "The Ambassadors" reputed to be his best.
Gawd! A string of wimpish people mincing through "charming" gardens and drawing rooms (I remember this story where he went on for pages about the "charm" of a room--Jeez)talking and thinking about nothing for pages and pages.
What was it? Because he spent all that time in Europe? Was it because most Americans at the time chawed tobacky and stank of horsecrap? Was it because of the paucity of American letters in the last half of the 19th century?
This guy is a boring waste of time and yet is lauded as a genius.
What is it? Have I missed something? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 10918
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 17, 2007 - 12:45 pm: |
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Sounds like Henry James would be somebody you'd relate to, crissy, since you are boring and verbose and inane, and mistakenly think of yourself as a genius.  |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 5931
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 01:07 pm: |
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Nope.
Have you ever read any of his works? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 10926
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 01:54 pm: |
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I think I may have been introduced to James in a English Lit course eons ago. If you think James is bad, you should try and negotiate Marcel Proust. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 5951
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 20, 2007 - 04:19 pm: |
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I have a problem with reading something in the translation. If you do not know the language I suppose you have no choice, but as they say, something is always lost.
Sometimes the translator does a fine job--I am thinking of some of the blank verse translations of The Iliad, but sometimes when you don't like it you wonder whose fault it was.
James by the way is often lumped with Joyce, who I can enjoy because even though he's dense and I gotta re read him he has a certain vitality.
I like "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" better than Ulysees.
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Theliterarythug
Newbie Poster
Username: Theliterarythug
Post Number: 9
Registered: 11-2007
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 04, 2008 - 10:06 pm: |
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Depends on the James.
I find damm near everything that I have read from his late period (after 1888) to be excruciating, but some of his shorter works( his "nouvelletes")are wonderful. IMO, James is most effective when he goes against type (the class conflicts in Washinton Square, the character development of the grifters in the Aspern Papers, the chronology of a nasty divorce in What Maise Knew). In Longer works, he suffers from his neruoses and his inability to rely on any rudimentary aspect of constructing a novel save prose style. |
Emanuel
Veteran Poster
Username: Emanuel
Post Number: 475
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 04, 2008 - 10:46 pm: |
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Chris said: I have a problem with reading something in the translation. If you do not know the language I suppose you have no choice, but as they say, something is always lost.
Chris,
Even religious texts? Just think if the Bible or the Koran was never translated to English. Gotta admit it would be a different world.
I know what you mean though. While I was reading "100 Years of Solitude" I kept thinking how it probably makes perfect sense in Spanish for all of these characters to have nearly or exactly the same names but in English it's just confusing. I read 2/3 of it but eventually gave up, not just because of the name problem but because of the boring fictitious war that never seemed to end in the book. In American writing classes we're taught to not even give characters names that begin with the same first letter to avoid confusion, and here I was reading a book with characters named the same.
I'm trying to think back to some other books I've read that were merely English translations of the original books...
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