Reading Newman Reading: Textuality and Possession in The American

Reading Newman Reading: Textuality and Possession in The American by Michael Hobbs, University of North Texas I doubt if we have a precedent for this energy of appropriation of a deposit of stated matter, a block of sense already in position and requiring not to be shaped and squared and caused any further to solidify , but rather to suffer disintegration, be pulled apart, melted down, hammered, by the most characteristic of the poet's processes, to powder —dust of gold and silver, let us say. Henry James, "The Novel in The Ring and the Book" In the above excerpt, James is referring to Robert Browning's reading of the book upon which the long poem The Ring and the Book is based. James implies that Browning took possession of a given text, demolished it, and then reshaped it into something of great value, comparable to "silver and gold." Browning as reader confronted "a deposit of stated matter," and Browning as author reshaped that deposit into a new text. Put thus, the process sounds neatly organized, the roles of reader and writer conveniently categorical. But critical theory, especially reader response theory, has been questioning the boundaries separating reader and writer for some time now. For example, in The Theoretical Dimensions of Henry James, John Carlos Rowe states that "the intertextuality of literature involves a confrontation of discourses that questions not only the concept of the 'author,' but that of the 'reader' as well" (221). It is no longer clear where Browning the reader ends and Browning the author begins. The moment James's Browning begins to read, he is at least partially involved in writing the text he wishes to read; he is appropriating a body of material to accommodate his own discourse. In The American, Christopher Newman resembles a naive Browning. James often describes Newman's confrontation with the world he inhabits in terms of reading, and his reading is always an attempt to possess and to author. Newman acts as reader in several ways throughout the novel. In the first The Henry James Review 13 (1992): 115-25 © by The Johns Hopkins University Press 116 The Henry James Review section of this paper, I discuss how Newman reads in a rather literal sense during his meeting with Mrs. Bread. When he listens to Mrs. Bread's tale, we learn a great deal about Newman's limited abilities as a naive reader. He is won over entirely by Mrs. Bread's wildly romantic tale because he is so thoroughly intent on possessing her ugly secrets about the Bellegardes and thus on authoring a world within which he can live comfortably. In section two, I examine Newman's travels through Europe and his interaction with Babcock, both of which reveal just how thoroughly Newman feels the world is a text to be owned and authored according to his specific design. Finally, I consider James's use of reading as a metaphor to show how Newman attempts to read Claire—that is, possess her—and rewrite her with his "commercial imagination" (AM 359). In order to gain his ideal wife, to recreate Claire in his own image, Newman must write a new world, must "pull apart" the aristocratic traditions that define Claire. But his limitations lead to failure. Newman cannot author a new world; the world he sees, the Claire he reads and tries to create, is only a shallow surface of Madame de Cintré and the world she inhabits, that "dark, 'psychological' abyss" (AN 39) over which Newman spreads his thin planks of commercial understanding. Nevertheless, out of Newman's failure to author a new Claire comes the death of his "commercial imagination," and from his despair is born the beginning of psychological insight. I Newman's most literal moment of reading occurs when he acts as audience for Mrs. Bread's Poe-esque little tale about the death of Madame de Bellegarde's husband. Our hero's naive "commercial imagination" (AM 359), his full power of understanding, his entire reading attention is directed towards acquisition. He is intent on gaining possession of the text that Mrs. Bread is carrying in her head, but his desire to own Mrs. Bread's...