The Master

Rating:
Summary: A Good Look at the Life Of Henry James.
Review: Although the book didn't go into detail in some aspects of Mr. James' life, it did shine a light to let us see what type of person the famous author was and how he used his personality to write such hit books. The fact that he takes his friends for granted, at times, until they are no longer there, made me feel a little on the edge. But his incorporating some of their characteristics into his books made me appreciate such a man. I had read Mr. James' and Mr. Moore's, "The Portrait Of A Lady", last year and feel it, along with his own life, will always be sought-after material. Interesting material that was put in an attentive form by Mr. Toibin! I am including this book, along with "The Portrait Of A Lady" in my "So You'd Like To ... Dip Into Some Great Books- Go Ahead And Dive!"

Rating:
Summary: THE REAL LINE OF BEAUTY
Review: After the dreary, inconsequential "Story of the Night," Colm Toibin's superlative new novel "The Master" represents a gratifying jolt forward for this fine gay writer. The subject is the interior life of Henry James, who may have gone to his grave a virgin--a gay virgin. His entire life and work were deeply closeted and every loved one who sniffed around him, trying to open what was closed, found themselves stiff-armed brusquely. If James wrote today, out of the closet, I am convinced he would have emulated Toibin's gleaming, crystalline elegance instead of the dense, unnatural voice of the fusspot. This, not Hollinghurst's "Line of Beauty," should have won the Booker Prize. The London gay mafia backed the wrong homo.

Rating:
Summary: Satisfying
Review: An intimate portrait of Henry James's life from 1895-99, The Master is the story of a great American author. Colm Toibin takes his reader deep into the psyche of this extremely complicated man, as we witness first the bomb of a play on the London stage, then move to a dinner party in Ireland to which he is invated, and the buying of his dream house in Rye.

Although the book is divided into eleven chapters, each with its own "time" and place, the action really isn't limited to a particular place. The narrative goes back in time to James's childhood, exploring the relationships he had with his siblings, especially his invalid sister Alice. The reader gets a look at Henry James's relationships with other authors, and the effect other writers had on him. We get a look into the inspiration behind Henry James's own works.

The subject of the book is infinitely fascinating; this book looks into the private life of a man who chose not to enter the Union army during the Civil War and who never really felt comfortable with his own sexuality. While the author never really touches upon Henry James's sexual feelings, he hints at what might possibly have been.

In all, this is a well-written piece of fiction, not simply because of the fascinating subject, but because of its own literary value.

Rating:
Summary: The Genesis Seeds of Genius: Meditating on Henry James
Review: Colm Toibin's fine novel THE MASTER is an act of art in and of itself. This is a well-researched biography of one of America's greatest novelists but it is also a novel, a great work of literature that sifts through all the extant data found in the copious letters between Henry James and his brother (the equally famous William James) and others of his family and acquaintances, other biographies, and the vast writings about this extraordinary family . But what Toibin has achieved is more a dissection of the mind of a man who produced so many great books, showing us the gradual development of influences that, once digested, became such great books as 'The Turn of the Screw', 'The Portrait of a Lady', 'Washington Square', etc. THE MASTER opens with the expatriate James' embarrassing failure as a playwright ('Guy Domville') while his compatriot Oscar Wilde is enjoying tremendous success in another nearby London theater. This parallel plays significantly throughout the novel as a point of reference for James' periods of self doubt, fear of his own like sexual longings that ended Wilde's career in a famous trial, his odd transplantation from America to the United Kingdom and Italy, etc. Toibin's novel (by inference of his chapter titles) takes place from 1895 to 1899, but using the flashback and flash forward technique we are privy to the whole history of the James family (the premiere intellectual family in the latter 19th century), Henry's childhood and avoidance of serving in the Civil War, and all of the famous people who surrounded him (and at times slept with him in the case of Oliver Wendell Holmes). In a sensitive way, Toibin addresses the ambiguous sexuality of Henry, touching reverently and yet sensually on his platonic relationships with a manservant Hammond, his houseboy Burgess Noakes in Rye, England, and his magnetic attraction to the Norwegian sculptor Hendrik Andersen. Yet Toibin devotes equal energy to exploring Henry's long-term friendship with the writer Constance Fenimore Woolson who committed suicide in his beloved Venice, his sister Alice who dies young and has a suggested lesbian relationship, Lady Wolseley who decorates his home in Rye, and his own brother William. Along the way are hints and digressions about novels in gestation and in final form. And as if this tome of information weren't enough to satisfy the reader, Toibin writes with such magnificent prose that the book literally sings. "As an artist, he recognized, Andersen might know, or at least fathom the possibility, that each book he had written became an aspect of him, had entered into his driven spirit and lay there much as the years themselves had done. His relationship with Constance would be hard to explain; Andersen was perhaps too young to know how memory and regret can mingle, how much sorrow can be held within, and how nothing seems to have any shape or meaning until it is past and lost and, even then, how much, under the weight of pure determination, can be forgotten and left aside only to return in the night as a piercing pain." And in the final chapter: " 'The moral?' Henry thought for a moment. 'The moral is the most pragmatic we can imagine, that life is a mystery and that only sentences are beautiful, and that we must be ready for change, especially when we go to Paris, and that no one,' he said, raising his glass, 'who has known the sweetness of Paris can properly return to the sweetness of the United States.' "

Erudite, elegant, and sensual. Colm Toibin has mastered it all in this exceptional book. Read it slowly - to absorb over a hundred years of history and the development of the intellect, and to savour the seeds of genius in a great mind. Highly Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: The observer observed
Review: Five years in the life of Henry James, the late '90's, beginning with the production and abysmal failure of his play, Guy Domville. These are the years of What Maisie Knew, The Spoils of Poynton, The Awkward Age.

It is a dangerous thing to write a novel which is a psychological portrait of Henry James, the great master of the psychological novel. Tóibín succeeds wonderfully, avoiding the temptation to imitate James' style. (There is quite an amusing passage when Henry's elder brother, William, tries to tell him what he should write about and how. "Harry, I find I have to read innumerable sentences you now write twice over to see what they could possibly mean."
He has also shunned any sort of plot, preferring instead to simply give us a picture of James through his own thoughts, memories and actions. It is a complex picture, and ultimately a sad one.

James was an observer of life, more than a participant in its passions, yet Tóibín shows us the undercurrents. His James is not the repressed New Englander so often described, but more a man who, while having emotions, and recognizing them, cannot allow himself to be vulnerable to them. As a result, he may appear cold and unfeeling,. Indeed, when he is accused by his old friend, Oliver Wendell Holmes, of failing to take their friend, Minny Temple, to Italy, an act which might have mitigated the TB that killed her, he has to hunt up her old letters to see if she really did ask him to do that.

Anyone familiar with James' work will recognize those moments and ideas which will eventually be transmuted into various stories and novels. (It is, in fact, rather fun to say to oneself, "Aha! Turn of the Screw! ") Tóibín frequently alludes to the way in which all is grist to the writer's mill. It is not only James, of course. Describing James' trip to Venice after the suicide of his friend, the novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson, he writes: "This, he thought, was her last novel. They all played their assigned roles. He watched as the American women stood in her bedroom afraid to approach the window to the small balcony from which she had jumped. Constance would have been able to conjure up their stricken faces and would have known, too, that Henry James would have studied the women, observing them with cold sympathy. She would have smiled to herself at his ability to keep his own feeling a a great distance from himself, careful to say nothing. Thus the scene taking place in this room, each breath they took, the very expresssions on their faces, each word they left said and unsaid, all of it belonged to Constance. It was pictured by her with wry interest during the time when she knew she would die, Henry believed. They were her characters; she had written the script for them. And she knew that Henry would recognize her art in these scenes. His very recognition was part of her dream. No matter where he looked or what he thought, he felt the sharpness of her plans and a sort of sad laughter at how easy it was to manipulate her sister and her niece and how delicious to direct the actions of her friend the novelist who, it seemed, had wished to be free of her. "

Oscar Wilde is introduced as a counter-point to James, the man who indulged his passions juxtaposed with the man who refused them. As Wilde's triumphant dramatic career turns to ashes, James observes it in a detached, yet sympathetic, manner. Tóibín does not shirk the issue of James' sexuality (which, whatever his inclinations, he seems not to have indulged), and there is much homoeroticism here. James clearly recognizes his feelings (of a night spent platonically sharing a bed with Holmes, he " wondered if he would ever again be so intensely alive"). But he cannot give in to them.

Tóibín's James is a man who prefers to look on, sympathetically, ironically, indulgently, analytically, but alone and in control. At the end, his brother and his family having left after a visit, James returns home. "Lamb House was his again. He moved around it relishing the silence and the emptiness. He welcomed the Scot, who was waiting for him to begin a day's work, but he needed more time alone first. He walked up and down the stairs, going into the rooms as though they, too, in how they yielded to him, belonged to an unrecoverable past, and would join the room with the tasseled tablecloths and the screens and the shadowed corners, and all the other rooms from whose windows he had observed the world, so that they could be remembered and captured and held."




Rating:
Summary: The Portrait Of A Gentleman
Review: I bought and read this novel, not so much because it's about Henry James as that is is written by Colm Toibin, one of my favorite contemporary writers. I am certainly no authority on Mr. James, having read only two of his novels-- many years ago-- both required in an English course, THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY and THE TURN OF THE SCREW. Having finished this fine novel, however, I'm encouraged to read more James, particularly his letters and maybe a biography about him. Mr. Toibin's novel has the flavor and nuances, as best I can recall, of a Henry James novel, no small accomplishment. Toibin's James, though a bit like Eliot's Prufrock, is nevertheless a likable person and not so different from a lot of people I know. His sexuality is repressed, he has friendships with women whom he doesn't want to get too close to, he is the second child in a family of brilliant people-- William James being his older brother-- his father drinks too much, his beloved sister Alice suffers from emotional problems, he is attracted to men but doesn't act on his feelings, he is cowed by alcoholic servants, and he has a pushy woman friend from whom he has to hid a tapestry he has bought for his home because she told him he shouldn't purchase it. On the other hand, Toibin's James takes comfort in writing, in decorating a new home in Rye-- and while he sometimes may be lonely-- often enjoys solitude, something altogether different. "He loved the glorious silence a morning brought, knowing that he had no appointments that afternoon and no engagements that evening. He had grown fat on solitude, he thought, and had learned to expect nothing from the day but at best a dull contentment."

James through Toibin has poignant observations about life and death. "He realized that he did not even want the past back, that he had learned not to ask for that. His dead would not return. Being freed of the fear of their going gave him this strange contentment, the feeling that he wanted nothing more now but for time to go slowly." About his cousin Minny Temple who dies at an early age, James says that he "could control her destiny now that she was dead, offer her the experiences she would have wanted, and provide drama for a life which had been so cruelly shortened. He wondered if this had happened to other writers who came before him. . ." What a wonderful way to become immortal, to be fictionalized by a great writer. Near the end of this novel James tells Edmund Gosse that "'I am a poor storyteller. . .a romancer, interested in dramatic niceties. While mly brother [William] makes sense of the world, I can only briefly attempt to make it come alive, or become stranger.'" The same can be said of Toibin, himself. In this finely wrought novel, he has make Henry James, the master, come alive.

Rating:
Summary: An insight into James that leaves the mystery intact . . .
Review: I'm not a stranger to James but far from knowledgeable about his life and work, and I picked up this book in hopes of gaining a glimpse inside the man whose novels I have always found somewhat difficult. And Toíbín certainly provides that. Yet a glimpse into a mystery points to more mysteries, and one is left at the end of this novel with a conviction that no creative person - perhaps no person - can ever be really known.

There are many ways to read this novel, because there are so many ways Toíbín chooses to reveal James. Fascinating for me was how James' experiences and the people he knew or knew of found their way into his stories and novels. The various threads of real-life drama that weave together into the idea that becomes "The Turn of the Screw," for instance, make an intriguing study. It's doubly interesting that this process is explored by a storyteller gifted in his own right.

Toíbín also explores the moral dimension of transforming real lives into fictional ones. He looks rather hard at how James' apparent emotional neglect of the people nearest him didn't prevent him from appropriating their vulnerabilities for his own ends as a writer. We see him as much as abandon those who need him. Then after their deaths, he gives them life again in his stories, where he can control their fates. The ironies of this process double-back on him as he finds himself playing a role in a scene he sees as imagined by a novelist friend who has committed suicide. And again, he recognizes his relationship with a young sculptor as similar to that of two men in a novel he wrote long before - only to discover that his actual life does not take on the narrative shape he has hoped for.

Readers eager for revelations about James' sexuality will be disappointed. Toíbín represents James as fiercely defended against anything so inappropriate as erotic attraction between men. Even his estimation of Oscar Wilde, whose plays he dislikes, is based on the man's disregard for the impact of his behavior on his wife and children. In an age when such self-closeting is considered almost pathological, it's hard to accept this portrait as anything but dishonest. But I suspect that it's close to the truth, and the interplay between James' insight into character and motive and blindness to his own adds a dimension to this novel that makes it a richly rewarding read.


Rating:
Summary: "This is where the tales are told."
Review: I've been a long time fan of Henry James and I've read everything he ever published. My favorite works were THE GOLDEN BOWL and THE WINGS OF THE DOVE, but really, I love everything he ever wrote. Henry James is the only man (other than Jose Saramago) who can grab my attention at the beginning of a sentence and hold it until he concludes that very same sentence several pages later.

When I heard that the very talented author, Colm Toibin had written a book about James, I couldn't wait to read it. THE MASTER was quite a bit different than what I thought it would be, but it fulfilled all of my expectations for an engrossing and very literary read and then some. I expected THE MASTER to focus on all of James's career, but Toibin is a better writer than I gave him credit for (and I gave him credit for a lot). Wisely, he chooses to focus on only a part of James's career, perhaps the very lowest point. THE MASTER concentrates on James when he is in his fifties, his failed efforts at becoming a playwright still fresh in his mind and heart and his greatest successes as a novelist still ahead of him.

THE MASTER is set between 1895 and 1899 when James lived, most of the time, in London, eclipsed by Oscar Wilde, a man more troubled than was James. Some people might think this was a very odd choice for Toibin to make and, I'll confess, I thought the same thing, but only at first. Once I started reading THE MASTER, I realized how wonderful Toibin's choice was and the rich palette of emotions he could bring to us by focusing on James's regret and uncertainty rather than on his successes.

While I loved THE MASTER, I've been reading James since my teenaged years when I was first introduced to him in school with THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY and THE TURN OF THE SCREW. I think THE MASTER is a book that's going to be best appreciated by those of us with some familiarity with, not only the works of Henry James, but with his personal life as well. For example, it helps greatly in your appreciation of THE MASTER if you know that James's cousin, Minny Temple, formed the basis for many of his heroines. I think people who have little to no familiarity with Henry James might find THE MASTER very slow going or simply "too literary." But really, how could anyone write about Henry James and not write a very literary book? I think that would be almost impossible. Readers wanting to learn about James and his work shouldn't start with THE MASTER despite the fact that it's certainly a five star plus book. They should first familiarize themselves with James's life and his works.

Despite the above, THE MASTER isn't a biography of James. It's much too good to be that. And it's not "dry" at all, as many biographies are. No, THE MASTER, which was culled from James's own writings, presents a fictionalized portrait of Henry James based on fact.

I know some readers won't like the fact that Toibin "filled in" some of the facts of James's life, but I think it brought "the master" to life much more fully. I'm not really a fan of biographies, no matter how well written, and I usually find them a little dull, but I thought THE MASTER was absolutely wonderful and I thought James was such a flesh-and-blood character, I'll never be able to read his novels in the same way again, all to the good, of course.

Toibin does manage to write in the same style as did James, but he stops short of giving us James's pages long sentences. I wouldn't have minded if he had; I love everything about James's writing and I think his style is elegant and suits his subject matter wonderfully.

THE MASTER is a book that is sad, melancholy, graceful and very delicately nuanced. I think it's essential reading for any fan of Henry James. I loved it and it's one of my very favorites of 2004.

Rating:
Summary: Dry and Disappointing
Review: I've read all of HJ's fiction, his Notebooks, Prefaces, Letters, travel writing and a shelf of biographies and I'm finding this book lifeless and "studied." It does not animate HJ, but makes him a waxwork--I found the (fairly) recent biography of HJ in relation to Fenimore and Minnie far livelier and better written. It's being hyped to the stars, but does not live up to the hype, and if you read the long NYTBR review carefully, the reviewer there isn't wild about it either, noting its mechanical quality and its anachronistic view of HJ.

Rating:
Summary: A Must for James Fans
Review: I've read most of James's novels and the five-volume biography by Leon Edel, and Toibin succeeds in this high-wire act of a novel to get inside Henry James's skin in a language that is remarkably Jamesian in its style and reticence. He has a deft hand when dealing with James's homoerotic longings -- which remain nothing but longings -- but also delves into his his relationships with the women whose friendships were vitally important to him and with his family, most notably his sister Alice and his brother James. Henry James really does come alive in this book -- even more so than in the biographies.