The Ambassadors (Hardcover)

The writing in The Ambassadors---I read every word, slowly---reminds me of the story of the mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr., in the movie A Beautiful Mind, in which Mr. Nash is consumed by a madness of numbers. The numbers are all there, in his head, and he adores them, but is too absorbed by them to be able to get them out properly for another person's account. In the movie The Pillow Book, there is a scene where words are superimposed over the body of a woman to suggest that she is washing herself with them, as they are the objects of her devotion, the means to record life, the means of hanging on to moments. In The Ambassadors, Henry James strikes me as being overcome by an infatuation with words to no great account---words composed for love of them without giving lyrical effect, clarity, or shape to a story or characters.

Artistry is making something perfect, communicating a personal vision, with all one's tricks, so that others get it clearly, perfectly---not being so personal that the creation hardly reaches anyone but the creator, and, in the case of The Ambassadors's main character, Strether, not being so personal that his fascinations are chiefly fascinating to him. Overly many words in The Ambassadors give reverence and eternity to a moment, a thought, or the delicate ascertainment of motive, but the reverence is not remembered as much as the roughness in going through so many words, obscurely put, to reach understandings that are not great enough or numerous enough to make the effort fulfilling. The novel should have been shortened by at least one-third.

Allusions in the novel's narration and dialogue are chronic, creating a deliberate vagueness without building a sufficient quantity of impressions to keep one from finally being exasperated that all one has met is a pile of words in which only James is bathing luxuriantly. Using too many words to tell too little has James repeating, too often, what long ago was implied or expressed. At story's end, little more is known than what one suspected at the beginning. Obviousness in a plot is not fatal, as demonstrated by William Shakespeare, who sets out characters and purposes straight-off in most of his plays and then proceeds through the details with magnificence, large points being told clearly with the fewest words in the prettiest arrangement. In getting to the end of his story, James does not add much of interest, but confounds by having one unsure, too often, what language intended, whether in describing a thing or a person or a motive. Throughout, something that is imputed to one person seems capable of being imputed to any of the characters, which might be alright if it led to discovery eventually. The work in determining something as simple as who or what was meant by the words "he," "she," "this," or "it" was not worthy of the gain.

Subtly leading a reader to an impression appeals to me, but finally there has to be impression. Gore Vidal is a master of subtlety and clarity. Everything he tells me subtly seems to be absorbed by me clearly. In The Ambassadors, James has me arguing through language that did not tell me enough to provide delight from comprehension, in contrast to his writing in The Portrait of A Lady, where subtly there is a building of Isabel Archer's personality so that one sees her from above, from below, from the sides, and straight through without quite knowing how one got to know her in the round except through magic.

Long, controlled, and clear sentences are to be adored, and so is repetition, which is the key to learning. James's sentences in The Ambassadors are long, controlled, and too often unclear, and rather than gathering to clarity, they annoy as nonsense for requiring so much work from the reader for so little. In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin's masterpiece of clarity, it is clear that Darwin cannot write except by way of long sentences, but his sentences on matters obscure and subtle are commanding, so clear that they make light work out of something difficult in other hands. And throughout, Darwin is repetitive in a delightful way, reinforcing and accumulating knowledge so that you are drawn into his view of the world if only because you want to be drawn by someone who has expressed his view so clearly and perfectly, with dedication.

And dedication is what my most favourable impression of The Ambassadors is---the dedication of the main character, Strether, to figuring out motives and making what he regards as the right choices. In this way, Strether reminded me of the determination of Michel de Montaigne and Charles Darwin to working hard to figure out the motives of life, determination that inspires awe, except that Montaigne and Darwin saw themselves through their words clearly and Strether, while making decisions and figuring things out, did so only with words that leave the reader with more sensations of the unclear than the things figured out.