chabot@miles.DEC (Bits is bits) (05/19/85)
No, wait: I take *my* Henry James recommendation back for this book alone. _Portrait_of_a_Lady_: fine; _The_Golden_Bowl_: beautiful; _What_Maisie_Knew_: still appropriate to children and divorce today. But _The_Bostonians_ is very aggravating. I'd never run into a Henry James novel or story I hadn't liked before. This one starts off with caricatures of Boston feminists, contrasted against a superior-feeling southern gent (old-fashioned and chivalrous, at least for those who deserve it), and the battleground is laid for a triangle between the gent, and attractive young woman who *obviously* doesn't belong with all the biddies, spinsters, poor-housekeepers, and other losers, and one of the spinsters. Guess who wins (at least, from what I was able to determine from the forward and the cover notes), although I found the set-up that someone had to win disgusting. I got to chapter 2, and I haven't been so annoyed at a book in a long time; I boiled for a week, started to mention it to a friend and he exploded that he hadn't been able to tolerate it for as long as I had. It just struck me as a nasty, one-sided view of some historically important figures in Boston feminism. Oh, I'd meant to FLAME about this book last fall. James sometimes doesn't seem to know his subject well: in _The_Princess_Cassa- massima_ he also sets up some straw-characters which seem to be patterned on the icons Dickens would create. Good book, but some of the characterizations will make you retch. Also, it appears essential that his female protagnists be physically attractive. But, I welcome differing opinions and additional information. L S Chabot ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot chabot%amber.dec@decwrl.arpa