We come then to the period of allegories ("The Real Thing," "Dominick Ferrand," "The Liar"). There ensues a growing discontent with the short sentence, epigram, etc., in which he does not at this time attain distinction; the clarity is not satisfactory, was not satisfactory to the author, his _donné_ being radically different from that of his contemporaries. The "story" not being really what he is after, he starts to build up his medium; a thickening, a chiaroscuro is needed, the long sentence; he wanders, seeks to add a needed opacity, he overdoes it, produces the cobwebby novel, emerges or justifies himself in "Maisie" and manages his long-sought form in "The Awkward Age." He comes out the triumphant stylist in the "American Scene" and in all the items of "The Finer Grain" collection and in the posthumous "Middle Years."
This is not to damn incontinent all that intervenes, but I think the chief question addressed to me by people of good-will who do not, but are yet ready and willing to, read James, is: Where the deuce shall I begin? One cannot take even the twenty-four volumes, more or less selected volumes of the Macmillan edition all at once, and it is, alas, but too easy to get so started and entoiled as never to finish this author or even come to the best of him.
The laziness of an uncritical period can be nowhere more blatant than in the inherited habit of talking about authors as a whole. It is perhaps the sediment from an age daft over great figures or a way of displaying social gush, the desire for a celebrity at all costs, rather than a care of letters.
To talk in any other way demands an acquaintance with the work of an author, a price few conversationalists care to pay, _ma che_! It is the man with inherited opinions who talks about "Shelley," making no distinction between the author of the Fifth Act of "The Cenci" and of the "Sensitive Plant." Not but what there may be a personal _virtu_ in an author--appraised, however, from the best of his work when, that is, it is correctly appraised. People ask me what James to read. He is a very uneven author; not all of his collected edition has marks of permanence.
"The American," "French Poets and Novelists," "The Europeans," "Daisy Miller," "Eugene Pickering," "Washington Square," "A Bundle of Letters," "Portrait of a Lady," "Pandora," "The Pupil," "Brooksmith," "What Maisie Knew," and "The Awkward Age" (if one is "doing it all"), "Europe," "Four Meetings," "The Ambassadors," "The American Scene," "The Finer Grain" (all the volume, i.e., "The Velvet Glove," "Mona Montravers," "Round of Visits," "Crapey Cornelia," "Bench of Desolation"), "The Middle Years" (posthumous) and "The Ivory Tower" (notes first).