The Later Style of Henry James by Seymour Chatman (review)

Reviews Chatman, Seymour. The Later Style of Henry James. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972. 135 pp. Cloth: $8.00. Inasmuch as Chatman's book is a linguistic study in a Language and Style Series (edited by Stephen UUmann), we cannot expect a literary, critical orientation. More consonant to his purpose is an analysis of the components of James' style. It is a study that presumably arms either camp. Those who might wish to "correct" James benefit from a clear understanding of what in James' style accounts for its difficulty, its vagueness. Conversely, Chatman illuminates for others the source of their challenge and delight in James. Chatman remains remarkably neutral in his presentation, but admitshis admiration of the later style, justifying much of James' difficulty "in terms of the larger effects that he seeks" (p. 88). Chatman's most direct statement: "I admire James' ability to make us feel the vagueness of the inchoate creative state. I think the form suits the content and would have it no other. What I have tried to do is to locate as precisely as I can the sources of that vagueness and aUusiveness" (p. 100). It is no simple task, for these qualities appear to permeate the entire style, and they are the result of a converging multiplicity of devices or stylistic traits. James' predilection for indirect statement can beseen in his frequentuse of expletive it, as in TAeAmbassadors, "It was almost as if she had been in possession and received him as a guest" (p. 73); but, as Chatman explains, the combined qualifications, "almost as if," make the statement even more tenuous. Similarly, James' expletive (Aere tends to combine with deictic nouns such as anything or nothing, as in TAe Wings of the Dove: "... there were things in that, probably, many things, as to which she would learn more . . ."(p. 77). Nor can we rely ona relative pronoun, such as fAaf, to have a clear and near referent; as Chatman points out, "one is almost overwhelmed by the pronouns and other deictic elements and slightly aghast at the problem of figuring out their references" (p. 57); "James is quite ready to risk confusing the reader by using Ae where there are two men, sAe where there are two women, or they where there are more than two people . . ." (cf. p. 57). Consider the Jamesian linking of devices in "Surprise, it was true, was not on the other hand what the eyes of Strether's friend most showed him . . ." (p. 68): we find the expletive it (as an embedded sentence), the tuAaf-cleft sentence (an act becomes nominaUzed), negation and antithesis—"not on the other hand." Add to these characteristics, still others: James' penchant for elegant variation, hyperbole, ellipsis. Even with the clearest references James' sentences would challenge us with their disruptive interpolations. The combined effect is a text that requires, at the very least, diligent reading. Those who persevere may agree with Chatman that the various devices promote "a thoughtful, a puzzling-outattitude , the kind of reading that James wanted" (p. 86). Much of the effect of the later style is laid to what Chatman caUs intangibility. He refers to "the relation between intangibility and ellipsis. The combination of the two is perhaps James' most characteristic effect . . ." (p. 86); later to "the relation of intangible language to hyperbole" (p. 105); and to "most importantly . . . the relation between intangibility and metaphor" (p. 109). Thus, intangibility might appear to have singular meaning, but it is in itself a reference to the concatenation of devices: "intangibility (to move, myself, to the abstract noun) is the concomitant of certain other structural, stylistic and contentual choices" (p. 5) . Under this umbrella, Chatman expediently groups devices: James' preference for the general word over the specific, the abstract for the concrete, the 242Reviews intangible rather than the tangible; his selection of psychological verbs ("the central consciousnesses of the late fiction are typically receivers of 'felt experience' rather than deciders and judgers" [p.17]); his reliance on nominalizations ("Maggie finds herself 'in the act of plucking [a plan] out of theheart of her earnestness' " [p. 40]). Chatman Ls well aware of the difficulties with some ofhis categories, especially"psychologicalverbs," difficulties that reflect...