Stephanie Gayle

So I've read Turn of the Screw by Henry James, at last. I'd recently read Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, which I very much enjoyed, and I thought, "Self. You should really read Turn of the Screw." So I did, and then I thought, "Self? What the hell was that?" and also, "Self. Don't listen to my ideas. They are often stupid and painful."

I had forgotten that I have a problem with Henry James and his mazy sentences of many commas that wind, labyrinthine, throughout the story, nearly losing the reader along the way. Sometimes I would reach the end of one sentence and have to reread from the beginning because I'd forgotten how I got there. Like some sort of bad public transport system, yup, that's James!

And the ending didn't work for me. I don't mind ambiguity or even games in which the writer is exercising mastery (Nabokov). By story's end I didn't feel surprised or shocked because I didn't feel invested. In part, it's timing. James' ghostly villains: an uppity man servant and his paramour governess just don't convey evil intention in today's times. They would need bombs strapped to their chests or a history of pedophilia. As is, they feel spooky at best.

And getting back to his sentences: often fear necessitates immediacy. There is no immediacy in a forty word, five comma sentence.

I'm sure I'll catch hell for this. People adore this story, and cite it as a masterpiece, a template for future horror.
Not for me. But The Haunting of Hill House? That I recommend. It had amazing characterization and a feeling of inevitability that was well executed.

P.S. I began reading The Ax by Donald E. Westlake (until I realized that I'd read it before) and lo and behold it starts with a quote from Henry James' The Art of Fiction. The last sentence quoted is, "The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life." And here I find myself in absolute agreement with H. James. Ours is meant to be a stormy relationship it seems. Right now I've called a truce.