Book Review: The Master, by Colm Toibin
The Master
Colm Toibin
352 pages, Scribrner, 2004 (US edition). $25
200 pages, Picador, 2004 (UK edition). £16
Buy from Amazon.com | Amazon UK | Amazon FR
[Update, June 14, 2006: The Master has won the Impac prize, the world's richest literary award. Sigh... In the interest of reiterating how bad I thought that book was, and how good Author, Author is, I have re-posted my reviews of both books.]
Literary coincidences occur occasionally, and this year’s coincidence is the appearance of two novels about Henry James, both written by authors hailing from countries east of the Atlantic. (The other novel is David Lodge’s Author, Author; I’ll review that book here soon.) It is as if James has been appropriated by Irish and British authors, having been largely ignored by those of his native America for so long. James, who became a British citizen at the end of his life, spent most of his productive years in England and continental Europe. It is no surprise that his fiction has a European flavor, nor is it any surprise that he is such a beacon for British and Irish writers.The Master in question is old Henry himself, who, in the final period of his life, has received this nickname from critics in praise of the quality of his prose and plots (James was arguably the greatest American author of his period; I confess to being a James fan myself, and even have a print of his portrait, painted by John Singer Sargeant, on the wall next to my desk).
At this time, Henry attempted to break into the theater, with the belief that he would not only achieve recognition from the general public but also the fortune that accompanies such success. In the way writers want to sell scripts to Hollywood today, James wanted to sell his stories to the London theater. Alas, it was a failure; a resounding failure, one that shook James’ resolve and faith in himself.
Toibin is clearly a Jamesophile, yet he portrays old Henry as a socially inept, somewhat confused old man, who is uncomfortable at dinners and balls, and who longs for his preferred solitude, which he eventually finds in the house he purchases in the small town of Rye. While some may claim that this is a valid portrayal of James, though exaggerated, Toibin neglects to provide the book with a plot, and instead merely relates a series of incidents and events in Henry’s life. While Toibin’s writing is agreeable–it is, naturally, somewhat Jamesian–his story has little interest. Seen as a series of vignettes, cobbled together with flashbacks to try and put some depth into the story, Toibin shows James far too incompletely to make a novel that works.
For Toibin seems obsessed with showing examples of James’ alleged homosexuality, going as far as inventing an incident with Oliver Wendell Holmes, when the two of them shared a bed in their youth. Recent years have seen many “scholars” suggesting that James is homosexual, though the evidence is of the “they have weapons of mass destruction” type. In fact, after reading this book, with its unsuccessful denouement, one wonders if Toibin simply wanted to present this hypothesis in a fictional form, and filled in the rest so there would be something worth publishing.
Toibin does little more than fill in spaces around events described by Leon Edel in his monumental biography of Henry James. By fleshing out these events, Toibin does give more life to them than Edel does, but is it worth it? To me, having read Edel recently, and being familiar with James’ work, the book seemed to drag on, as I hoped to find some sort of narrative thread in the work. But I was not fortunate; Toibin simply relates events, albeit occurring within a specific period, without doing more than adding dialog and inner impressions to the characters actions.
But this raises a deeper question about such a book. That a writer of Toibin’s ilk could simply create a docu-drama of some events in a real person’s life suggests that he is in a period of plotter’s block. It is relatively simple to depend on reality, and add a few strokes of dialog, and while it is oft said that truth is stranger than fiction, in this case, the truth doesn’t provide for an interesting read. James’ life was certainly remarkable, yet decidedly uneventful. And Toibin’s choice of telling a part of that story in this manner falls flat, in part because there is no real denouement.
Many reviewers seem to be fawning over this book, using such panegyrics as “the literary novel of the summer.” But it seems that these critics are jaded, and willingly accept anything that has a “classical” background in order to escape the banality of much contemporary fiction. Henry James was an extraordinary writer, an exceptional man, in his own manner, and his life is quite a story, but he is poorly served by this “novel”, which seems to be little more than an exercise in fictionalizing such a man’s life. This book will certainly appeal to the boobs (as Mencken called them), who find it just the right thing to make them look smart, but readers looking for a good book would be better off picking up some of the Master’s work and ignoring Toibin.
Visit my Reading Henry James website.
