Henry James, _The Other House_

MY MAJOR JAMES phase was roughly 1981-84; I read most of the novels and a lot of the tales while working through Leon Edel's five-volume biography. I did not read this one, though. At this remove in time, I'm no longer sure whether I skipped it because it wasn't in print at the time (thank you again, NYRB Classics) or because Edel had a low opinion of it ("one of his most unpleasant novels," "an outburst of primitive rage").

This was James's return to the novel after his switch to writing plays foundered so badly with Guy Domville. Having just reacquainted myself with that crucial episode thanks to David Lodge's Author, Author!  and having purchased The Other House a few years ago thinking I would have time for it eventually, the moment seemed propitious.

Edel had a point; things get unpleasant here. I can think of other fictions by James in which a child dies in a way for which some adult may be indirectly responsible ("The Turn of the Screw," "The Pupil"), and I can think of many examples in which characters perform actions that are selfish, cruel, unethical, or immoral, but this is the first one I've read in which someone is actually murdered.

More interesting (to me) than that, though, was how plainly the novel revealed its origins as a scenario for a play. I'm not sure how receptive the London stage circa 1896 would have been to a play in which a child is murdered, but James is obviously following his plan for a play closely. The novel is organized into three "books" that would work just as well as three acts; each "book" represents a continuous action in a single setting, as if trying to conform to the Aristotelian unities.

Almost all the action, furthermore, is dialogue. No character's point of view organizes the presentation, and all the characters get around to saying more or less exactly what is on their minds--enough by itself to cast the novel as utterly un-Jamesian.  An unfortunate effect of this approach is that the famous James interiority--precisely what made him so key a precursor for the 20th century novel--is all but entirely absent. There isn't a whiff here of What Maisie Knew, which lay only a couple of years ahead.

There are spots in "Book Third"--especially its final chapter--where James hints at what one character is trying to convey wordlessly to another. One can imagine how hard a time he would have had explaining to an actor (or a director) what had to be conveyed, and one can imagine the actor or director telling others how mistaken a conception of the theater Mr. James had. But in these spots we feel fiction writing is reclaiming James, that he is about to take fuller advantage of his mastery of its form than he ever did before.