An Introduction

I haven’t got a title for this blog yet. No doubt a suitable phrase will jump out at me as I re-read James over the coming weeks and months - a choice epigram, a form of words that neatly applies to what I’m doing here, something I just happen to like - at which point I’ll slot it in at the top of the page as if it had been there all along. Nor do I have an especially concrete project in mind. My formal, academic work on James happens - or more often doesn’t happen - elsewhere and I don’t intend to replicate it here. Rather, I want to come at the writing with the freshest eyes I can muster, give myself permission to enjoy it again, and think about what it is I still value about James after more than a quarter-of-a-century of erratically keeping him company. There’s a vague plan to re-read the short stories (112 of them) in chronological order, but I’m not going to be dictated to by that if the book I really want to pick up is The Golden Bowl. Not that I don’t have it in me to dream up grandiose campaigns of cultural mastery - quite the opposite, I’m full of them and they are always doomed - I just want whatever this is to be about pleasure rather than any particular goals. I will read some James - I was going to anyway - and find words for any thoughts I happen to have.