Get the latest tech news

Just Say It, Henry

Henry James wanted every sentence to be artful. What he could often forget, later in life, is that some sentences just...

James described writing one of his shorter stories as akin to jam-making, from which it emerged ‘after boilings and reboilings of the contents of my small cauldron, after added pounds of salutary sugar, as numerous as those prescribed in the choicest recipe for the thickest jam’. It is a version of the world in which we live, although James’s hot-air balloon may sometimes take us so high above it that the air is starting to get a little thin: we occupy a delicate weave of emotions and beliefs that half beguiles us into thinking of ourselves as its centre, until something is seen or something happens which tells us, irrefutably, that we are not. This can result in horrible circumlocutory tangles, rather than just a simple statement along the lines of ‘yes, I was a bit stuck in a rut at that point.’ Take a sentence like this one (brace yourself) from the preface to Lady Barbarina: ‘What I was clearly to be treated to by fate – with the early-taken ply I have already elsewhere glanced at – was (should I have the intelligence to embrace it) some considerable occasion to appreciate the mixture of manners.’ Got that?

Get the Android app