Two Henrys and Perfectly-Equipped Failures

Many literary folks would rather jump off a cliff than read a Henry James novel.

I like some of his work. But then again, methinks the short stories of Sir Walter Scott helped spawn science fiction, and the naturalist writers of the 30s and 40s were masters depicting the parallels of literature and science. In all of James' novels, there exists the "National Enquirer" busybody plot purled into the major story line. And there are tiny bits of wisdom knotted in the author's knitting, if one is patient enough to weed through James' verbose prose.

In this new year of 2006, there is all sorts of advice coming through the Net and across other media on ways you can physically and emotionally improve yourself. And if you don't, by gahd, there's something wrong with you. That is so American, isn't it? To seek a "project" rather than silently looking within.

How about those people who don't want to be fixed? Those average human beings who just want to live quietly, creating what is important to them. Who have no need to blunderbust their way through life, rubbing freedom and liberty and religion and money and terror and class in all noses...here, throughout the world, and back again.

The dirty laundry stories continue to appear in the news every day. Average citizens are being heard...without their knowledge. Warnings of a housing slowdown, with those brilliant greed-driven interest-only adjustable mortgages so many folks sought so they could show off more than they need, soon coming home to roost. Buck buck.

Many CEOs are in legal trouble. One local chap with the last name of Pukke made 80 million dollars "helping" the common American tethered in credit card hock to "get out of debt." This "successful" businessman will soon be on trial for misuse of tax-exempt status, as the company falsely billed itself as non-profit, while the man and his wife had three luxury homes and all the trappings money can buy.

James birthed American characters, time and time again, who believed you can create yourself through money. Many of these high-end characters have no sense of humor, are blindly loyal to class, and are really good at making other people feel uncomfortable. If that's success, you can have mine.

In the James novel The Ambassadors (1903), Lambert Strether, a bourgeois fiftysomething turn-of-the-20th-century New England fellah seeks the big time with a richer-'n-Roosevelt Brahmin Boston lady. He is dismissed by her until he conducts a mission. The task: go to Paris, retrieve my son Chad, who is cavorting with a French babe over there, bring him back, and then I will marry you. Lambert discovers that Chad is perfectly happy in France with a woman who may be dubious by staid Boston standards, but who is a cool person in her own right. Lambert sees beauty for the first time, and it is not the Puritan kind he knows. He learns that beauty has nothing to do with class or money, and neither does success. He speaks with one Maria Gostrey, a woman he befriends on this excursion:

"'I am a perfectly-equipped failure," Lambert says.

'Thank goodness you are a failure - it's why I so distinguish you. Anything else today is hideous. Look about you - look at the successes. Would you be one, on your honour?'

'Look, moreover,' she continued, 'at me.'

For a little accordingly, their eyes met.

'I see,' Strether returned. 'You too are out of it.'

'The superiority you discern in me,' she concurred, 'announces my futility. If you knew,' she sighed, 'the dreams of youth! But our realities are what has bought us together. We're beaten brothers-in-arms.' "

Another Henry...Miller that is...his work banned in so many countries, wrote:

"Living apart, and at peace with myself, I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain, even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with another's way of life - so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands off!"

Photo Henry James:
http://www.ku.edu/carrie/specoll/AFS/library/2-ww1/James/Henry.html

Photo Henry Miller:
http://www.powys-lannion.net/Powys/America/miller.jpg