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Jun. 18th, 2005 08:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
decemberthirtyFrom The Master:
As the tea was served and the conversation began, Henry felt as though he had been dipped in something; what had happened lingered as an obsession importunate to all his sense; it lived now in every moment and in every object; it made everything but itself irrelevant and tasteless. It came to him so powerfully as he drank his tea and listened to his cousins that he had to remind himself that it was not still in progress, and a new day had begun with a new day's duties.
And:
He did not realize then and did not, in fact, grasp for many years how these few weeks in North Conway--the endlessly conversing group of them gathered under the rustling pines--would be enough for him, would be, in effect, all he needed to know in his life. In all his years as a writer he was to draw on the scenes he lived and witnessed at that time...
Ah, I'm really loving The Master so far. I like the way Toibin is not afraid to allow his story to develop very slowly, valuing the depth of psychological understanding over the demands of plot. I like the way he lets his lengthy sentences unfurl slowly and carefully--they're long but perfectly punctuated so you never get lost in them. Most of all, I like Henry James. As Colm Toibin has imagined him, Henry James is another of these men, these repressed and yearning men, who never fail to break my heart. He's right in line with Sammy Clay, Woodrow Call, Rivers and Sassoon, John Grady Cole... I wonder why it always seems to be the men that I fall in love with. I suppose it's because what I truly love is the sense of self-denial, the intense, suppressed longing, and it tends to be men who embody that. I don't know why.
As the tea was served and the conversation began, Henry felt as though he had been dipped in something; what had happened lingered as an obsession importunate to all his sense; it lived now in every moment and in every object; it made everything but itself irrelevant and tasteless. It came to him so powerfully as he drank his tea and listened to his cousins that he had to remind himself that it was not still in progress, and a new day had begun with a new day's duties.
And:
He did not realize then and did not, in fact, grasp for many years how these few weeks in North Conway--the endlessly conversing group of them gathered under the rustling pines--would be enough for him, would be, in effect, all he needed to know in his life. In all his years as a writer he was to draw on the scenes he lived and witnessed at that time...
Ah, I'm really loving The Master so far. I like the way Toibin is not afraid to allow his story to develop very slowly, valuing the depth of psychological understanding over the demands of plot. I like the way he lets his lengthy sentences unfurl slowly and carefully--they're long but perfectly punctuated so you never get lost in them. Most of all, I like Henry James. As Colm Toibin has imagined him, Henry James is another of these men, these repressed and yearning men, who never fail to break my heart. He's right in line with Sammy Clay, Woodrow Call, Rivers and Sassoon, John Grady Cole... I wonder why it always seems to be the men that I fall in love with. I suppose it's because what I truly love is the sense of self-denial, the intense, suppressed longing, and it tends to be men who embody that. I don't know why.
