And it's impossible for me to read Henry James.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've never managed to get very far with Henry James.
I had the idea in my twenties that a writer could immediately become the late Henry James. Henry James himself had to mature. Even Saul Bellow did.
I want to read Keats and Wordsworth, Hemingway, George Orwell.
The world is a beautiful book, but of little use to him who cannot read it.
Henry James's later works would have been better had he resisted that curious sort of self-indulgence, dictating to a secretary. The roaming garrulousness of ordinary speech is usually corrected when it's transcribed into written prose.
I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.
I write longer sentences than most of the others, maybe because I probably like Henry James more than they do.
The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic arrangement into three reigns: James I, James II, and the Old Pretender.
I cannot understate the ability to handle classical texts such as Shakespeare.
I am re-reading Henry James as a change from history. I began with Daisy Miller, and I've just finished Washington Square. What a brilliant, painful book.