After a rather disappointing day, where I just sort of maintained cruising speed – didn't really do much useful, but didn't stop completely – it is now late at night, when I should be sleeping (as I can't sleep in tomorrow, because I have a doctor's appointment in the morning). But I am not sleepy... so I read a short story of the Master's, the above title, a late story mentioned in a review by Borges I read this morning.
Lovely. Perfectly written, of course, though the fragments of dialogue towards the beginning remind me of why James was such a failure as a playwright – there's a very fine line between his writing and parodies of it. But the whole is definitely a fantasy – that, after their deaths, two men who had been so misjudged by the world – the dull one successful, the intelligent one obscure – would be re-judged on the publication of volumes of letters: as though people would really read, and would read so carefully... I doubt that would ever happen; more probable is that the existence of two volumes of correspondence by a famous man would simply be regarded as monumental proof of his importance.
But it is a pleasant, if slightly vindictive, fantasy. I think Borges said it was a late work – no surprise – of course he was thinking of posterity!...
It leaves me still trying to get to sleep, but – with a (Jamesian) oblique, mysterious smile playing about my lips....
Comments