The Nature of Things

Whenever one sees a list of "Great American Novels," Henry James'  The Portrait of a Lady  almost invariably appears on it. Indeed, one can find proponents of the idea among the literary  cognoscenti  that it is THE Great American Novel. And so, it was necessary that, in furtherance of my woefully lacking literary education, I should read it and decide if I agreed. The first thing that I learned is that reading Henry James is not for the faint-hearted. This book, which is considered to be his masterpiece, was published in 1881 and it was written at a time when verbose, dense novels were in vogue. It certainly fits into that tradition.  James writes sentences that go on for half a page or more. He never uses a one-syllable word when a three-syllable word is available. His paragraphs go on for pages without a break. The conversations of his characters are maddeningly oblique. They seem to be speaking in some kind of code to which I do not possess the key.  Mo...