Reviews for Literary Criticism: Essays on Literature, American Writers, English Writers (Library of America), Vol. 1

The average rating for Literary Criticism: Essays on Literature, American Writers, English Writers (Library of America), Vol. 1 based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-07-28 00:00:00 Jari Viitala This LOA volume doesn't have much of interest to a general reader, and there are several problems that make it problematic for a literary specialist as well. Those who want to learn more about Henry James, his theory on writing, and his tastes in reading will need to read this entire work (and likely the second volume as well) to gain such insights. Again, however, the way this volume was put together and the supporting critical superstructure do not help general or specialist reader to gain such insights easily. The book is divided into three sections. The first (and shortest) section contains "general" essays on literature (the scare quotes indicate that, while in some ways this is a correct heading, in other ways it is not: this section does contain James's most famous essay on the novel as an aesthetic form, but it also serves as a sort of catch-all for some book reviews that otherwise would not fit into any of the other categories the editor used). The second contains essays and book reviews on American writers (including James's book-length study of Hawthorne). The third and longest section contains essays and reviews on English writers. Both the American and English Writers categories, like the "Essays on Literature" category, are mostly accurate but also a little misleading. For instance, a book review that is supposedly about Ralph Waldo Emerson (and thus included in "American Writers") is actually more about Carlyle (and thus should have been included in "English Writers"). There are similar inconsistencies throughout this volume. Another annoyance for the contemporary reader is that none of James's frequent usages of foreign words and phrases (frequently French) are translated in the notes. This includes one-half page of an excerpt of a letter by Sainte-Beuve, presented in French without translation and nearly without comment. Yet another annoying feature of the book is that writers in the latter two sections are presented in alphabetical order by last name rather than chronologically as written by James (further, the scholarly information at the back of the volume that presents specific information about the original publication of each of the items in the book does NOT present the items in the order in which they appear in the book, but DOES present them chronologically; thus, if you wanted to find the detailed bibliographical information on a specific book review, you would have to spend several minutes hunting it down only knowing roughly when it was published in relation to other items in the volume). Some of the interesting things we learn about James are: 1) that he was a terrible reader of works after only one reading (he often needed time to think about what he had read): this makes many of his reviews not only untrustworthy as evaluative indicators of the works James read, but also gives some amusement (James calls Trollope several times a "stupid" writer of "stupid" books; however, as the lovely essay James wrote on the occasion of Trollope's death indicates, he eventually understood what Trollope was doing after James had had 20 years to reflect on Trollope's particular brand of "realism"); 2) James was frequently harsh as a young book reviewer (some of the items included in the book were not published during James's lifetime because they were considered too blunt by editors), and he frequently broke his own pet peeves in his later work; 3) James could also be very generous and thoughtful in his remarks about writers he had the opportunity of observing for many years: the four writers who take up the most space in this volume (Hawthorne, George Eliot, Thackeray, and Trollope) all benefit from that thoughtfulness and generosity, while some writers we only get a glimpse of James's change of opinion (Whitman is notable in this vein); and 4) James loved all works on travel, but most especially those dealing with Africa: he never gave a bad review to a travel narrative, even when he knew the events to be spurious.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-09-13 00:00:00 Crystal Blondeau Based on reviews written here by Henry James, I've purchased a couple more books for reading. If modern reviewers had the depth and capacity of interpretation, book sales would undoubtedly spike up.