"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Saturday, February 11, 2023

The Golden Bowl (Henry James, 1904)

525 pages.

Only made it through 357 pages.  Not planning to finish.

Four central characters (Adam Verver, his daughter Maggie, Prince Amerigo, Charlotte Stant).

Two additional characters (Mrs. Assingham and her husband) who orbit the four central characters and provide perspective on them.

Minimal roles for anyone else, at least as far as I made it.

Minimal plot line - just exploring the central relationships and how the participants perceived, felt about those.

Of course - deep development of the four characters and the relationships among them.  But they just weren't interesting enough to keep me engaged.  Part of the problem:  they are fabulously wealthy - function in a world without any financial considerations - to that extent, untethered from "normal" life.  Not recalling examples from other novels at the moment, but I've run into this before - people with limited day to day responsibilities focusing all of their energies on themselves.

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