Besides Daisy Miller, this ancient Penguin I bought in Japan near the end of the 20th century has three other short stories:
The Last of the Valerii (1874) is about an international marriage. Martha is a stylish American who marries Count Macro Valerio and settles down in his country. During a make-over of his ancestral grounds, an ancient statue of Juno is dug up. The count has been rather an unconscious pagan since his dim-witted youth , without the power to comprehend the challenging belief system of Christianity. He begins worshiping the statue, which adds a heathenish supernatural turn to the story. He ignores his American spouse. James obliquely gets across the delicate fact that he has stopped sleeping with her. Naturally this situation can’t continue but how does Martha end it?
The Real Thing (1892) is story about the visual arts and its parallels with writing fiction, models, and their conflicts with real life. James gets in telling jabs against the deadly conventional British social system of the time. Social class has erected such impenetrable barriers that people from different backgrounds can’t begin to understand each other. A shabby genteel couple are so down at heels that they are begging for work and a tiny income, but the artist is so in awe of them that he can’t ask them to do chores that he has his Italian and Cockney models do. The artist is so discomfited by them that he cuts them loose, though they are desperate.
In The Lesson of the Master (1888) a long-married high literary figure, Henry St. George, advises an aspiring writer, Paul Overt, to give up the idea of marrying red-headed Marian Fancourt and instead to devote all his energy to writing. I mustn’t say any more lest I risk giving away the game, save it is a great story.
No comments:
Post a Comment