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The Beast in the Jungle and Other Stories
Regarded by many as James's greatest achievement in short fiction, "The Beast in the Jungle" is a portrait of a man alienated from life and love with a secret neither he nor James can talk about. "The Jolly Corner" and "The Altar of the Dead" are two tales that explore the complex interlacings of loss, love and the ever-present past in the lives of their protagonists.
101 pages, Paperback
Published April 23, 1993
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265 people want to read
About the author
Henry James
4,557 books3,942 followersHenry James was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."
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April 9, 2024A pretty joyless, turgid, dense read. Like Marcher's plaintive evasion of the Beast, you're alone in reading this, mired in a fog so consuming it feels like a void. It is also a story that likely becomes clearer with a second visit... but I don't think I'm up for it right now. Proto-modernist James definitely tried my patience here with his slow, wandering syntax and compulsive use of dependent clauses. There's a beautiful story here that's clouded by impossible sentences. Again, a reread would probably show that the cloudiness is actually what constructs that beauty, but I'm not there yet.
All this said, I'm excited to keep reading him. I miss feeling like a more disciplined reader and there's no way around it when confronting James's rarefied style. As a teacher once said to me about his writing, "it's all about his groove; give up on your own."
All this said, I'm excited to keep reading him. I miss feeling like a more disciplined reader and there's no way around it when confronting James's rarefied style. As a teacher once said to me about his writing, "it's all about his groove; give up on your own."
February 12, 2023
Three great stories of the Late James: the Altar of the Dead, Beast in the Jungle (which I’ve read numerous times), and the Jolly Corner (the last of which I’ll save for another day).
December 3, 2024
The Beast in the Jungle:
This story for me is a lesson; a lesson that holding back from opportunities, or loving someone in your life, due to the fear of it hurting you, will actually hurt you a lot more in the end. Henry James gives minimal context around the two characters that this story is centered around, yet the connection between them and the emotions involved can still be felt very strongly through the writing. I felt this was really beautifully done and, if anything, reflects the nature of the anxiety that the main character, James Marcher, feels throughout his life with the ‘beast in the jungle’ that is waiting for him: something that has a strong presence but cannot be put into words.
There were three other short stories in this book as well: the altar of the dead, the private life and the way it came. I enjoyed the altar of the dead but not the other two as I couldn’t fully grasp what was going on.
Overall, 3 stars
This story for me is a lesson; a lesson that holding back from opportunities, or loving someone in your life, due to the fear of it hurting you, will actually hurt you a lot more in the end. Henry James gives minimal context around the two characters that this story is centered around, yet the connection between them and the emotions involved can still be felt very strongly through the writing. I felt this was really beautifully done and, if anything, reflects the nature of the anxiety that the main character, James Marcher, feels throughout his life with the ‘beast in the jungle’ that is waiting for him: something that has a strong presence but cannot be put into words.
There were three other short stories in this book as well: the altar of the dead, the private life and the way it came. I enjoyed the altar of the dead but not the other two as I couldn’t fully grasp what was going on.
Overall, 3 stars
March 31, 2024
A classic for a reason...I was drawn in from the get go, undaunted by James' long paragraphs. The two person plot kept my interest in how it would end. Now, I'm excited to see the different movie renditions inspired by this tale of longing and self-denial.
November 5, 2015
I took up this volume as Halloween approached and I realized I had never read James’s second most famous ghost story, “The Jolly Corner.” (I love James, but his most famous ghost story, the novella The Turn of the Screw, has always struck me as a bit of a gimmick, a work written to order for a syllabus on literary interpretation.) Nor had I read “The Altar of the Dead,” also collected here; and while I had read the collection’s middle story, “The Beast in the Jungle,” I cannot claim to have understood it.
These three stories belong to James’s later period: “The Altar of the Dead” is from 1895 (the disastrous year of Guy Domville), “The Beast in the Jungle” from 1903 and “The Jolly Corner” from 1908. The prose in this volume accordingly grows more involuted and periphrastic and vague, James’s late style being a vast effort at artful evasion. (I do not admire the notion adopted by many of the modernists that their styles were tending toward some absolute uniqueness, untouched by reality. I prefer the discoveries of their middle period, when their styles developed under the novel pressures of their themes, with form and content inseparable: I like Ulysses better than Finnegans Wake, Mrs. Dalloway better than The Waves, Molloy better than “Ping”—and The Portrait of a Lady better than The Wings of the Dove.)
These three tales are all one story, really: a man turns aside from the course of normative life—family, business—and develops a monomania or obsession with something absent—a dead loved one, a mysterious destiny, his own past self; in this bizarre worship of the vanished, he is joined and goaded by a woman who is not quite a lover but who fills something like a lover’s role. All three chart the peril and potential of a life consecrated to something other than the natural or the conventional. Because this “something” remains yet to be realized in a social reality that is bound to custom or else has vanished with the potential of an individual’s evanescent youth, it is often said that all James’s stories are ghost stories, haunted by the elusive possibility of a richer existence that never materializes in the present, just as his increasingly unreadable prose never fully brings meaning before the reader.
“The Altar of the Dead,” being the earliest of the stories in this slim volume, is perhaps my favorite. It concerns a man named Stransom who devotes himself to a shrine to his dead loved ones; soon he is accompanied in this morbid devotion by a woman who becomes “the priestess of his altar.” They seem happy in their two-person cult until Stransom discovers that all her mourning is directed at his own late ex-friend, Acton Hague, who appears to have cruelly used her sexually, in spite of which she has forgiven him. The quarrel over whether or not to memorialize Hague divides them until each realizes that they have nothing to live for but their shared worship. The story is redolent of church candles and incense, all that fin-de-siècle longing for an inviolable and sacred haven amid the industrial soot, the tenement filth, and the noise of the emergent mass culture. Not that there is an religious belief in this story; what Stransom intends by his memorial project is precisely the prolongation of the presence—if only as fire—of his beloved dead, a kind of secular immortality that Walter Pater. who died the year before this story's publication, might have called art:
“The Jolly Corner” is, as its title hints, a more genial tale than these. It is about an American expatriate who returns to New York City after a long absence and begins to wonder what his life would have been like had he chosen an American destiny of swashbuckling capitalism instead of opting, like James, for the Old World. To find out what might have been, Spencer Brydon becomes convinced that he can encounter the ghost of his alternate self haunting his childhood home (which sits on the eponymous corner). In this obsession he is, like the previous protagonists, helped by a woman—Alice Staverton has had “an unbroken career in New York” and seems poised to love Brydon. Most of the story is an exercise in suspense, a build-up to Brydon's dead-of-night encounter with the ghost and to the climactic revelation that Alice has also seen this grizzled spirit—anguished and maimed (missing two fingers) from its hard life of American business. (You can almost see the faint smile on the aged James’s lips at these sportive exaggerations.) Alice seems more attracted to the businessman ghost of Brydon than to the bohemian reality, but she comes around by the end, and the story seems to end happily. A very poignant but also witty reflection on the artist’s dream of having been “normal”—if you will let me end on a self-indulgent note, it reminds me very much of my own short story, “They Are in the Truth,” which is admittedly less complex, though probably easier to read.
These three stories belong to James’s later period: “The Altar of the Dead” is from 1895 (the disastrous year of Guy Domville), “The Beast in the Jungle” from 1903 and “The Jolly Corner” from 1908. The prose in this volume accordingly grows more involuted and periphrastic and vague, James’s late style being a vast effort at artful evasion. (I do not admire the notion adopted by many of the modernists that their styles were tending toward some absolute uniqueness, untouched by reality. I prefer the discoveries of their middle period, when their styles developed under the novel pressures of their themes, with form and content inseparable: I like Ulysses better than Finnegans Wake, Mrs. Dalloway better than The Waves, Molloy better than “Ping”—and The Portrait of a Lady better than The Wings of the Dove.)
These three tales are all one story, really: a man turns aside from the course of normative life—family, business—and develops a monomania or obsession with something absent—a dead loved one, a mysterious destiny, his own past self; in this bizarre worship of the vanished, he is joined and goaded by a woman who is not quite a lover but who fills something like a lover’s role. All three chart the peril and potential of a life consecrated to something other than the natural or the conventional. Because this “something” remains yet to be realized in a social reality that is bound to custom or else has vanished with the potential of an individual’s evanescent youth, it is often said that all James’s stories are ghost stories, haunted by the elusive possibility of a richer existence that never materializes in the present, just as his increasingly unreadable prose never fully brings meaning before the reader.
“The Altar of the Dead,” being the earliest of the stories in this slim volume, is perhaps my favorite. It concerns a man named Stransom who devotes himself to a shrine to his dead loved ones; soon he is accompanied in this morbid devotion by a woman who becomes “the priestess of his altar.” They seem happy in their two-person cult until Stransom discovers that all her mourning is directed at his own late ex-friend, Acton Hague, who appears to have cruelly used her sexually, in spite of which she has forgiven him. The quarrel over whether or not to memorialize Hague divides them until each realizes that they have nothing to live for but their shared worship. The story is redolent of church candles and incense, all that fin-de-siècle longing for an inviolable and sacred haven amid the industrial soot, the tenement filth, and the noise of the emergent mass culture. Not that there is an religious belief in this story; what Stransom intends by his memorial project is precisely the prolongation of the presence—if only as fire—of his beloved dead, a kind of secular immortality that Walter Pater. who died the year before this story's publication, might have called art:
It was in the quiet sense of having saved his souls that his deep, strange instinct rejoiced. This was no dim theological rescue, no boon of a contingent world; they were saved better than faith or works could save them, saved for the warm world they had shrunk from dying to, for actuality, for continuity, for the certainty of human remembrance.Now for the “The Beast in the Jungle.” I am not well-versed in James criticism, but I gather there have been two successive tendencies in interpreting this story about a man who, convinced that some vast destiny awaits him (the titular beast), does nothing with his life, abetted in this inaction by a devoted woman whom he realizes too late—after her death—that he might have loved. The first (moralizing) school of interpretation sees this as a story that warns against the arrogance of believing yourself set apart from the duties of the ordinary; the second (politicizing) interpretation sees this as a tragic tale of the closet, about a furtive gay man and his kindly, knowing beard. Both of these critical allegories, though, seem to evade the story’s main action, in which a canny and imperious woman takes a rather formless, dreamy man and molds his life into a sublimity of nothingness, a vast abstraction. Marcher, as his name may imply, is a mere conscript or trouper in May Bartram’s lifelong project to shape a life. Marcher’s epiphany—that he ought to have loved her—is a bathetic and sentimental falling-off from the glory of absolute and inhuman art that they had shared; he fails to see that this is what she meant when she told him that his destiny had already come without his knowing it—his destiny was to be her creation, her character, an artwork like those of the coming century that would have no reference to our common life. She was the beast all along, and he her prey in a city that has forgotten that it remains a jungle. Read this way, instead of as a sentimental tale about a man who is either a moral delinquent or a political victim, “The Beast in the Jungle” becomes as austere as a Greek tragedy about a mortal man who falls victim to—and is therefore elevated by—the immortal designs of the gods.
“The Jolly Corner” is, as its title hints, a more genial tale than these. It is about an American expatriate who returns to New York City after a long absence and begins to wonder what his life would have been like had he chosen an American destiny of swashbuckling capitalism instead of opting, like James, for the Old World. To find out what might have been, Spencer Brydon becomes convinced that he can encounter the ghost of his alternate self haunting his childhood home (which sits on the eponymous corner). In this obsession he is, like the previous protagonists, helped by a woman—Alice Staverton has had “an unbroken career in New York” and seems poised to love Brydon. Most of the story is an exercise in suspense, a build-up to Brydon's dead-of-night encounter with the ghost and to the climactic revelation that Alice has also seen this grizzled spirit—anguished and maimed (missing two fingers) from its hard life of American business. (You can almost see the faint smile on the aged James’s lips at these sportive exaggerations.) Alice seems more attracted to the businessman ghost of Brydon than to the bohemian reality, but she comes around by the end, and the story seems to end happily. A very poignant but also witty reflection on the artist’s dream of having been “normal”—if you will let me end on a self-indulgent note, it reminds me very much of my own short story, “They Are in the Truth,” which is admittedly less complex, though probably easier to read.
February 10, 2025
This is a review only for the short story “The Beast in the Jungle,” which I read because I wanted to understand its influence on Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast, a time-hopping sci-fi/romance/horror/satire/undefinable-mess-that-I-adored 2024 French film about two people’s potential love that is thwarted, generation after generation, by trendy societal forces. The woman, played by Lea Seydoux, stays largely the same throughout the ages, from the Victorian era to the near-future, a bastion of hopeful sanity that nonetheless, eventually breaks down and gives into despair, but the man, played brilliantly by George MacKay, morphs according to the times. By turns, he’s shaped into an etiquette-obsessed, Victorian Era snuffed candle of a person, a modern-day incel fueled by resentment into murderous rage, and a near-future work-obsessed robot, incapable of love.
Very little of what I’ve described can be found in this short story, however. Bonello seems to have taken the bare bones idea of a person being kept from loving someone else, from expressing their true feelings, due to some design they’ve internalized (in the case of the short story’s protagonist, Marcher, he believes there is some metaphysical Beast that dictates his future, preventing him from acting with true intention in the present with the only woman who really knows him, lest his actions dispel the vague future he’s imagined for himself), and has turned it into a larger meditation on why? Why does this happen? Why does love not really win? Why am I losing? Why are we all losing?
Ultimately, I preferred the expansivity of the movie much more than this short story, which I found to be, in its narration, internal to the point of complete remoteness, sort of like a road trip with no landmarks, passing by, going north to nowhere. Worth reading though.
Very little of what I’ve described can be found in this short story, however. Bonello seems to have taken the bare bones idea of a person being kept from loving someone else, from expressing their true feelings, due to some design they’ve internalized (in the case of the short story’s protagonist, Marcher, he believes there is some metaphysical Beast that dictates his future, preventing him from acting with true intention in the present with the only woman who really knows him, lest his actions dispel the vague future he’s imagined for himself), and has turned it into a larger meditation on why? Why does this happen? Why does love not really win? Why am I losing? Why are we all losing?
Ultimately, I preferred the expansivity of the movie much more than this short story, which I found to be, in its narration, internal to the point of complete remoteness, sort of like a road trip with no landmarks, passing by, going north to nowhere. Worth reading though.
June 8, 2018
“The Beast in the Jungle”
A deep and subtle book, but one that requires attention and patience because of James's style, the narrative form of the time when it was written, and resembling a novel. And then a tip, in my opinion, is to find a good translation.
As in other works by Henry James, for example in "The Turn of the Screw" there are many subliminal psychological nuances, ambiguities and secrets of the characters that are not immediately revealed to us, readers, but hovering throughout history, leading us to participate and interpret their revelations - even if some of them are not unveiled until the end ... and then we are wondering what actually happened.
The plot is based on the relationship between two friends: a man and a woman. They had met and talked for a long time, during a social event and they held different memories and feelings from that day. Years later, they meet again in another chance, they surprise themselves on that day and they begin to develop a deep friendship from there.
This is the background for James to put on the table how relationships can help us see who we are, what we cover, what we feel and open to the other and to life. To see how certain aspects of ourselves, hidden under the masks we use in social relations, are seen only by those who truly love us.
How far do we live looking at our own navel and fail to notice the other person in front of us wanting to tell us something?
The symbology of this plot follows a path that points out that all of this can reach the extreme of one's own death in life - that of losing our existence not by mistake, but by ceasing to try and do. By standing still and not realizing the possibilities that are often exposed in front of us.
"Our fate is never thwarted, and the day she told him that his was sealed, he saw him only to stupidly ignore the salvation he offered."
And finally not letting ourselves feel, reflect and allow ourselves to be what we are.
"What ended up happening is that he started to wear a mask painted with the social smile, whose cracks emanated a look of an expression that had nothing to do with his features"
____
“The Liar”
The story begins interestingly, but as it unfolds, unfortunately it gets too slow, without movement, and even without the deepest insights, so present in other works of Henry James.
The central theme is the “lie”.
The narrative is about an artist painting portraits. He is invited to make a picture of an old man at his house. There he meets an old love, now married to that master's son. Her husband is an attractive, friendly person, but extremely lying. The girl knows how much the husband is compulsive in his lies, but he loves him above all else. And the artist gets lost in life and wants to understand all this, sentimentally and rationally, since he realizes that he still loves her.
James raises at the beginning of the narrative interesting questions about how we admire people, as in this dialogue:
"Do you think I appreciate people to the extent that they are false?
"I think we all do it until we find out," Lyon said.
Even more interesting is the judgment of a possible positivity of the "lie":
"He is a Platonic liar," Lyon said, saying to himself, "Do not lie in order to gain anything or to injure anyone." It is only a question of art for the sake of art. a clear inner vision of what should be, of what it should be, and work in good cause only in the substitution of tonality.It puts color where it should be.Isn't that what I do in my profession? "
In the unfolding of history, Lyon is changing of opinion in its contemplation of the lie. If at first he even finds some kind of poetics, he comes to understand that not always the justification of increasing a narrative does not really mean reinventing it.
Then he realizes that the act of lying can reach the sickly extremes of a complete fantasy, which even includes violence and an innocent accusation for a crime he has never committed.
All this by the simple maintenance of a false character of itself, that from so much lying, believes that the truth is the own lie.
And the other, an accomplice who sees the lies of his companion, justifies his complicity not because of his penance, but, believe it or not, for love.
____
The Turn of the Screw
An incredible narrative that makes every chapter shiver and fills us with more doubts than answers.
A book that points out more suggestions than affirmations, providing the reader have their own reflections, criticisms, and conclusions.
The chapters are short, the narration is full of ambiguous dialogues that are beyond verbal language: they also exist in descriptions about emotions, features and expressions of the characters that sometimes explain more than even their speech.
A scream, a cry, an escape, a hysterical laugh - all are elements of language that Henry James uses in an exceptional way.
The ambiguity is so present in this script that we start to be in doubt about what and who is indeed real or not.
The suggestions also surround up to the age and sexual gender of the characters. And there is still a subliminal questioning: a relationship between morality, sex, perversion, anger, hatred, chastity and religiosity.
Some dialogues are entirely suggestive in this sense and it is as if the author actually places the reader as agent of the novel. Henry James does this in an absurdly creative and engaging way. In some excerpts, for example, it is common to read dialogues like "you already know"; or "do you really already know everything?" or "are you sure about this?"
And it is marvelous to see how these questions receive different responses not only from readers, but from cinematographic adaptations, as for example "The Innocents", which has the script signed by none other than Truman Capote and where there is an interesting Freudian conjecture in his interpretations. "The Others" with Nicole Kidman is another great and scary film based on this book.
This is a wonderful example of how literature opens the relations between the fictional characters, the author and the reader, bringing ambiguity to the experience of reading, imagination and reality.
And also a doubt: woww maybe I saw something in that hallway. Is the result of my imagination or some kind of ghost? : )
_______
A deep and subtle book, but one that requires attention and patience because of James's style, the narrative form of the time when it was written, and resembling a novel. And then a tip, in my opinion, is to find a good translation.
As in other works by Henry James, for example in "The Turn of the Screw" there are many subliminal psychological nuances, ambiguities and secrets of the characters that are not immediately revealed to us, readers, but hovering throughout history, leading us to participate and interpret their revelations - even if some of them are not unveiled until the end ... and then we are wondering what actually happened.
The plot is based on the relationship between two friends: a man and a woman. They had met and talked for a long time, during a social event and they held different memories and feelings from that day. Years later, they meet again in another chance, they surprise themselves on that day and they begin to develop a deep friendship from there.
This is the background for James to put on the table how relationships can help us see who we are, what we cover, what we feel and open to the other and to life. To see how certain aspects of ourselves, hidden under the masks we use in social relations, are seen only by those who truly love us.
How far do we live looking at our own navel and fail to notice the other person in front of us wanting to tell us something?
The symbology of this plot follows a path that points out that all of this can reach the extreme of one's own death in life - that of losing our existence not by mistake, but by ceasing to try and do. By standing still and not realizing the possibilities that are often exposed in front of us.
"Our fate is never thwarted, and the day she told him that his was sealed, he saw him only to stupidly ignore the salvation he offered."
And finally not letting ourselves feel, reflect and allow ourselves to be what we are.
"What ended up happening is that he started to wear a mask painted with the social smile, whose cracks emanated a look of an expression that had nothing to do with his features"
____
“The Liar”
The story begins interestingly, but as it unfolds, unfortunately it gets too slow, without movement, and even without the deepest insights, so present in other works of Henry James.
The central theme is the “lie”.
The narrative is about an artist painting portraits. He is invited to make a picture of an old man at his house. There he meets an old love, now married to that master's son. Her husband is an attractive, friendly person, but extremely lying. The girl knows how much the husband is compulsive in his lies, but he loves him above all else. And the artist gets lost in life and wants to understand all this, sentimentally and rationally, since he realizes that he still loves her.
James raises at the beginning of the narrative interesting questions about how we admire people, as in this dialogue:
"Do you think I appreciate people to the extent that they are false?
"I think we all do it until we find out," Lyon said.
Even more interesting is the judgment of a possible positivity of the "lie":
"He is a Platonic liar," Lyon said, saying to himself, "Do not lie in order to gain anything or to injure anyone." It is only a question of art for the sake of art. a clear inner vision of what should be, of what it should be, and work in good cause only in the substitution of tonality.It puts color where it should be.Isn't that what I do in my profession? "
In the unfolding of history, Lyon is changing of opinion in its contemplation of the lie. If at first he even finds some kind of poetics, he comes to understand that not always the justification of increasing a narrative does not really mean reinventing it.
Then he realizes that the act of lying can reach the sickly extremes of a complete fantasy, which even includes violence and an innocent accusation for a crime he has never committed.
All this by the simple maintenance of a false character of itself, that from so much lying, believes that the truth is the own lie.
And the other, an accomplice who sees the lies of his companion, justifies his complicity not because of his penance, but, believe it or not, for love.
____
The Turn of the Screw
An incredible narrative that makes every chapter shiver and fills us with more doubts than answers.
A book that points out more suggestions than affirmations, providing the reader have their own reflections, criticisms, and conclusions.
The chapters are short, the narration is full of ambiguous dialogues that are beyond verbal language: they also exist in descriptions about emotions, features and expressions of the characters that sometimes explain more than even their speech.
A scream, a cry, an escape, a hysterical laugh - all are elements of language that Henry James uses in an exceptional way.
The ambiguity is so present in this script that we start to be in doubt about what and who is indeed real or not.
The suggestions also surround up to the age and sexual gender of the characters. And there is still a subliminal questioning: a relationship between morality, sex, perversion, anger, hatred, chastity and religiosity.
Some dialogues are entirely suggestive in this sense and it is as if the author actually places the reader as agent of the novel. Henry James does this in an absurdly creative and engaging way. In some excerpts, for example, it is common to read dialogues like "you already know"; or "do you really already know everything?" or "are you sure about this?"
And it is marvelous to see how these questions receive different responses not only from readers, but from cinematographic adaptations, as for example "The Innocents", which has the script signed by none other than Truman Capote and where there is an interesting Freudian conjecture in his interpretations. "The Others" with Nicole Kidman is another great and scary film based on this book.
This is a wonderful example of how literature opens the relations between the fictional characters, the author and the reader, bringing ambiguity to the experience of reading, imagination and reality.
And also a doubt: woww maybe I saw something in that hallway. Is the result of my imagination or some kind of ghost? : )
_______
April 1, 2024
Read for The Beast in the Jungle only. J. Robert Oppenheimer was transfixed by this short story when he read it in the late 1940’s when he had iconic status in the US.
[John Marcher’s secret, that he has some catastrophic fate awaiting him, is something that occupies the entirety of his life. In fact, he spends his whole life sitting in waiting for this fate to come. He calls this catastrophe his beast in the jungle.
The most dominant theme is fate and doom. John Marcher's relationship with May Bartram is founded on the fact that he once confessed to her his personal belief that he would one day meet a cataclysmic danger or fate that he could not prepare for or avoid.
The great misfortune of his life was to throw his life away, and to ignore the love of a good woman, based upon his preposterous sense of foreboding.]
[John Marcher’s secret, that he has some catastrophic fate awaiting him, is something that occupies the entirety of his life. In fact, he spends his whole life sitting in waiting for this fate to come. He calls this catastrophe his beast in the jungle.
The most dominant theme is fate and doom. John Marcher's relationship with May Bartram is founded on the fact that he once confessed to her his personal belief that he would one day meet a cataclysmic danger or fate that he could not prepare for or avoid.
The great misfortune of his life was to throw his life away, and to ignore the love of a good woman, based upon his preposterous sense of foreboding.]
September 16, 2023
Welcome to issue two required reading for my English class.
This time around, I read The Beast in the Jungle and Other Stories by Henry James. While I only had to read the title story for class, I did read the others in this collection to see if I disliked them less. The answer was no. Simply put, these stories were too literary for me. Honestly, most of the time I was just confused. The writing style was very cyclic in nature, you never really get a clear idea of what they’re discussing, and none of the characters are likable. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy books that make me think, but this was just too much for my brain to handle.
This time around, I read The Beast in the Jungle and Other Stories by Henry James. While I only had to read the title story for class, I did read the others in this collection to see if I disliked them less. The answer was no. Simply put, these stories were too literary for me. Honestly, most of the time I was just confused. The writing style was very cyclic in nature, you never really get a clear idea of what they’re discussing, and none of the characters are likable. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy books that make me think, but this was just too much for my brain to handle.
October 18, 2024
I dunno. The first time I read "The Beast in the Jungle," I found it simply annoying. What was the matter with John Marcher, so determined, so convinced, that his was an exceptional life, that he was so special, something extraordinary was bound to happen to him? What an adolescent self-construction. Reading it again, in company with a friend I've been talking books with, I liked it slightly better. It's very dense James, and I always find it an interesting challenge to follow his efforts to render consciousness into language. Marcher's still annoying; he gets the end he deserves; May deserved better.
November 22, 2023
Interesting stories, but I found James's rambling style hard to get on with. So opaque, in fact, that I nearly put this one down. Once I was able to divine what the hell was going on, though, I did find them very sad, heartbreaking tales of loneliness, fate, past and future, etc. We'll see if I have the stamina for more of his writing.
April 22, 2025
Three short stories: ‘The Altar of the Dead’, ‘The Beast in the Jungle’ and ‘The Jolly Corner’. The common thread in the first two seems to be not appreciating what is in front of one until it is too late. The last is a kind of ghost story but again has a similar theme to the other stories in the sense of a lurking alternative reality just beyond one’s sight/grasp.
March 26, 2024
Reallyyyyy confusing in terms of time and the lecture did NOT help but very original and fun
December 7, 2024
The Altar of The Dead: 2/5
The Beast In The Jungle: 4/5
The Jolly Corner: 3.5/5
The Beast In The Jungle: 4/5
The Jolly Corner: 3.5/5
December 8, 2025
Hard to get into and follow. Read and kind of enjoyed one story about the altars of death. The rest were unsuccessful.
December 18, 2022
These stories speak of absences and presences, of fears and possibilities and losses and longings—of hauntings, in a word. They feature James’s famous late style, which can be challenging, and which can be sent up (Max Beerbohm did that well), but which carries, as it were, hidden treasures and secret spells. I began rereading “The Altar of the Dead” early in the coronavirus pandemic, although I had lost no one, because I felt, in the absence of social contact, that I had lost many. It’s a story that understands such things, as “The Beast in the Jungle” understands waiting for a transformative event and “The Jolly Corner” knows about paths that could have been taken. These tales have stood me in good stead more than once; they seem to belong here, now.
December 23, 2010
I think The Beast in the Jungle made me the most pissed off while reading of all the stuff I read for my Henry James class. The prose is typical of his later style, which means that it's INFURIATING. You read yourself into circles, thinking that you know what each word on the page means, but somehow they do not add up to a logical meaning when you reach the end of the sentence, so you have to back and re-read, and re-read, and re-read. And even when you do that, the meaning of the story is not clear. According to my professor, that is kind of the point— that the titular "beast" is James' syntax itself, which devours his character at the end. While it's certainly an impressive feat to pull off and I take my hat off to James' capacities as a writer, it did not make for enjoyable reading for me. I remember having the sinking feeling, as I tore my hair out trying to figure out what was going on, that the story would never reveal exactly what is going on; that you never find out exactly what was supposed to have happened to Marcher, or what knowledge May Bartram has of his life. There is the interpretation that he's just the guy to whom nothing ever happens, that he thinks he's the central character of some great story or drama but it turns out that he's a terrible protagonist because he wastes his life waiting for something to happen. BUT, not only is that terribly trite, it doesn't really explain what happens at the very end of the story, when the Beast pounces upon him. Another more interesting interpretation is that Marcher is homosexual, but even that is a bit overdetermined. I suppose my professor's "syntax" idea is the most palatable to me (probably because I was brainwashed by her superior intellect), but that doesn't change the fact that this is an incredibly painful story to read, seemingly written only so that James can laugh at you and your weak brain in the end.
April 8, 2023
6/10 Rating - My Enjoyment
7/10 - Quality
I absolutely love Henry James but I don't think I've read any of his short stories before now. These three stories, all concerned with memory and loss, weren't for me. However, I'm not a big fan of Victorian Gothic and I rarely enjoy short stories as much as novels.
The writing is often top-notch and the themes beautifully portrayed, but I never felt invested in the characters or their outcome.
"The Jolly Corner" is the only story here I'd like to revisit. In this psychological tale, the protagonist roams an old house haunted by his alter ego, the man he could have or would have been had he made different choices. This story deals with some of life's great questions and is quite a prompt to think and reflect on one's own narrative self. I'd specifically like to re-read this KNOWING the ending, so as to more fully appreciate and ponder the meaning throughout.
"The Beast in the Jungle" is supposedly James' best short story, but I found it anti-climactic and predictable. John Marcher's life is dictated by his belief that one day, he will succumb to some great disaster.
In "The Alter of the Dead," an older man attempts to mark and honor the deaths of his friends and loved ones.
I would only recommend this compendium for those who know they like short stories steeped in Victorian macabre.
'He did this from time to time with such effect that he seemed to wander through the old years with his hand in the arm of a companion who was, in the most extraordinary manner, his other, his younger self; . . . Thus in short he settled to live -- feeding all on the sense that he once had lived, and dependent on it not alone for a support but for an identity.' p 68, 'The Beast in the Jungle'
'. . . the time he gave to his devotion came to seem to him more or contribution to his other interests the number of them. Even a loaded life might be easier when one had added a new necessity to it.' p 8, 'The Alter of the Dead'
7/10 - Quality
I absolutely love Henry James but I don't think I've read any of his short stories before now. These three stories, all concerned with memory and loss, weren't for me. However, I'm not a big fan of Victorian Gothic and I rarely enjoy short stories as much as novels.
The writing is often top-notch and the themes beautifully portrayed, but I never felt invested in the characters or their outcome.
"The Jolly Corner" is the only story here I'd like to revisit. In this psychological tale, the protagonist roams an old house haunted by his alter ego, the man he could have or would have been had he made different choices. This story deals with some of life's great questions and is quite a prompt to think and reflect on one's own narrative self. I'd specifically like to re-read this KNOWING the ending, so as to more fully appreciate and ponder the meaning throughout.
"The Beast in the Jungle" is supposedly James' best short story, but I found it anti-climactic and predictable. John Marcher's life is dictated by his belief that one day, he will succumb to some great disaster.
In "The Alter of the Dead," an older man attempts to mark and honor the deaths of his friends and loved ones.
I would only recommend this compendium for those who know they like short stories steeped in Victorian macabre.
'He did this from time to time with such effect that he seemed to wander through the old years with his hand in the arm of a companion who was, in the most extraordinary manner, his other, his younger self; . . . Thus in short he settled to live -- feeding all on the sense that he once had lived, and dependent on it not alone for a support but for an identity.' p 68, 'The Beast in the Jungle'
'. . . the time he gave to his devotion came to seem to him more or contribution to his other interests the number of them. Even a loaded life might be easier when one had added a new necessity to it.' p 8, 'The Alter of the Dead'
January 11, 2022
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Henry James wrote beautifully.
Very eloquently.
If Hemingway took James’s ideas, he would have written the same stories in half as many pages.
It’s not a bad thing, just a matter of personal style.
I’ve read all of Hemingway and a few of James.
A big difference for me is with James, my mind starts to wander……. I need to get a new container to store the rest of the Christmas decorations…..where was I, oh yeah…….
This book contains three of James’s short stories.
The first two, The Altar of the Dead and the title story, The Beast in the Jungle have a lot in common.
They both concern men with obsessions. The former dedicating his life to the memories of his friends and family that have passed on. The latter obsessing over a premonition of a terrible unknown he believes is to befall him.
Both men have a woman “friend” that they both fail to see as their true purpose/destiny. Not realizing that what is most important is staring them in the face.
The third story, The Jolly Corner, concerns a man who returns to New York after spending most of his life overseas. He has become sole heir to his childhood home. Will he stay or return as he had planned? Can he deal with the “spirits” in the old place?
Henry James wrote beautifully.
Very eloquently.
If Hemingway took James’s ideas, he would have written the same stories in half as many pages.
It’s not a bad thing, just a matter of personal style.
I’ve read all of Hemingway and a few of James.
A big difference for me is with James, my mind starts to wander……. I need to get a new container to store the rest of the Christmas decorations…..where was I, oh yeah…….
This book contains three of James’s short stories.
The first two, The Altar of the Dead and the title story, The Beast in the Jungle have a lot in common.
They both concern men with obsessions. The former dedicating his life to the memories of his friends and family that have passed on. The latter obsessing over a premonition of a terrible unknown he believes is to befall him.
Both men have a woman “friend” that they both fail to see as their true purpose/destiny. Not realizing that what is most important is staring them in the face.
The third story, The Jolly Corner, concerns a man who returns to New York after spending most of his life overseas. He has become sole heir to his childhood home. Will he stay or return as he had planned? Can he deal with the “spirits” in the old place?
October 21, 2018
If you want to read really wordy stories in which you have to struggle to keep your mind from wandering off, by all means read Henry James!
Although I have to hand it to him: he comes up with some pretty novel story arcs.
The Alter of the Dead deals with a mourner who sets up his own personal alter in a church. He's surprised to find that a mysterious woman is also enjoying his little morbid candle holder.
The Beast in the Jungle gives us a protagonist who spends his life thinking something terrible, or at least some major crisis, is going to one day leap out at him. This story was a bit predictable.
The Jolly Corner was...oh what the hell I have little idea what the heck that story was about.
Although I have to hand it to him: he comes up with some pretty novel story arcs.
The Alter of the Dead deals with a mourner who sets up his own personal alter in a church. He's surprised to find that a mysterious woman is also enjoying his little morbid candle holder.
The Beast in the Jungle gives us a protagonist who spends his life thinking something terrible, or at least some major crisis, is going to one day leap out at him. This story was a bit predictable.
The Jolly Corner was...oh what the hell I have little idea what the heck that story was about.
June 21, 2013
A collection of "The Altar of the Dead," "The Beast in the Jungle," and "The Jolly Corner." All deal vaguely with the supernatural, but the focus is, as always, the minds and thoughts of individual people. The delicacy of thought and the depth of prose one associates with James are present in all three, though occasionally the scenes can grow tedious--in "The Jolly Corner" the protagonist spends five pages thinking about whether to open a door. I read this in the Dover Thrift Edition, which was lovely--$2.00 for three short stories strikes me as very reasonable.
December 7, 2022
I’ve only started delving into short stories in the past couple years but I really enjoyed these. They’re a bit horror, but not grotesque. More psychologically horror, which I enjoyed a lot. They’re thought provoking, and well written, though the writing does require full full attention because it is thick. Some parts I had to re read if my mind drifted for a second, but that’s my fault.
January 18, 2016
Some of the stories were more interesting than others. I really had trouble getting into The Altar of the Dead, but found The Beast in the Jungle interesting and moving towards the end. The Jolly Corner was interesting when the woman was in the scenes, and the ending was good, but it was a tough read and hard to follow. All in all, the stories have some interesting parts but the language makes it very difficult to understand what is going on.
January 16, 2012
As dense as Henry James is to get through (those reading muscles have atrophied!) I have enjoyed 2 of the 3 stories.
Beast in the Jungle of course is gut-thumping, but I found the characters in Altar of the Dead more lovable and the plot packs a punch there too.
Looking forward to the third (The Jolly Corner), as soon as I can carve out some big-girl reading time!
Beast in the Jungle of course is gut-thumping, but I found the characters in Altar of the Dead more lovable and the plot packs a punch there too.
Looking forward to the third (The Jolly Corner), as soon as I can carve out some big-girl reading time!
January 10, 2013
James' style is tortuous, in every sense of the word. I don't know if these passive, overly comma'd, lumbering and graceless sentences are purposeful, an attempt to portray the confused character of the protagonist, but they make for quite horrible reading. Kant is a better stylist than James in this story, which is saying a lot.
April 20, 2016
This wasn't my favourite book by Henry James. The action dragged a bit at times; actually, for most of the story, nothing whatsoever happens. However, we leatn at the end that the protagonist's inaction is the whole point of the narrative. As usual with James, it's brilliantly told, as regards both language and focalization, but it wasn't my cup of tea.
March 1, 2021
Not great. Average. I’ve read other stories by Henry James like “The Turn of the Screw” and “Daisy Miller” and love them. This collection not so much. My Favorite was the first one, “Alter of the dead” but even then it wasn’t as good as some other works of his I’ve read. Could be I wasn’t much in the mood or could be just me at his time in my life, having read a lot of literature since....
August 30, 2007
What I really wanted was "The Pupil," but it wasn't on this silly site. But I read that and The Beast in the Jungle in the same collection. And The Pupil was great. And The Beast In The Jungle was only moderately less great. So here it is.
September 16, 2007
My eyes get heavy after a a page or two. In two nights, I made it to page seven before falling asleep, and now I'm trying to read it during the day.
Day was better. I liked The Beast in the Jungle best, which is not saying a lot.
Day was better. I liked The Beast in the Jungle best, which is not saying a lot.
February 10, 2008
I read this book for a class on gender and culture in literature, alongside Eve Sedwick's essay from The Epistemology of the Closet -- the essay helps me read the title story as an attempt to provide a space for legibility of a marginalized discourse. I recommend both texts.
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