Saving a piece of black history: Foundation working to restore historic Arkansas Baptist church Aug 24, 2008
To build Centennial Baptist, Morris engaged black architect and church member Henry James Price, who was most likely self-taught. The Gothic-Revival style building, capable of seating 1,000, was dedicated in 1905 and the congregation grew to capacity. (Racine Journal Times, WI)
Book Review: 'How Fiction Works' Aug 17, 2008
The heroes of this great artistic labor tend to be semimonastic introverts who, like Wood's beloved Henry James and Gustave Flaubert, toil with the doors shut and locked, in soundproof splendid isolation, attentive to the subtle frictions among nouns and adjectival phrases. Conversely, the folks who spoil the experiment are David Foster Wallace types who let themselves be distracted and overwhelmed by the roar of the streets, the voices of the crowd. (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
Amor and more in 'Barcelona' Aug 16, 2008
Allen has Henry James in his sights. His tale of American women enriched and undone by travel abroad has some resonant insights into the box a committed relationship can trap a lady in. (Boston Globe)
Theodore Solotaroff, 80; his New American Review showcased writers Aug 13, 2008
Discouraged, he entered the University of Chicago and had nearly completed a dissertation on Henry James when fate derailed his planned academic career. Roth, a fellow student, recommended him to the editor of The Times Literary Supplement, who wanted an essay on American Jewish writers. (Boston Globe)
Independent Reader: Local doc writes about a doc and the Mob Aug 2, 2008
Nelson, recently retired as a Distinguished Teaching Professor of English at SUNY Fredonia, writes about "the roads I have known, traveled, lived on, dreamt about." He does, indeed, live on Route 20, and, in this charmingly evocative book, he traces the road that starts in Boston's Kenmore Square and ends a mile from (and in sight of) the Pacific Ocean--3,300 miles of "a real cross-country road, really the only one left." Route 20, he explains, is "the Main Street of my life. I am fond of it,... (Hillsdale Independent, NY)
Booker nomination surprise for de Krester Jul 31, 2008
The Lost Dog, which won the fiction prize and book-of-the-year title in the NSW Premier's literary awards, tells the story of an Anglo-Indian writer whose dog wanders into the bush while he is working on a book about Henry James. De Kretser came to Australia from Sri Lanka as a teenager, and said she wanted to write about the migrant experience. (Sydney Morning Herald -- Entertainment)
Born in the Gardens Jul 24, 2008
Captivity versus freedom is clearly going to be the theme of a Peter Hall Company season that includes Ibsen and Henry James, and it kicks off with a sprightly revival by Stephen Unwin of a Peter Nichols rarity. Premiered in 1979, only four months after Margaret Thatcher's ascent to power, it combines a wry look at the state of a divided nation with an examination of the moral choices facing a comically dysfunctional family. (guardian.co.uk)
Charleston: Southern Comfort Jul 23, 2008
A century ago, Henry James was seduced by Charleston's "idle, easy loveliness," as well as by a particularly delectable Lady Baltimore cake ... A friend recommends Henry James's The American Scene as a vade mecum. (Concierge.com)
* [BOOK REVIEW] Weight loss, Dick Cheney-style Jul 20, 2008
As I read The Dark Side I thought of Henry James great novel The Wings of the Dove, which tells the story of two blameless young lovers who try to procure the money that will allow them to marry. By the time they get it, their decency is in shreds X and so is their love. (Taipei Times, Taiwan -- World)
Portrait of a lady Jul 19, 2008
When Henry James met Browning in the 1870s, he was perplexed and not a little horrified at the apparent difference between Browning's personality and the sophisticated, finely tuned sensibility he'd been led to expect from the poetry ... His last collection, Asolando, was finished during a stay in the hilltop town of Asolo in the Veneto in the autumn of 1889, where he was the guest of an affable American widow called Mrs Bronson (who also happened to be a friend of Henry James). (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
Over the top Jul 13, 2008
"Really, universally, relations stop nowhere," Henry James would write, 40 years later, in his preface to the New York Edition of his early novel Roderick Hudson, "and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so." Life was infinite, argued James, but the novel therefore required a form which gave the illusion of completeness. James, after all, had learned the art of the novel from Flaubert. (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
James gang: bigger than you thought Jul 13, 2008
Could my family have actually served Henry James dinner. The man's politeness goes far to suggest it. (Boston Globe)
The lives of others Jul 7, 2008
Citing Leon Edel, celebrated biographer of Henry James, he writes: "For Edel, biography was exciting because it enabled one to peer behind the mask of an individual's life, in order to discern the true individual." He invokes, as Edel naturally did, James's image of "the figure in the carpet," that discernible but seldom obvious pattern of psychological motivation. Interestingly, for all his traffic in innuendo, Edel proposed a similarity between the biographer's task and the sculptor's. (Boston Globe)
The right book for any trip Jul 6, 2008
If I were walking around Rome and needing something to slip in my pocket to read over lunch, it would be more likely to be Henry James - perhaps Daisy Miller (Penguin). In Venice, it might be James's Letters from Palazzo Barbaro in that truly pocketable volume from the Pushkin Press. (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
Today in History Jul 4, 2008
Thought for Today: "America is American: that is incontestable." Henry James, American author (1843-1916). Yahoo. (Yahoo News)
'House of Wit': The oh-so repressed world of Henry James and his family Jul 4, 2008
House of Wit': The oh-so repressed world of Henry James and his family - International Herald Tribune. House of Wit': The oh-so repressed world of Henry James and his family ... " However you choose to tell it, it's an extraordinary American family story, stretching from the 1820s to World War I. First there's the pioneering tale of the founding grandfather, William, an Ulster immigrant and self-made Albany businessman. Then, the eccentric and domineering personality of Henry James Sr.,... (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
'American Girl' film: Companions at hand, girls claim the spotlight Jun 30, 2008
To paraphrase Henry James: It's a complex fate, being an American girl. You grow up being told that you can do anything - run for president, win a Nascar race, fly into space or become a four-star general - but in the meantime everything you do is subject to intense and often contradictory scrutiny from the grown-up world. (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
'Like Breath on Glass' scratches surface on Whistler Jun 29, 2008
The show takes its title from Whistler's 1880 assertion, "Paint should not be applied thick. It should be like breath on the surface of a pane of glass." The metaphor was reiterated by Henry James, who wrote that Whistler's manner of painting "was to breathe upon the canvas," and in various comments on George Inness's art. The critic Elliot Daingerfield, for instance, suggested that an Inness painting was "breathed upon the canvas in waves of color.". (Boston Globe)
IN MY LIBRARY: MEGAN MULLALLY Jun 29, 2008
If you've never read any Henry James, this is a great starter. We're reading 'Portrait of a Lady' now, which is 700 pages, so it's a little bit more of a commitment. (New York Post -- Opinions)
In darkest Dickens Jun 28, 2008
Henry James spoke for many when he called this novel "the poorest of Mr. Dickens's works." Why didn't his contemporaries like it ... Henry James was 25 when he penned that derogatory judgment on Our Mutual Friend. (Globe and Mail)
Burrowing muskrat causes levee to fail in Missouri Jun 28, 2008
Jeff Roberson Residents Henry James, left, and Herb Crosby sit on top of a house as they wait for the floodwaters to arrive after a levee break Friday, June 27, 2008, in Winfield, Mo ... Jeff Roberson Residents Henry James, left, and Herb Crosby sit on top of a house as they wait for the floodwaters to arrive after a levee break Friday, June 27, 2008, in Winfield, Mo. (Fresno Bee -- Local)
MAMA DIARIES: Kick back and let kids be kids Jun 27, 2008
By Debbie Squires-Lee. Thu Jun 26, 2008, 04:00 PM EDT. (Hingham Journal, MA)
wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald Jun 24, 2008
As you can see the girl, of course, represents that inhibited attraction that all men show to a wild + beautiful woman". The greyer a mans life is the more it comes out. But if I d have explained the story in anyway but a dream it would have been a regular Max Beerbohm extravaganza + hence furthur over people s heads that it is now. But I do think to come out + say it was all a dream in so many words would cheapen + rather spoil the story. SincerelyF Scott Fitzgerald 1921 To Carl Hovey Fri,... (Harper's Magazine)
1) Globe and Mail: John Doyle on ESPN's revolutionary decision to broadcast Euro 2008 in full Jun 24, 2008
And it is has been told countless times, by Henry James and others. In fact Jim Rome might not like this, but in attitude he bears a close resemblance to little Randolph Miller, the irritating younger brother of Daisy Miller in Henry James classic short story (published 1878) about a young American woman visiting Europe, one that is still studied by millions of U.S. students. (Guardian Unlimited -- Football)
Scenes from a life Jun 21, 2008
Henry James began to write The Golden Bowl in 1903, when his imagination was at its most refined and his talent as a stylist supreme ... The first entries in Henry James's Notebooks that offer us a shadow of Adam Verver in The Golden Bowl appeared on May 22 1892 ... In his autobiography, Buchan described how "the widow of Byron's grandson asked Henry James and myself to examine her archives in order to reach some conclusion on the merits of the quarrel between Byron and his wife ... So, during a... (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Harvard is good, but not that good. Jun 14, 2008
Whitman and Bell are classic East Coast American blue bloods out of Henry James or Edith Wharton: full members of the club. The others only qualify for various levels of associate membership. (Slate)
Citizens or customers? Jun 13, 2008
But otherwise, there is that famous passage of Henry James looking at the skyline of New York saying; whatever it means, it means business. So that's certainly what the New York skyline is about -- the enormous energy of American business rising in the way that Chicago did and New York did. (CNN -- International)
Little known IMPAC prize awaits a lucky novelist Jun 11, 2008
When Irish novelist Colm Toibin won the IMPAC in 2006 for "The Master," his fictional treatment of the life of Henry James, one of the nominating libraries was the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Joan Luebering, the manager of the Loveland Branch Library in that system, was the person who passionately pushed for "The Master" and remembers how thrilled she was when it was chosen for the award. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, PA)
Tom Kalin returns to true crime in 'Savage Grace' Jun 8, 2008
"All the characters seemed like they were out of a Henry James or Edith Wharton novel.". Indeed, the film fuses the family melodrama of classic Tennessee Williams with the bed-hopping, pill-popping of '80s trash TV like "Dynasty," spiced with the true-crime drama of "In Cold Blood.". (Boston Globe)
Post-Cannes update: Sony claims "Bashir" and "Tyson" May 30, 2008
If Henry James had lived in the modern age and developed a taste for cocaine and anal sex, he might have written this story. Andrew O'Hehir. (Salon)
"My kids think I work in a trailer" May 29, 2008
If Henry James had lived in the modern age and developed a taste for cocaine and anal sex, he might have written this story. "Savage Grace" is a deliberately excessive picture that recalls the self-indulgent '70s cinema of Luchino Visconti, Bernardo Bertolucci and R.W. Fassbinder, and also the "queer cinema" of the '90s in which "Swoon," Kalin's first feature, played a crucial role. (Salon)
What I'm reading: Emily Perkins May 26, 2008
What I want to read for it though - and what might take over before I finish the Denis Johnson - is Henry James' The Wings of a Dove. Not sure why but I have a sense it is going to help in some way. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
The book of revelations May 24, 2008
Henry James complained that Middlemarch was too messy ... In 1873, the young Henry James reviewed George Eliot's Middlemarch ... For the young Henry James, who has not yet patience for the commonplace, it is a mystery why there must be Fred (or so much Fred). (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
Remembering Emerson May 23, 2008
Another contemporary of Emerson's, Henry James Sr. the father of Henry James the novelist and William James the psychologist sought to explain just what it was about the adult Emerson that was so commanding. In (an article written before Emerson's death, but published in The Atlantic in December 1904), James recalled the dramatic first impression Emerson had made on him when he attended a series of his lectures many years earlier. (The Atlantic Online)
Dog-inspired tale wins book prize May 21, 2008
The book by Melbourne-based de Kretser whose previous novels, The Rose Grower and The Hamilton Case, have received critical acclaim and several prizes tells the story of an Anglo-Indian writer, Tom Loxley, whose dog vanishes while he is writing a book about Henry James. De Kretser, who moved from Sri Lanka to Australia as a teenager, said she wanted to write about someone who had made that migrant journey to Australia and the haunting sense of other paths his life might have taken. (The Age)
American Politics: The Early Years of the Country, Part I May 21, 2008
05/20/08 By Jim Thomas. (Editor s Note: This is Part I of a series of four based on the author s paper presented at the Monday Night Club, a discussion group. (Dublin Courier Herald, GA)
"A WRITER'S PEOPLE" May 18, 2008
As a young man, Naipaul was hired by the BBC to conduct radio interviews on Caribbean topics, and once let slip in a live interview with writer Samuel Sevlon: "But getting back to your wretched little book . . ." It is clear that Naipaul has not been softened by time or accolade, as large swathes of the Western canon are mercilessly dismissed here, including Henry James, Evelyn Waugh, Somerset Maugham, Philip Larkin and Ernest Hemingway, who are skewered in short order. Naipaul is deeply... (New York Post -- Opinions)
IN MY LIBRARY: CHRISTINE BARANSKI May 18, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008 Last Update: 01:50 PM EDT. May 18, 2008 -- If you've caught her black-and-white-and-Chanel-all-over look in Broadway's "Boeing, Boeing," you won't be surprised to know that Christine Baranski is cuckoo about Coco. (New York Post -- Opinions)
Publish - then edit and be damned May 17, 2008
Ditto for Henry James and Emily Dickinson. As for D. H. Lawrence, he "did improve his early work by rewriting it for his Collected Poems, but perhaps this is because the poems were so bad to begin with". (Sydney Morning Herald -- Entertainment)
Home from home May 17, 2008
Both house and pub turn up in the Pisan Cantos, written 40 years later, as does a meeting in the street with Henry James. However, the densest marginalia in Pound's A-Z would surround 10 Church Walk in Kensington, a small square of Poundography tucked away between the High Street and the Church of St Mary Abbots. (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona and Woody May 17, 2008
No less than Henry James, Allen is judgmental of Americans abroad they betray a sexual naivete when exposed to a society so much more practiced in the art of gracious loving. And no less than Vicky and Cristina, Allen is almost star struck by the Spaniards, and the Mediterranean ease in forming, then releasing, sexual liaisons. (Time.com)
Biographer fails to get to the heart of Conrad May 13, 2008
He brought a visionary style and a grave moral seriousness to his stories of tormented exiles, marooned sailors, imperial adventurers, brooding spies, and political radicals, and, along with Henry James, helped push the English novel into the modern era ... Yet Conrad slowly worked his way into the literary establishment - his friends included Henry James and John Galsworthy, among many others - and made himself into an English gentleman and man of letters. (Boston Globe)
Preventing an arms race in space May 13, 2008
As World War I broke out, Henry James identified an inexorable current that had been running below international events, leading to the "monstrous scene" of August" as its grand Niagara." ... If Henry James were alive, wouldn't he have recognized an upshift in the current toward Niagara. (International Herald Tribune -- Ed/Op)
Preventing an arms race in outer space May 12, 2008
AS WORLD WAR I broke out, Henry James identified an inexorable current that had been running below international events, leading to the "monstrous scene" of August "as its grand Niagara." Below the glassy upriver surface, the swift tide had been driven by habits of mind, arms merchant greed, imperial hubris, and a politics that was wholly inadequate ... If Henry James were alive, wouldn't he have recognized an upshift in the current toward Niagara. (Boston Globe)
Six views out of a thousand May 10, 2008
"What she does is give a vivid sense of history through fiction, so I wanted to go in for that kind of thick description." Lee sought to rescue Wharton from her reputation as "a sort of inferior Henry James" that she developed after falling out of fashion in the '30s, when she was seen as fusty and posh ... "I wanted the structure to be like going into a series of rooms, so that you would have the Henry James room, or the Italian room, or the terrible room of France at war.". (Sydney Morning Herald)
Book Review: Brian Hall's 'Fall of Frost' May 10, 2008
Variations on this form have become increasingly fashionable in recent years - so fashionable, in fact, that two fictional portraits of Henry James alone were published in 2004, with another trailing along the next year. Like James, an inert and reputedly celibate Victorian, Frost seems from the outset an unlikely protagonist for fiction. (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
The frisky art of Cynthia Ozick May 6, 2008
In the wonderfully playful title story of her new book, Dictation, Cynthia Ozick imagines freighted interchanges not just between two great writers, Henry James and Joseph Conrad, but between their secretaries. James and Conrad did in fact meet once in England, but their conversations are unrecorded. (Christian Science Monitor)
Andrea Hirata: Asking all the right questions, from the start to The End May 4, 2008
In his preface to The Portrait of a Lady, literary giant Henry James once said that perhaps a better way to approach the question of defining the greatness of great literature would be to ask questions about personal experience and the use made of it. James said all art is expression, and the thing expressed is personal experience, either external or internal; the congruence between the experience and the expression is also an issue. (Jakarta Post, Indonesia -- Features)
Fighting talk May 3, 2008
Henry James would recognise him as an equal. Harold Hobson, Sunday Times, May 25. (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
Back - due to popular demand May 3, 2008
He was deeply influenced by the tradition of the classic English novel - by Jane Austen, George Eliot and Henry James - and his heroines make their way through the treacherous social maze with courage and aplomb. He was writing at a time when ideas about gender were undergoing profound and lasting changes, and helped to contribute to those changes. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Save the Mount! Apr 21, 2008
Our own American grande dame, author of more than 40 books, friend of Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt bothered herself with wallpaper and sconces. (Actually, she loathed wallpaper. (Slate)
Flights of fancy Apr 20, 2008
Henry James, as it happens, also makes frequent appearances, mainly by way of aptly chosen epigrams from his work, especially as introductions to the kaleidoscopic array of chapters. In Benfey's careful reading of poems and texts by Stowe, we learn that to her the hummingbird became symbolic in diverse ways at different times. (Boston Globe)
Shorts collection cynical but entertaining Apr 13, 2008
The title story fantasizes about two typists supposedly hired by two giants of 20th-century fiction: Henry James and Joseph Conrad. Miss Lilian Hallowes and Miss Theodora Bosanquet achieve what seems to them a bit of literary immortality. (Helena Independent Record, MT)
Beckett's ancestors Apr 9, 2008
Beckett also appreciated that Flaubert, rather than fabricating heroes, created circumstances that reduced his characters to their just level of banality, thus revealing their paradoxical nature and sometimes their stupidity, an approach which shocked Henry James, who said: "Why did Flaubert choose, as special conduits of the life he proposed to depict, such inferior and ... such abject human specimens?" Madame Bovary's creator had anticipated such a charge by once writing that there were... (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Morningside prof, former student co-publish story Apr 3, 2008
SIOUX CITY -- A story co-authored by a Morningside College professor and a former student has been published in the spring issue of the North American Review, a literary magazine that has featured writers such as Walt Whitman, Henry James and Andrew Carnegie. SIOUX CITY -- A story co-authored by a Morningside College professor and a former student has been published in the spring issue of the North American Review, a literary magazine that has featured writers such as Walt Whitman, Henry James... (Sioux City Journal, IO)
Holocaust survivor captivates, educates middle school students Apr 3, 2008
Based on her book (co-written by Lila Perl) "Four Perfect Pebbles," Lazan presented her horrifying story as a child prisoner to eighth-graders at Henry James Memorial School in Simsbury on March 20 ... Ultimately, Lazan said, "I don't dwell on the Holocaust. I live in the present and for the future." After the program concluded, Assistant Principal Patricia Peters said, "It's important for the kids to hear her story and message, and make it real for today, in their own lives, to make a... (Farmington Valley Post, CT)
Feel the chill Apr 1, 2008
It will see him exploring enactments of stories by authors like Henry James and M.R. James. What I love about their stories is that they play so much on suggestion and ambiguity. (The Star Online, Malaysia)
The Mount in Financial Straits Mar 28, 2008
" Edith Wharton designed The Mount as a literary retreat. There she wrote several of her novels, including "The House of Mirth" (1905), the first of many chronicles of old New York, and there she entertained the cream of American literary society, including her close friend, the novelist Henry James. She abandoned the house in 1911 following her divorce from Edward "Teddy" Robbins, and retreated to France where she lived for the rest of her life. But she left behind a legacy that demonstrated... (Litchfield County Times, CT)
'A Man for All Seasons' was an actor for all roles Mar 21, 2008
He was amazing - forgive the baldness of the adjective, but that is the precise word - as Lambert Strether in a 1977 BBC adaptation of Henry James' "The Ambassadors": self-aware, shy, blooming, acute but not quite acute enough, a man filled equally with wonder and sorrow. It's a spectacularly calibrated performance, right down to Scofield's pursed-lips American accent. (Boston Globe)
Fair Shares for All: Fancy some soldiers with your egg, mate? Feb 27, 2008
Mum, brow furrowed, applies herself to Henry James, struggles to like progressive jazz and encourages her son to spend a lot of time with the neighbors. "Must be under the illusion that there's an element of perfection in there somewhere," one of them observes to John about his mother's view of the educated classes. (International Herald Tribune -- Arts)
Obituary: Ronald Segal Feb 26, 2008
In between the travelling, Segal had a passion for literature and classical music and collected first editions, in particular Henry James, George Orwell and Graham Greene. Round his bridge table could be found Peter Jay, Mark Boxer and Hugh Stephenson, while his poker mainstay was the Marxist Joe Slovo. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Raymond Kennedy, mined Western Mass. for oft-praised novels Feb 24, 2008
"He didn't want everyone to be Henry James. He didn't want everybody to be Raymond Kennedy. He wanted people to find their own voice, and he encouraged that while holding them to very high standards.". Clad in a tweed jacket and tie, Mr. Kennedy "really pressed students to transgress the boundaries of their imagination," Gordon said. (Boston Globe)
In Search of a Scenario: Hollywood's Version of the Campaign Feb 13, 2008
"The Portrait of a Lady," with Hillary as protagonist, couldn't be the narrative of Henry James about a woman who stays in a bad marriage in spite of her independent spirit, but one studded with flashbacks of a woman in a bad marriage who enjoys what comes of her experiences at the White House ... "The Portrait of a Lady," with Hillary as protagonist, couldn't be the narrative of Henry James about a woman who stays in a bad marriage in spite of her independent spirit, but one studded with... (Townhall.com)
Amy Winehouse grabs 5 Grammys, but Herbie Hancock takes top album Feb 11, 2008
Traditional Blues Album: "Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen:Live In Dallas," Henry James Townsend, Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins. Robert Lockwood Jr. "Honeyboy" Edwards. (North County Times)
Black History Preserved by Blues Education Project; Education Charity Garners Grammy Nomination Feb 9, 2008
It features stellar musical performances by blues legends Henry James "The Mule" Townsend, Robert Lockwood, Jr., Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins, and David "Honeyboy" Edwards, who ranged in age from 89 to 94 years old at the time of the recording. ADVERTISEMENT. (Yahoo! Wire -- Entertainment News)
