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The Gilded Age novel that helps explain our fascination with Luigi Mangione
Henry James’ ‘The Princess Casamassima’ tells a story of political radicalism in a time of economic inequality. But even James ran up against the limits of putting himself in the mind of a killer.
This scene not only describes Luigi Mangione’s alleged murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in midtown New York – and the ensuing flood of media attention – but also the plot of one of Henry James’ lesser-read novels, “ The Princess Casamassima.” Hyacinth, grappling with a “strange mixture of contradictory impulses,” hesitates to abandon the finer things in life: good food, French novels and high art. James’ plot seems modeled on the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev’s political novel “ Virgin Soil,” which also influenced Joseph Conrad’s “ The Secret Agent.”
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