Turn of the Hoo

That would be a good title if Henry James collaborated with Dr. Suess. Having made that declaration, I thought it would be a good idea to read one of James' most famous "nouvelles", his 8,000 word The Turn of the Screw. This is a good length of a book to commit yourself to as you await the arrival of your next full length Civil War battle history, via Amazon's free standard shipping (3-5 busines days).

Reading James in the wake of Hemingway is like driving a school bus - albiet a very stylized one, with Victorian arm chairs instead of bench seats - after having just driven an Italian sports car. His writing is dense, slow, and plodding. The sentences go on, and on, and on. At the end, you are left wondering if he was actually mocking the circumspect way people approached sex and morality in his day. In fact, upon further consideration, he was.

This was no ghost story. Someone asked me if the book scared me. That person, a close relation of the older generation, grew up in an era that had its share of scary movies (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc). But after having seen The Sixth Sense and Signs, a few English spooks puttering about a country house in 1898 won't give me nightmares.

Rather than being about ghosts then, The Turn of the Screw is about how when people try too hard to shield children - and adults - from sin and temptation, they often end up causing more harm than good. I feel now like I just ate a big bowl of spinach salad. I really didn't enjoy it, but I feel better for it. I may read James' The American one of these days (I started it and put it down about 15 years ago); but only if Amazon is really, really late on a delivery.