“Brooksmith” is a moving portrait of a house servant and “Sir Edmund Orme” is an enthralling ghost story. “The Lesson of the Master” is an intricate study of ambition, disappointment, and the demands of a life devoted to art. “The Pupil” is a densely suggestive account of the moral perplexities underlying the relationship between an impoverished tutor and a young invalid. “The Aspern Papers” is a stunning novella about emotional ruthlessness in the service of literary scholarship. This Library of America volume (the third of five volumes devoted to his short fiction) includes among its seventeen stories some of James’s greatest masterpieces. Sometimes overshadowed by his work as a novelist, Henry James’s short fiction is an astonishing achievement, a triumph of inventiveness and restless curiosity.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |