Henry James's Apprenticeship, The Tales: 1864-1882 (review)

322 The Henry James Review political class, Epsoms, and Ascots, by the absence of which Mr. James suggests our poverty to the English conception," Howells wrote, "we have the whole of human life remaining, and a social structure presenting the only fresh and novel opportunities left to fiction, opportunities manifold and inexhaustible. No man would have known less what to do with that dreary and worn-out paraphernalia than Hawthorne" (I, 294). To read Howells's criticism is to be exposed to a generous spirit, a critic who does not allow his very clear aesthetic convictions to restrict his wide-ranging curiosity and interest. Although some are well-known, many of the essays here are reprinted for the first time. They are a valuable addition to our understanding of the American literary landscape between 1859 and 1920. W. R. Martin and Warren U. Ober. Henry James's Apprenticeship, The Tales: 1864-1882. Toronto: P. D. Meany Publishers, 1994. 213 pp. $38.00. By Arthur Sherbo, Michigan State University The purpose of this book is to examine "individually and seriatim the first 38 tales James wrote," to show James's development from these tales to the work of his late thirties and finally to the last great works, and to demonstrate how James, "saturated in Shakespeare," was influenced by the plays, "especially Hamlet, Othello, and The Tempest, where an Innocent is nearly or actually entrapped by the snares of the World" (xii). Further, the authors attempt to trace James's borrowings or imitations or derivations of plot or theme from the writings of authors he admired. There is an Introduction, "The Young Man and the Early Tales," in which, among matters biographical, James as artist is pronounced unlike D. H. Lawrence (5) and compared, in one aspect, to Shakespeare, the latter writing of kings and noble figures, James writing of different nobility in "an egalitarian age" (6). The whole intent is to show, by close reading, "how the vision and faculty that he was refining in these tales prepared him for the writing of his first masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady" (9). The work is then divided into nine chapters: I. Unpublished Translations of the First Six Tales, 1860-67; II. The Crop of 1868; III. First Culmination, 1869; IV. Adventure to Europe and Return, 1869-72, V. Renewal in Europe, 1872-74; VI. American Interruption, 1874-76; VII. Fame, 1877-79; VIII. End of a Phase; IX. Towards The Portrait of a Lady. The mode of procedure is to give a short explanatory introduction to most chapters, ranging from one page (usually) to three or four and then to analyze the tales in chronological order, giving the names and dates of the periodical in which Book Reviews 323 they appeared, with dates of any reprintings. Square brackets are used to show that particular tales were revised, so that the very first unrevised reading, for example, reads "Ά Tragedy of Errors' (Continental Monthly, February 1804)." There is a digest of the plot of each tale, suggestions (often statements rather than suggestions) as to probable borrowing or imitation and a comparison of the tale with the probable source, and, usually, a concluding statement about the relative significance of the tale in terms of James's progress as a writer. Thus, "A Tragedy of Error" glances at Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors in its title and reworks the "Franklin's Tale" in The Canterbury Tales, turning the "original upside down and inside out, but so systematically that the borrowing is unmistakable." James "changes the Franklin's exemplum of true love, trust, openness and 'gentillesse' into a nightmarish maze of deceit, infidelity, failure to communicate, lies, treachery, and assassination" (14). A footnote after the above quotation directs one to the authors' essay "The Provenience of Henry James's First Tale," Studies in Short Fiction 24 (1987): 5758 . Recourse to the essay reveals that not only is the argument the same in both essay and book, but that various other matters (similarity to Balzac's Contes Drolatiques, Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors) are also the same. With others of the tales, the authors' previously published essays are all duly listed and acknowledged with gratitude...