Henry James and His Path to Individuation in 'The American'

I just read Henry James' novel, "The American".

I was inspired to read it by the Great Books suggested novels list. I looked it up on Amazon and it sounded fun and easier to read than the later James novels, and so it was. The style is wonderful, humorous, and vibrant. The prose is luxuriant and jewels up into a bon mot every few pages.

It starts with Christopher Newman, a charming character with a kind of flexible moral fibre that can take almost any kind of shock - except those shocks entailed by the plot of the novel.

Newman is very much a free American, and so he is attracted to the bondage of old European values as his path to individuality and wholeness. His attraction to Madame De Cintre has all the hallmarks of a shadow attraction - the inner feminine draws Newman into contact with his vengefulness, hatred, bitterness, narrowness, and evil side - in other words, his shadow. The solitude and loneliness of Newman's character at the end of the novel can be read as a kind of belated adolescence in him - he finally has come to grips with his shadow side as represented by the Bellegarde family.

The Jungian typology is quite convenient for explaining James' novel, because he plays the opposites of European and American with an open hand about his mixed feelings for both sides of the Atlantic. The charged polarities of emotion represent a sort of gateway for the reader into the authorial consciousness itself, which for me is the deepest and most satisfying experience of reading Henry James.

(James is just a wonderful man - the experience of his living consciousness through the text is ineffable. I do not feel I know him yet, but I should want to, and I intend to read "Daisy Miller", "What Maisie Knew", "Turn of the Screw" and "Portrait of a Lady" to discover more about him.)

But back to "The American".

It is as if by externalizing his European-ness and American-ness, Henry James becomes something larger than both. The effort at becoming aware is tangible by the number of times James reverted to the material of the novel in his long career.

Henry James sought perhaps that intoxicating liberty from culture that came from transcending experiencing itself, and instead, it seems, fell into entrapment in the gravity well of Great Britain's culture. Anglophilic became British. Plain-spoken became ornate. The image of the American unconsciously became something more universal through Henry James' conscious rejection of American moeurs.

Montaigne on Managing the Will.

Michel says "In my opinion, a man should lend himself to others and only give himself to himself."

This is good food for thought!

What does it mean to lend oneself? He says to lend your faculties to another is make yourself a slave to them. You need to be thrifty in lending yourself out. What does it mean to give oneself?

Is happiness more in being fully involved in life, or in detachment, or in involvement without attachment, or in something else? Montaigne says it is in involvement with detachment.

Soon I find myself agreeing with Michel. When we act without passion for outcome, we act freely and happily. We can lend ourselves wholly to the task and keep ourselves for ourselves. To give all and keep all at once is the wisdom of prudence indeed!

Montaigne's prudential guideline1 : want only what is near and free.
Montaigne's prudential guideline 2: the reasonable man prefers peace and avoids disturbance above all else.

Is this quietism? No; in Montaigne's age is was realistic. Confucius agrees: when the leaders are vicious the wise men act stupid.

The Great Writer as Adolescent: Re-reading Andre Gide's Journals

Re-reading Gide's journals tonight, I am struck by how he obsessed over his image, over how others saw him. It is a little jejune for Gide to fret over what impressions his ideas and books make on others AFTER he has won public notoriety with his sex life. And how could it have been otherwise - I admit he was in a sore spot with Corydon and his autobiography - but still the overall impression of the journals is of adolescent angst.

Gide's introduction to Montaigne is a case in point. Andre Gide thinks he adds sharpness to Michel de Montaigne when all he is adding to Montaigne is Gide. Gide's Montaigne is 'risky' and 'impudent' because Gide has failed to discern his good taste from his ego.

Then there are Gide's assays into fields he is ignorant of. Three specific great writers he mentions in his journals he has signally failed to come to grips with.

First there is Marx. Gide's flirtation with communism is embarrassing because it reveals his adolescent-level political consciousness, limited (as politics should be with adolescents) to a passing enthusiasm.

Then William James. He thinks James' 'Psychology' is boring after a few pages, because he cannot understand the way James has reinvented the human soul along scientific lines without any loss of humanity or grandeur.

Finally in Freud he can see only the value of Freud as a de-mystifyer of sexual matters. About Freud's compulsive prose and striking insight into inner realities, not a word. He likes Freud because he is 'impudent'.

Gide consistently gets these great writers in a nutshell but misses the nut. And it's not simply a failure of his time or place, but a failure of imagination. Gide is too busy being 'impudent' to read these serious writers for adults.

I love Gide's work and personality, but the truth is he is basically an adolescent playing at being an adult much of the time. And it is a bitter pleasure to have outgrown his tutelage, and seen his limitations for what they are. Andre Gide is no less a great writer for the truth about him being less than complimentary. In fact, the pleasure of seeing the truth about him has inspired me to read his novels again.