[lbo-talk] Conrad v Hochschild (was Lincoln Gordon, he dead)

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Jan 16 06:45:56 PST 2010


James himself called Turn of the Screw a pot-boiler -- and I agree with him. It's a bore, but has amde a big splash because of the fight over whether the ghosts are real or the governess is batty. The debate is a bore too.

Carrol

John Adams wrote:
>
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
>
> >John Adams wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> I wouldn't go that far, but I didn't care for his style, either. (I don't care for Henry James, either.)
> >>
> >Oh my.
>
> Well, what do you expect from a guy who ends two sentences in a row with ", either."?
>
> >What Maisie Knew. The Awkward Age. The SAcred Fount. Portrait of a Lady.
> >Beast in the Jungle. The Golden Bowl. The Reverberator.
> >
> >All favorites of mine. Especially the first two.
>
> Well, that gives me an entry point if and when I decide to try again (which I expect I will, given enough time).
>
> I distinctly remember the experience of reading James, or perhaps the experience around reading him, though not the prose itself. It was in the mid-eighties, probably in late 1985, in the Kansas City bus station. I spent much of those years Traveling on Business for the Revolution, and it was my habit to hit junk stores and used book shops for cheap copies of books I either loved and wanted to re-read or was curious to read.
>
> What I'd picked up of James was a small black-covered paperback of "Daisy Miller" and "The Turn of the Screw". I still have it, somewhere, because I got about halfway through "The Turn of the Screw" and simply lost interest. I had four or five other books with me, and I moved on. (Interestingly, I have no idea what the other books were, though my memory of this one, as a physical artifact at least, is vivid.)
>
> I spent much of my travel time in non-optimal shape, often skipping nights of good sleep dozing in terminals or on buses. Perhaps that was why I didn't connect. That was when I got deep into Melville, though, so who knows?
>
> Thanks,
>
> John A
> http://www.arkansawyer.com/wordpress/
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