H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e1 2 4*
Some works of literature are more resistant to interpretation than
others. As civilisation grows more complex and fragmentary, so
does human experience, and so too does its literary medium,
which is language. The later fiction of Henry James is so stylisti-
cally convoluted that he was once described as chewing more than
he could bite off. A whole critical essay has been written on the first
paragraph of his novel The Ambassadors, seeking valiantly to make
sense of what on earth is going on. The following passage from The
Wings of the Dove is by no means the most tortuous example of his
later style:
It was not moreover by any means with not having the imagina-
tion of expenditure that she appeared to charge her friend, but
with not having the imagination of terror, of thrift, the imagina-
tion or in any degree the habit of a conscious dependence on
others. Such moments, when all Wigmore Street, for instance,
seemed to rustle about and the pale girl herself to be facing the
different rustlers, usually so undiscriminated, as individual
Britons too, Britons personal, parties to a relation and perhaps
even intrinsically remarkable – such moments in especial deter-
mined for Kate a perception of the high happiness of her
companion’s liberty.It is a far cry from Dan Brown. Like a lot of modernist writing,
James’s prose refuses to slip down easily. It poses a challenge to a
culture of instant consumption. Instead, the reader is forced into a
sweated labour of decipherment. It is as though reader and author
become co- creators of the work, as the reader is drawn into the