Goodreads | Otra Vuelta de Tuerca / The Turn of the Screw

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Anca rated it:

(review of isbn 0460872990)

09/21/08

bookshelves: 10a

Read in September, 2008

recommended to Anca by: llosa

Cineva zicea (aici: http://rogozanu.blog.cotidianu... )
- si avea dreptate - ca atunci cind citesti clasici si capodoperele lor si nu-ti plac, dai vina pe tine dar daca citesti ceva nou si nu-ti place, dai vina pe autor. Asa si eu acum cu Henry James pe care l-am apucat in biblioteca dupa ce l-am gasit dat de exemplu ca tehnica narativa cu cartea asta in Scrisori catre un tinar romancier....more

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Werner rated it:

(review of isbn 0140620613)

08/12/08

bookshelves: classics, supernatural-fiction

Read in January, 2002

recommends it for: Fans of supernatural fiction

By classifying this book as supernatural fiction, of course, I've already made my interpretive stance (which is based on having read the book twice --once as a college student in the early 70s, and more recently after becoming aware of the revisionist theory, to see whether I'd missed anything the first time) clear; I view this as a straightforward story of a ghostly haunting, and the governess as exactly what James makes a point of establishing her to be at the outset, a trustworthy narrator. ...more By classifying this book as supernatural fiction, of course, I've already made my interpretive stance (which is based on having read the book twice --once as a college student in the early 70s, and more recently after becoming aware of the revisionist theory, to see whether I'd missed anything the first time) clear; I view this as a straightforward story of a ghostly haunting, and the governess as exactly what James makes a point of establishing her to be at the outset, a trustworthy narrator. Indeed, the "questions" the above description refers to never arose prior to the 20th century, and find no basis in the text; in fact, they fly in the face of the text. As an example, the housekeeper can recognize the deceased Peter Quint from the governess' description of the figure she saw, though the governess never heard of Quint and never saw him in life. The claim of one critic that she "could have" picked up this information in the village (a locality that James never shows her visiting) is a device of intellectually dishonest desperation --she "could have" acquired the information from a race of omniscient aliens by telepathy, too, but James doesn't provide any suggestion that she did either one. Basically, the revisionist anti- interpretation (it is not genuinely an interpretation, in the sense of an actual attempt to exegete a written text, as opposed to forcing a externally-derived meaning onto it) only exists to satisfy the modern critical community's ideological hobby-horses: contempt for the idea that language can clearly communicate an author's meaning; the conviction that any work whose meaning is clear on its face must be shallow and low- brow, so that only the "interpretive" twisting of a work's meaning into its apparent opposite can save it for the "canon"; and a snobbish disdain for the supernatural genre as a literary slum unworthy of great writers or serious readers. (Unfortunately for these critics, James didn't share the latter view --his corpus shows that the ghost story was a favorite medium of expression for him, and his other works in the genre are equally resistant to "hallucination" theories.)

A possible sub-text of hidden, or at least subtle, meaning of a different sort may exist in the story, however, though the idea in this case is suggested by details in the text, not outside it: James may use the format of a ghost story to explore the subject (which, if explicitly treated, would have been taboo in Victorian literature) of child sexual abuse. The reason for Quint's and Miss Jessel's interest in the two children, both in life and after death, and the nature of their corrupting influence, is never explicitly stated; the very reticence here invites surmise. And this view makes sense of the otherwise curious revelation, late in the book, that the little boy got in trouble at school for things he said --not, as the governess initially supposes, to boys he disliked, but to those he "liked."

James' prose style can be dry and convoluted (even by 19th- century standards); but it's less so here than in much of his other work. The story also has a very real emotional force, enhanced by the fact that its menace is directed against children, which adds, in James' own words, the titular "turn of the screw" to the horror. Atmospheric, brooding and well- paced, this is far and away the best of the author's ghostly tales --and one of the best I've read from any writer! ...less

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