In college, imagining that I loved all great literature and could never get enough of it, I signed up for a course on Henry James. Henry proved to me that I could. We slogged through book after book after book. He wrote about fifty of them and we must have read at least a dozen. He was the brother of the great William James, who wrote Varieties Of Religious Experience, still a must read for anyone interested in religion. Henry spent forty years in England, eventually becoming a British citizen. Unsurprisingly, his great subject was Americans living in Europe and their relations with Europeans. 

 

His most well-known book, still inflicted on vulnerable youth who think they love great literature, by tenured literary parasites, is Portrait Of A Lady (656 interminable pages in Penguin Classics). I’ll give you a sample of the flavor of the dialogue -- try to stay awake until the end:

 

The father caught his son's eye at last and gave him a mild, responsive smile.

 

"I'm getting on very well," he said.

 

"Have you drunk your tea?" asked the son.

 

"Yes, and enjoyed it."

 

"Shall I give you some more?"

 

The old man considered, placidly. "Well, I guess I'll wait and

see." He had, in speaking, the American tone.

 

"Are you cold?" the son enquired.

 

The father slowly rubbed his legs. "Well, I don't know. I can't

tell till I feel."

 

"Perhaps some one might feel for you," said the younger man,

laughing.

 

"Oh, I hope some one will always feel for me! Don't you feel for

me, Lord Warburton?"

 

"Oh yes, immensely," said the gentleman addressed as Lord

Warburton, promptly. "I'm bound to say you look wonderfully

comfortable."

 

"Well, I suppose I am, in most respects." And the old man looked

down at his green shawl and smoothed it over his knees. "The fact

is I've been comfortable so many years that I suppose I've got

so used to it I don't know it."

 

"Yes, that's the bore of comfort," said Lord Warburton. "We only

know when we're uncomfortable."

 

"It strikes me we're rather particular," his companion remarked.

 

"Oh yes, there's no doubt we're particular," Lord Warburton

murmured. And then the three men remained silent a while; 

 

Seems they ran out of things to say.  Only 650 pages to go. And yes, “enquired” is actually a word, a variety of inquire, says Dictionary.com. 

 

Nothing happens in Portrait other than Daisy having some suitors and rejecting them. Everyone is rich and bored. Eventually it ends. It is considered a breakthrough in realism, which it is. No previous writer had dreamt of making a career based on the lives of rich, boring people who lead unimaginably uneventful lives. Even the great Goncharov, in his novel Oblomov, a portrait of a man who does nothing (496 pages, Penguin Classics, I also read that one in college), has some things happen to his hero, like money problems, falling in love and illness. A critic commented that James wrote fifty books in which no one was ever rude or went to the bathroom. 

 

Think I am making this up? That it is not possible that young readers are still being force fed this pablum? Google “henry james & college reading lists” and you will see that Portrait  is holding its own in the canon. Gotta go -- I’m taking a fresh look at The Magic Mountain (Vintage Press, 720 pages).