Somebody Else's Nimrod

Henry James, Roderick Hudson

This is the first James novel, and I reread it largely because I wanted to remind myself of the history of Christina Light, the femme fatale of this book who is also the heroine of The Princess Casamassima, which I am presently trudging through.

This book is, to be frank, the See Jane Run edition of Doktor Faustus, which, if it treated of a theme that isn't terribly compelling to the modern mind (are art and morality fundamentally opposed?), at least had the good grace to lard it with some very abstruse footnotes and complex symbolism, sadly missing here. Well, Roderick Hudson is a first novel. It hasn't aged well (though it reads easily and clearly, not exactly a strong point for James later on). What can you expect, really?

The one interesting thought I had about this book is that the existence of present-day New York City would've utterly undone James. He might never have written a word. An American city, one of the greatest capital of the art world and of sophisticated debauchery? It would unstring his dichotomies and reduce his plots to rubble. Even in the latest novels, when American power is represented as far less crude, far more subtle, much more irresistible than at the start of his career (Adam Verver vs. the senior Touchett), James was never prepared to treat with New York City as the flower of Western civilization.