The Altar of the Dead, The Beast in the Jungle, the Birthplace & Other Stories

by Henry James

The private life - Owen Wingrave - The friends of the friends - Sir Edmund Orme - The real right thing - The jolly corner - Julia Bride.

516 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1908

About the author

Henry 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."

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Beast In the Jungle is supposedly one of James’ best short stories, and it served as my introduction to his work. I was very impressed with the deftness of his literary play in psychological depths, conversational labyrinths, and sociological jungles [wink].

Learning his discursive and intermittent sentences—a splicing of myriad thoughts that flow back and forth through clarifications, qualifications, and endless expansions of ideas mid-sentence—can be quite a task, and can give you a headache worse than this sentence might give you. And that’s the way it is through the entire book! And then, the conversational complexity and subtle nuances that he weaves into his stories caught me off guard and made me feel like such a 3rd grader trying to play ball with the 5th graders. I felt like I was listening into dialogue that I could barely keep up with—inside jokes that were told right in front of me about incidents that had happened all around me, and I was the only one that didn’t get it. I had to reread sentence after sentence to catch up with the conversation that was sure to serve as the next launching pad for a new inference in the next paragraph.

And I loved it. Yeah, you heard me. Although the plot itself was just okay (that reduced my 'star' rating above), the dialogue gave me hope that intentional conversation can be so much more than the doldrums we often make it. Why do we settle for so much less in even a causal convo? Could we really do better at peering into each other souls, and gleaning from each others' experiences, instead of nonchalantly acknowledging the weather patterns for the day, or giving our image another roid-poke by endless shop-talk and blowhard self-aggrandizement that typifies much common talk that centers on the superficial, material happenings of the Ordinary? I do. But how? It would take at least two people, strong, with a passion for learning, committed to ‘saying more’, taking risks and treating every discussion like a window into a new world. Unfortunately, some of those windows open on a brick wall, and that’s why every conversation is a risk.

My favorite line refers to the tell-tale signs of the social masks we sometimes wear to conform through ‘dissimulation’ and conventional behavior: “out of the eye-holes [of the social mask] there looked eyes of an expression not in the least matching the other features. This the stupid world, even after years, had never more than half discovered.” The story is about finding that friend who knows the eyes behind the mask.

Not sure how interested I am in plunging further into James’ larger works, especially not the dense, belabored sentences/paragraphs that are sure to grow much more convoluted in something like ‘A Portrait Of a Lady”, but I might be up for another short story or two.

[Holly Krull · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked this up at a dollar sale on the basis that I loved "Turn of the Screw," "Sir Edmund Orme," and "Owen Wingrave" when I read the stories in the Oxford Classics collection, so I figured I'd be safe buying a collection that has 3 out of the 4 stories in that also printed within. However, the rest of these stories are basically unreadable, and not even reading the online synopses could help me make sense of the stories. Stories all have a good, somewhat ironic underlying meaning, however it's got paragraphs and sentences that are so long and drawn out, it'd make HP Lovecraft blush. Even the stories that I'd read prior to purchasing this were hard to revisit, save for "Sir Edmund Orme," which is surprisingly reserved in comparison to the rest. Ah, well, we'll still always have "Turn of the Screw," which is timeless and fantastic.

[Corrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up my old copy of James Henry this week and delved into his short story "The Altar of the Dead" because I realized I never read it. I'm intrigued by the story and have the last two chapters to read (tonight, perhaps?)
His writing is brilliant. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the Beast in the Jungle and The Turn of the Screw. Reading this story is bringing my love for those stories back.

[ultraviolet]

Read The Real Thing and The Beast in the Jungle

[Evrim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read The Beast in the Jungle and The Altar of the Dead. But The Beast in the Jungle is my favorite.