The Birthplace Book

"The Sea, The Sea!" This famous Greek shout should be invoked by anyone diving into late Henry James. Whereas the Greeks had joy in their lungs, the James reader should have trepidation.

For reading late James is like treading water in a vast, featureless ocean. You're floundering and gulping phrase after phrase until a period mercifully comes into view. A wave breaks and you think you can connect the pronoun "he" with the character James is referencing (if even two waves or paragraphs ago.) Sentence upon sentence builds all around you, yet you can't latch onto anything to stop drowning. A flotsam of a specific and identifiable description is spotted, and since it is the only thing that makes sense for sentences around, you cling to it, milking all the sense out of it, and elevating its importance just because you happen to understand it. You swim furiously to the next flotsam, knowing that intricately connected ideas are passing you by, like Jamesian jellyfish insufficient to live outside the buoyancy of the paragraphic sea.

This is a story about a couple who take over the guardianship of the birthplace of a nationally revered author. I believe James is making a point that the words are the thing wherein we catch the conscience of the author - and not the mundane physical leavings of an essentially random house. But what do I know, I just surfed from wave to wave and came up with my own story...