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Title: The Ambassadors: An Authoritative Text, the Author on the Novel, Criticism (A Norton Critical Edition) by Henry James, S.P. Rosenbaum ISBN: 0-393-96314-4 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: February, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.80 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.48 (21 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: New England provinciality meets Parisian charm
Comment: Was there any American more European than Henry James? "The Ambassadors" begins in England and takes place mostly in Paris, and even though most of its characters are American, it is only referentially concerned with its author's native country. At the same time, the novel is not about Americans frivolously sowing their wild oats in exotic ancestral lands, but rather how they use their new settings to break away from restrictive American traditions and conventions and redefine their values and standards of living.
The main character is a late-middle-aged widower named Lambert Strether who edits a local periodical in the town of Woollett, Massachussetts, and is a sort of factotum for a wealthy industrialist's widow named Mrs. Newsome, a woman he may possibly marry. Strether's latest assignment from Mrs. Newsome is to go to Paris to convince her son, Chad, to give up what she assumes is a hedonistic lifestyle and return to Woollett to marry a proper, respectable young lady, his brother-in-law's sister to be specific. There is a greater ulterior motive, too -- the prosperity of the family business relies on Chad's presence.
In Paris, Strether finds that Chad has surrounded himself with a more stimulating group of friends, including a mousy aspiring painter named John Little Bilham, and that he is in love with an older, married woman named Madame de Vionnet. Providing companionship and counsel to Strether in Paris are his old friend, a retired businessman named Waymarsh, and a woman he met in England, named Maria Gostrey, who happens to be an old schoolmate of the Madame's. When it appears that Strether is failing in his mission to influence Chad, Mrs. Newsome dispatches her daughter and son-in-law, Jim and Sarah (Newsome) Pocock, and Jim's marriageable sister Mamie, to Paris to apply pressure. Ultimately, Strether, realizing that he's blown his chances with Mrs. Newsome and that Chad has the right idea anyway, finds himself enjoying the carefree life in Paris, which has liberated him from his lonely, stifling existence in Woollett.
Not having cared much for James's previous work "The Wings of the Dove," I felt something click with "The Ambassadors." Maybe it's because I found the story a little more absorbing and could empathize with Strether; maybe it's because my reading skills are maturing and I'm learning to appreciate James's dense, oblique prose style. I realize now that, for all the inherent difficulty in his writing, literature took a giant step forward with Henry James; if the Novel is, as he claimed, "the most independent, most elastic, most prodigious of literary forms," it takes a writer like James to show us how.
Rating: 5
Summary: I loved reading this book!
Comment: I had some difficulty at first, getting the rhythm of his writing, but once I got it, I thoroughly enjoyed it. This is a novel about an American from Woollett, Massachusetts, named Lambert Strether, who sets out for Europe for the purpose of fetching his fiancée's, Mrs. Newsome's, son Chadwick Newsome, from the supposed clutches of an inappropriate liaison with a French woman, Madame Marie de Vionnet, and her daughter, Mademoiselle Jeanne de Vionnet. Other characters include Mr. Strether's longtime friend, Mr. Waymarsh, a new acquaintance, Maria Gostrey, Mrs. Newsome's daughter, Mrs. Sarah Pocock, her husband James Pocock, and Chad's intended bride-to-be, Miss Mamie Pocock. The Ambassadors of the title of the novel seem to be the group of Sarah, Jim and Mamie, who come to Europe later with the purpose of fetching Mr. Strether back for Mrs. Newsome. What occurs is a trial of manners and propriety with Mr. Strether encouraging Chad to stay on in Paris, France, with the advice of living life to the fullest rather than going back to America to a life of boredom and a stale marriage. I enjoyed reading the book itself, and I would greatly recommend this to others!
Rating: 4
Summary: dense yet worthwhile
Comment: Another tough Henry James read still contains his best leading character> In fact, all the characters here are well drawn, even ones you never meet, like Mrs. Newsome, who is strictly an indirect background force. James always wrote very piercing stories of moral and romantic conflict and this one, vague and hard as the langauge can be, is no exception. Despite the narrative's thickness, you can't helped but be awed by how a master can re-arrange the English tongue to sound this beautiful. You will feel every inch of being in Paris here, and, as well, the frustration and confusion of every lost soul in the story. Even the scared conformist characters are vividly drawn. Another amazing effort by a writer who isn't always easy to dissect. Requires more than a brief sit thru. Stick with it, you will feel like you've lived the book yourself.
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Title: The Golden Bowl (Penguin English Library) by Henry James, Gore Vidal, Patricia Crick ISBN: 0140432353 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: May, 1985 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The American by Henry James, William Spengemann ISBN: 0140390820 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 1981 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Wings of the Dove (Penguin Classics) by Henry James, John Bayley ISBN: 0140432639 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: June, 1986 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Wings of the Dove by Henry James, Amy Bloom ISBN: 0812967194 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 08 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Bostonians (Oxford World's Classics) by Henry James, R.Q. Gooder, R. D. Gooder ISBN: 0192834428 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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