Henry James Points at Me

In his "Art of Fiction," Henry James accuses critics of the novel (as an artistic form) of condemning fiction as "priggish and paradoxical and superfluous."

I suspect strongly that I am one of those critics. Novels have always been to me one of those three things. I find its pornographic manifestations sunstantially superfluous to the art, as dependent on it as the market might be. Didactic novels are nauseatingly priggish, especially when it infringes on my idea of a proper romance. The third assertion, that novels are paradoxical in their relationship in the balance between truth and falsehood, I have blogged about extensively on my more personal site, which makes ME priggish, and of which status I am certain Henry James would disapprove, though D.H. Lawrence he is not.

And lo: I succumb to his syntax.

He continues to explain that for many (he means me), the ending of a novel (I feel the same way about film, television series, and all other narrative media) is the dessert course, and novelists who insist that fiction be "artistic" are the doctors who have diagnosed diabetes. (That last bit was a deplorably unacademic liberty, but more personally relevant). I am the sort of person who will absolutely refuse to consume media if I A) do not know or cannot predict the ending, or B) disapprove of the known ending. I also order dessert in restaurants, and keep a stash of chocolate in my desk drawer. Don't think that this means I approve of every nauseating bit of saccharine that blows in from Disney studios: quite the opposite. I wish to feel satisfied. I want the ending to be earned, and given. I do not wish it to be either given undeservedly, nor earned and then withheld. And what does James say about that? "There will be no intensity at all, and therefore no value, unless there is freedom to feel and say." He says "value" (which he defines as "interest") depends on freedom, and I think to some degree variation. We value reward because of the existence of alternatives, and without the literal existence of those alternatives, reward would be imaginary. I like chocolate, because not everything I eat is chocolate.

But that interpretation simplifies and I think partially misinterprets what he's trying to say. It also privileges my preference for literature that comes with a dessert. I think what James means is not subversion to lend piquancy to conformity, but rather the variation itself, the freedom and honesty are what makes literature delicious.