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The #VeryGoodFriends discussion group ( @cowbellemoo @crf_pdx @alkalinered @yashwinacanter @hearing_girl @balleywood717 @Marie_ClySar) is starting on Portrait of a Lady bc we're fancy as fuck. But I wanted to sneak in a thread abt biographical fallacies.
I know I said "pretend you don't know who James is, if you know who James is, while reading" but in this safe space we can mutter truths to each about how James was queer as pants, and made Edith Wharton drive him everywhere. It's okay. She was unpleasant too.
So, we read that 1° paragraph, which is 1+ pgs long, & if we come to this knowing that the camps are split on whether James got a handje from Oliver Wendell Holmes (pictured, and 100% yes please handje the stuffing outta me OWJ p&ty) you might read this as if James is telling it.
It's fussy and prissy and effeminate and effete and we think, "Yes, because James was those things." But I think then we aren't letting James be an artist; we're assigning him the role of biographer.
So rather than creating a narrator on purpose w these qualities, we instead think, "Well if we understand James then we'll understand the book."
And maybe you do have an insight into the author's psyche, and why they wrote how they wrote, even to a level the author themselves didn't even know.
(We think we know why Dickens wrote his romantic heroines the way he did, based on some early romantic unluckiness and missteps. But we don't understand Dora Spenlow better by knowing this; we understand Dickens. And that's not always the best way of understanding the book.)
I'm challenging us to think about who the narrator is. Do you know them? Why tell you this story? If we can free the narrator from being Henry James with the vigor of those people who wanted to free the nipple on Instagram, we're allowed a richer reading experience. /fin
