Bethany Layne - Henry James in Contemporary Fiction The Real Thing

Bethany Layne

Henry James in Contemporary Fiction

The Real Thing

Henry James in Contemporary Fictionexplores the afterlife queering of James and his texts, feminist responses to James, the temptations and possibilities attached to recuperation, and the position of the reader with reference to the original. The study offers new insights into the nature of biofiction and its relationship with literary theory, and, in its emphasis on same-media appropriation, a significant contribution to adaptation theory.

Karen Scherzinger, author of Staging Henry James: Representing the Author in Colm TibnsThe Masterand David LodgesAuthor, Author:A Novel (2008) and The Jouissance of Influence: Being and Following the Writer in Michiel HeynssThe Typewriters Tale(2010)

For Alex, who I shared Jamess books with, and who shared me with Jamess books, and in memoriam Karen Scherzinger, who had such faith in this one.

On a bright Saturday afternoon in the late summer of 2002, two men are introduced to each other in the front parlour of Lamb House. That they have both chosen this day for their visit is surprising, but not extraordinary: the National Trust opens Henry Jamess home to the public just two afternoons each week, and the writersfor writers they arehave good reason for wanting to make their pilgrimage before the house is closed for the season. What follows is rather more unexpected: the tenant, overhearing their conversation, unhooks the rope at the foot of the staircase and invites the writers to follow (Tibn , p. 18). He senses that it would not be tactful to mention this.

The men scribbling covertly in their notebooks are Michiel Heyns and Colm Tibn , and their forerunner was David Lodge. At present, only the tenant knows what soon the whole world will know: that all three are writing novels about the houses former inhabitant, of which two will be published amid a storm of publicity heralding The Year of Henry James . For in 2004, Lodges Author, Author and Tibns The Master coincided with Alan Hollinghursts The Line of Beauty, whose protagonist is a graduate student working on James , and with the paperback reissue of Felony, Emma Tennants novella about James and Constance Fenimore Woolson , first published in 2002 (Lodge , p. 75).

Others thought it unlikely that James , now resurrected, would die quietly (Saunders ).

This book examines the extraordinary proliferation of James-inspired narratives between the new millennium and the centenary of Jamess death. In doing so, I illuminate the reasons behind the novelistic fascination with his figure and fiction (Tintner ) ends, sacrificing Tintners encyclopaedic breadth for a more detailed and sustained discussion of a number of exemplary texts. I want to start by asking what developments in biographical and adaptive writing enabled millennial writers to engage so explicitly with James ? How can we start to explain his appeal for novelists working in these modes? And lastly, what forms have their engagement taken?

As noted by Lodge (, p. 8). To this definition, we must append a caveat regarding biofictions use of the subjects real name, a detail by which it distinguishes itself from the more numerous, but less explicit, engagements of