Tossing around in bed last night while the rest of the country was worrying over their need of gainful employment, lack of health insurance, swindled investments and the cost of a good haircut, I was obsessing about Isabel Archer Osmond and Company. I had two things going on that were not necessarily in agreement: One, I wanted to end “The Portrait of a Lady,” do what James wouldn’t do which was to tidy up all the loose ends and conclude the saga of Isabel and her failed marriage. (Have her divorce the beast or suck it up and find new interests.) By chapter five I had already done that. I had the couple reach a truce in chapter two and all the other characters falling into a set place with nary a conflict or piece of misery anywhere. Everyone is happy. Or at least accepting;
Two, while it is my natural instinct to give Isabel a happy ending, or at least a life-goes-on-such-as-it-is ending, a sequel must have its own story which is conflict, action, resolution. I’m in over my head and find it tough going inventing a story set in the 19th century in a foreign country. Now what?
Now I don’t have a sequel is what. I have an ending that James might have used but did not care for happily-ever-after, rarely used it, was chastised and made to suffer for it especially when he wanted to convert his novels into plays to make some serious money. He was told the theatre-going public would not tolerate a story without a happy ending, he tested that theory and found out the hard way, it was true. So biting the bullet, excuse the cliché, “The American” was the rewritten to those ends only to see it fail miserably at the box office while his nemesis Oscar Wilde succeeded brilliantly and lucratively which had been Mr. James‘s goal all along. James thought Wilde’s plays trivial exploitation, riddled with nonsense. The public loved them. He thought Wilde an exhibitionist and a major poseur. The public showered him with praise. Nothing much has changed. Just substitute literary novel into Hollywood screenplay and you understand Mr. James’s wretchedness. Not to be daunted he tried for several years to write successful plays and still dejectedly failed. His heart was broken and his coffers mostly unrewarded. I include a few quotes on the night his failed play ended in hisses and boos: The theatre is an abyss of vulgarity & of brutish platitude: from which one ought doubtless to welcome any accident that detaches one. And then, I have practically renounced my deluded dreams. The horridest four weeks of my life.
In the end he could not write seriously a happy ending; and when he attempted to change the outcome the whole thing fell apart. It was his idea that a novel should be the stuff of realism and psychological investigation and wanted no part of infantile fantasy.
And that is why I was awake last night wondering what I have gotten myself into. How could I pull this off without delving into the worlds of schlock and soap opera the master would abhor? I didn’t even get around to my own unemployment, lack of health insurance, homelessness, bankruptcy and really bad hair. But I have my priorities and HJ cannot fault me there.
"Henry James: The Imaginative Genius," by Fred Kaplan was used as a reference for this post. It is unavailable through Amazon, hence, no link but other biographies are available if you would like to read more on Henry James.
No comments:
Post a Comment