Indirections of the Novel: James, Conrad and Forster, and: Henry James and the Darkest Abyss of Romance (review)

Book Reviews 187 Kenneth Graham. Indirections of the Novel: James, Conrad and Forster. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1988. 225 pp. $39.50. William R. Goetz. Henry James and the Darkest Abyss of Romance. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U P, 1986. 215 pp. $25.00. In a critical book occasionally marked by its own indirections in style, Kenneth Graham gives us useful insights concerning narration in three modernist novelists. Graham postulates a reader who, under his guidance, will respond to extraordinary subtleties of style and movement. His close analysis of plotting in selected texts of Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and E. M. Forster (an analysis that recalls Gérard Genette's study of Proust's elaborate manipulations of events in Narrative Discourse) represents an often fruitful application of critical theory to the structure of specific modernist texts. Graham's brief introduction details die contribution of diese novelists to developments in die novel at die turn of die twentieth century, specifically in their employment of an indeterminate narrative form. This fictional form appropriately mirrors content, Graham claims, as the contradictory nature of these narratives reflects a world where characters are vulnerable; only by writing can the authors combat a modernist world, "an Armageddon of a deadened language, materialism, and fragmentation" (2). The first chapter, "Jamesian Stages," analyzes four novels: The Europeans, The Bostomans, What Maisie Knew, and The Golden Bowl. In this chapter, Graham contributes most to Jamesian studies witii his analysis of The Europeans, a book that has received less critical attention than the other three novels. Paying close notice to each measured nuance, Graham arrives at a plausible reading of character, plot, and theme. Particularly interesting are his discussions of male-female interchanges and dramatic scenes (long before James's experiment with the stage) that convey subtle meaning. Occasionally , however, Graham reads too much into this early novel. Discussing the scene where FeUx takes Gertrude boating, he notes: "And for all its genuine lightness of touch, this whole paragraph might seem to the contemplative-analytic reader to tremble just a little from the precarious balancing of its varying forces, a tremor which is deeply characteristic of Jamesian narration at its best, whether early or late, and gives the act of keen reading diat James enforces a very particular edge of excitement" (28). However, this paragraph (as well as other elements of the novel) may be instead a parody of bodi sentimental and comedy-of-manners novels radier Üian an exploratory analysis of "manners as a mask and a betrayal" (31). Graham's discussion of The Bostonians, albeit a thorough exegesis of the many subtleties of the text, seems more a conventional study of character and theme than of narrative indirection, and his claim that James "can be felt basically to endorse Ransom's position" (37) is open to debate. Graham states that James does not face "die fact that Ransom's desire for Verena is potentially as restrictive and possessive as Olive's" (37), but James often refers to Ransom's desire to dominate the girl (Ransom's view of women as unfit for public life, his coming to Cape Cod to "take possession" of Verena, his covering her with a cloak as they leave the Music Hall), indicating that James viewed both Ransom and Olive as restrictive and possessive. With Olive, Verena is at least encouraged to study and speak; the careful reader senses that in marriage to Basil Ransom her voice will be permanently silenced. A shorter analysis of What Maisie Knew focuses on rhetorical strategies, much in the manner of Ralf Norrman's The Insecure World of Henry James (1982), an earlier study showing how James's stylistic strategies reflect the philosophical uncertainties of his created universe. Graham suggests multiple meanings for the events of the text, always anchoring each transposition to an overall mode of narrative indeterminacy. His insights concerning Mrs. Wix seem particularly apt. The section on The Golden Bowl contributes least to Jamesian studies. Surely commentators have noted previously that "a self-questioning unease and ambiguity . .. riddles its narrative textures as well as the 188 The Henry James Review fictional world it examines" (74). A brief mention of James's "quasi-religiosity" puzzles more...