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sharone7's review
4.0
Edel is considered the ultimate Henry James expert, and he definitely gives off the sense of being immersed in James' life and work. I suppose it is his knowledge of James that gives him the confidence to make some of the assumptions he does about what James thinks and feels at a given moment.
In general I liked Edel's approach to the biography - in the introduction to this volume he writes about his non-traditional structure and rather imaginative approach, which he sees as dictated by the material and the subject. I can't say I disagree with him on that. However, what I liked far less was his over-emphasis on psychoanalysis in his readings of James' work. I know that it's a marker of Edel's literary and cultural moment, but I find it reductive - too convenient and neat. Sometimes it seems that Edel is trying to hard to identify a specific personal narrative arc in James' career. I should say that I found Edel's depiction of the last few months of James' life, and his death, to be the most moving I have read. I cried when the cher maitre died. But that might just be because I have a problem with unhealthy author-scholar relationships.
In general I liked Edel's approach to the biography - in the introduction to this volume he writes about his non-traditional structure and rather imaginative approach, which he sees as dictated by the material and the subject. I can't say I disagree with him on that. However, what I liked far less was his over-emphasis on psychoanalysis in his readings of James' work. I know that it's a marker of Edel's literary and cultural moment, but I find it reductive - too convenient and neat. Sometimes it seems that Edel is trying to hard to identify a specific personal narrative arc in James' career. I should say that I found Edel's depiction of the last few months of James' life, and his death, to be the most moving I have read. I cried when the cher maitre died. But that might just be because I have a problem with unhealthy author-scholar relationships.
jeeleongkoh's review
5.0
Last night I finished reading the fifth, and final, volume of Leon Edel's biography of Henry James. I started reading Volume One in December, and now it is March. The reading was fitful, most of it done during school breaks and long weekends. Coming to the end of the massive Life, I read "New York 1950-Honolulu 1971." I take the dates to mark the start and the end of the writing of this biography, though the dreaming and conception of such a work presumably began even earlier. So, at least, 21 years to research and write this Life.
Highly unlikely that those 21 years saw an uniform level of work, an equal intensity of focus. I imagine there were highs and lows, times when the stitch was dropped, times when the cloth bunched up, and times when the purr of the sewing machine was the only sound heard. But the Life showed no sign of those varying times. It flows, seamlessly, a narrative of great grace and penetrating insight. Its triumph is the imposition of form on chronological chaos, the making of a Life out of a life.
The writing of three mature novels and two works of autobiography, the deaths of family and friends, the worry over one's literary legacy, the body's decay, the ambiguous relations with younger writers, the Great War: these were less events than happenings when they happened in James's life, but in Edel's hands, they become events, they acquire proportion, weight and texture, they join up into a beautiful tapestry. Life is not art, but Edel has done what James says art must do: "Art makes life, makes interest, makes importance." Edel shows why James's life is interesting and important.
Highly unlikely that those 21 years saw an uniform level of work, an equal intensity of focus. I imagine there were highs and lows, times when the stitch was dropped, times when the cloth bunched up, and times when the purr of the sewing machine was the only sound heard. But the Life showed no sign of those varying times. It flows, seamlessly, a narrative of great grace and penetrating insight. Its triumph is the imposition of form on chronological chaos, the making of a Life out of a life.
The writing of three mature novels and two works of autobiography, the deaths of family and friends, the worry over one's literary legacy, the body's decay, the ambiguous relations with younger writers, the Great War: these were less events than happenings when they happened in James's life, but in Edel's hands, they become events, they acquire proportion, weight and texture, they join up into a beautiful tapestry. Life is not art, but Edel has done what James says art must do: "Art makes life, makes interest, makes importance." Edel shows why James's life is interesting and important.
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