The Portrait of a Lady

What Hacker News says

1. mabub24Feb 2022
   I was recommending Henry James in reference to readers attention spans, who often balk at the idea of reading anything quite as dense as from James' writings. But they're missing out. His famous Chp. 42 from Portrait of a Lady is the single best articulation of personal reflection on a failed marriage I have ever read - ever. [0] Losing out on that simply because it's a big imposing paragraph suggests an unwillingness to challenge oneself, which, I think at least, is only to our loss as our attention spans wane.

   Specifically for non-fiction, I would recommend R.G. Collingwood, a philosopher of ordinary language who was writing in the late 1930's. His writing, like many philosophers from that time, balances depth with clarity with stunning skill. His introduction to his book "The Principles of Art"[1] is one of my favorite bits of writing ever because of just how clear it is. The paragraphs are often long, but they are meticulously edited to keep forward momentum, and a sense of dawning awareness of a problem which he is solving, present without dragging the reader down. Most of all they are calm. It never seems rushed, or forced, or over-pruned. It's a rhetorical style of instruction that only works when you incorporate length into your writing.

   As an aside, the first sentence in the introduction is one of my favorite openings of all time. "The business of this book is to answer the question: What is art?"

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   [0]: http://www.online-literature.com/henry_james/portrait_lady/4...

   [1]: https://books.google.ca/books?id=SXpMC9416y4C&printsec=front...

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2. foldrFeb 2023
   I don't think it's unusual at all for fiction to describe internal characteristics of characters that aren't easily knowable. That happens pretty much any time a story tells you something about what a character is thinking or feeling. If you object to an author mentioning that a character is gay, it surely can't be because that's not a directly observable characteristic. You could cut The Portrait of a Lady down to about 5 pages if you removed all the descriptions of people's psychological states.

   While we're on the topic of Roald Dahl (who perhaps doesn't quite reach the psychological depth of Henry James), here are a couple of examples that I easily found in The Twits:

   "Mr Twit thought that this hariness made him look terrifically wise and grand."

   "...his evil mind kept working away on the latest horrid trick he was going to play on the old woman."

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3. westoncbOct 2017
   I wonder how the 'psychological novel' which was supposed to be invented in James' The Portrait of a Lady (1880) (according to the article) is distinct from, e.g., Crime and Punishment (1866) (or Notes from Underground, though I guess that was a novella so it doesn't count). Is Portrait of a Lady more psychologically focused, or is the way it treats the psychological content somehow different?
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4. CalChrisOct 2017
   I read Daisy Miller and Portrait of a Lady, kind've the same book if you ask me. The ending of Portrait is unsatisfying and meant to be. Does she go back to Osmond? But like Blade Runner, there are two edits:

   One ends with Henrietta telling Caspar (in a Graduate Hollywood sort of ending)

   “Look here, Mr. Goodwood,” she said; “just you wait!” On which he looked up at her.

   http://www.bartleby.com/ebook/adobe/311.pdf

   The other continues:

   On which he looked up at her-but only to guess, from her face, with a revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood shining at him with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot, thirty years to his life. She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now the key to patience.

   http://www.planetpublish.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/The_...

   Even James can't figure out what he wants.

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5. red_malangSep 2010
   Coetzee is on my wishlist, heard great things about him - as soon as I am done with my current read I suppose: Portrait of a lady (Henry James) ;)

   Update: Great, thanks for the suggestion - I'll go look it up at the uni library.

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