Telling in Henry Jamesargues that James's contribution to narrative and narrative theories is a lifelong exploration of how to tell, but not, as Douglas has it in The Turn of the Screw in any literal, vulgar way. James's fiction offers multiple, and often contradictory, reading (in)directions. Zwinger's overarching contention is that the telling detail is that which cannot be accounted for with any single critical or theoretical lens-that reading James is in some real sense a reading of the disquietingly inassimilable fictional machinery. The analyses offered by each of the six chapters are grounded in close reading and focused on oddments-textual equivalents to the particles James describes as caught in a silken spider web, in a famous analogy used in The Art of Fiction to describe the kind of consciousness James wants his fiction to present to the reader.
Telling in Henry Jamesattends to the sheer fun of James's wit and verbal dexterity, to the cognitive tune-up offered by the complexities and nuances of his precise and rhythmic syntax, and to the complex and contradictory contrapuntal impact of the language on the page, tongue, and ear.
Lynda Zwingeris Professor of English at the University of Arizona, USA, and Editor of
Arizona Quarterly. She is editor, with Patrick O'Donnell, of
Approaches to Teaching Faulkner's As I Lay Dyingand author of
Daughters, Fathers, and the Novel: The Sentimental Romance of Heterosexuality.
Offering a compellingly rich analysis of James's theory of the novel, Zwinger reads the writer's acts of 'telling' in the sharply focused style that James devoted to jokes, perverse claims, and 'dirt' in general. By this last term especially, Zwinger demonstrates how James's language implies something unconscious or unspoken, even as he insists on the authorial ability to tell them. A remarkable read! Dale Bauer, Professor of English, University of Illinois, USA
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