Status Updates From Tales of Henry James: The ...

it took him one month to write The Middle Years. his main challenge was to compress, but keep it interesting. the story runs around 8k words. he considered an alternate ending. his own reading of the ending is a lot more optimistic than mine, a testament to the ambiguity he's using. now queued up: The Beast in the Jungle & The Jolly Corner.

read a few of his journal excerpts included in this volume that describe the origin of his ideas. HJ is the master. I am determined that he will be my favourite writer; I am determined to write like him. important lesson: he considered 7k words to be the minimum length possible to do decent work in.

"The Pupil"---great characters; starts in the middle of a scene in classic Jamesian fashion; i wonder if there's a sexual aspect to Pemberton/Morgan's dynamic; shows a "flip" side of James's typical upper class milieu (the family are basically scam artists, get evicted at the end); highly readable, "commercial" fiction in the best way: the downside is the utterly moronic twist ending, abrupt and unearned.