A review by msand3
Roderick Hudson by Henry James

4.0

What begins as the Classic Bromance transforms into a Love Quadrangle, with Roderick being the embodiment of Romanticism that James loves to critique. Although this seems to be another in a long line of James' favorite theme (the innocent/wild/naive American abroad), we have to understand that this was the *first* such example in James' career, and it's heads-and-tails above Watch and Ward, while not quite up to the swirling lyrical quality of his later work. (Even James himself admits this in his preface to the New York Edition.) In that sense, the central theme of the novel (or one of them, at least) mirrors that of James' own struggle at this time: how can the artist transform the limitless possibilities of his vision into a disciplined and structured work that is ultimately a product for consumption by those who lack the artist's genius? As with the Ouroboros-styled love quadrangle presented in the novel, there doesn't appear to be a satisfactory answer to this question. Indeed, we have four artists (a different type of quadrangle) whose "types" seem doomed to failure: the Romantic Hudson, cynical Gloriani, the unabashed follower Singleton, and the impotent Rowland (artistically and, perhaps, romantically?). Without giving away too much of the plot, perhaps James *does* suggest an answer in the sense that Gloriani's cynicism ends up being the closest to describing the artist's reality--both in terms of his work and his love life.