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The Beast in the Jungle (Dodo Press)

3.71 of 5 stars 3.71 · rating details · 931 ratings · 74 reviews

'Something or other lay in wait for him, amid the twists and turns of the months and the years, like a crouching beast in the jungle.'

Henry James's devastating and profoundly moving novella is the story of John Marcher, a man who, for as long as he can remember, has been obsessed by the feeling that some life-changing - even catastrophic - event lies in wait for him like a...more

Paperback, 48 pages

Published April 1st 2007 by Dodo Press (first published 1903)

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Feb 02, 2013 Proustitute rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: british-irish-scottish-literature, american-literature, james, modernisms, victorian, fin-de-siecle, five-stars, favorites, 2013, short-stories-and-novellas

James is my second favorite writer, after Proust, of course. “The Beast in the Jungle” is probably his most masterful tale—novella or short story, you decide—and it’s one that I’ve read at least twenty times. While many of my readings have been colored by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s now canonical essay “The Beast in the Closet,” this time around I read James’s tale from an entirely new perspective.

And to me that’s the most marvelous thing about writers like James: one never encounters the same text;...more James is my second favorite writer, after Proust, of course. “The Beast in the Jungle” is probably his most masterful tale—novella or short story, you decide—and it’s one that I’ve read at least twenty times. While many of my readings have been colored by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s now canonical essay “The Beast in the Closet,” this time around I read James’s tale from an entirely new perspective.

And to me that’s the most marvelous thing about writers like James: one never encounters the same text; one always finds new entry points, threads, and cadences that were lost on the first (or tenth) reading. James’s work is always lucid and at the same time ambiguous, tapping into the ebb and flow of our psychological mindsets; I suppose it’s no wonder that our own psychological states while reading would blind us to the many other complex ideas and structures with which James is working with such laudable skill.

“The Beast in the Jungle” is the tale of John Marcher, a narrative that pits existential and phenomenological questions of being against the ineluctable nature of language, speech, and what is unnameable. While Marcher is sure that something monstrous is going to happen to him, thus remaining hypervigilant through his entire life in wait for what he calls the beast, James is quick to show how the underlying narcissism that pervades our suffering—and which can blind us to the suffering of others—still courts a desire to be understood, acknowledged, and ultimately known. The analytic relationship between Marcher and May Bartram is one of the most beguiling and yet touching of these sorts of relationships in James’s fiction, perhaps because the sense of intimacy and the threat of the beast are interwoven in a way that causes the textual rhythm to literally pulsate at times (e.g., see the famous ending lines).

If you are a writer and you’ve never read this, I honestly have no idea what sort of company you’ve been keeping. Not only is “The Beast in the Jungle” one of the very best examples of the short story, but it is also an investigation into the same representational inquiries with which we all deal when trying to nail down words for things that are simply unnameable. And if you’re a reader who has never read this: what on earth are you waiting for?(less)

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Feb 06, 2013 Lee rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: epub

Read the eBook version on my iPhone accompanied by the 133 BPM heart monitor heartbeat of my unborn daughter as my wife a few feet from me dozed after umpteenth hours of slow labor. Decided to read it because the hardback book I'm reading isn't backlit and they've dimmed the lights in our room. This was, therefore, a first read distracted by several nurses, a kindly midwife wearing a lightweight welder-like face visor, and an anesthesiologist. Not exactly read with morning coffee, or while libam...more Read the eBook version on my iPhone accompanied by the 133 BPM heart monitor heartbeat of my unborn daughter as my wife a few feet from me dozed after umpteenth hours of slow labor. Decided to read it because the hardback book I'm reading isn't backlit and they've dimmed the lights in our room. This was, therefore, a first read distracted by several nurses, a kindly midwife wearing a lightweight welder-like face visor, and an anesthesiologist. Not exactly read with morning coffee, or while libambulating, or even relaxing in bed. First impressions nevertheless: I haven't read much Henry James. He's rarely read these days, I feel. Of all the so-called major canonical writers, writer friends never bring him up as an influence or even suggest him as someone to read. After reading this, 1) it's clear he's great and 2) it's also clear why folks don't tend to jump up/down about him. In this one, at least, he suggests a setting and a scene, and then the world recedes, replaced by language. Reminded me of William Gass without the fun, Ben Marcus without the word substitutions and weird breath pathologies, and Poe without much story. The language's role seems less to clarify than to obfuscate reality, which fits this one that's all about withholding Marcher's secret dealio known only by his old lady friend Bartrum. Like Pavel in Fathers and Sons, once again, a more or less 19th century bachelor is described as queer and gay (I wonder if these descriptions established the contemporary terms or pre-date them). Maybe this is a metafictional tale about the storytelling technique of withholding. Or maybe it's simply about closeted dudes and their faithful beards. Or maybe it's about unrequited/undeclared love and a fear of solitude when one's platonic friend's moved on. All these most likely are in play, and more, since as Monsieur Proustitute's review mentions, this text requires re-reading, mostly because of how the sentences thicket and squirm and unfurl and flow and eddy and force a sleep-deprived distracted 21st century reader on the labor and delivery ward of "the nation's first hospital" to dream off about a movie he half-remembers but that he may have simply dreamed about while in grad school about a futuristic dystopia involving UFOs set in a Midwest where no one reads Henry James . . . Anyway, I need to read more Henry James. I see why no one reads him anymore but I also see why, especially for fans of exposition and summarized dramatization, reading him can't hurt.(Note: the goodreads free eBook functionality thingy worked well on my phone, although it did accidentally add to my profile a giant quote I tried to bookmark and it added HJ as one of my favorite authors.)(less)

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Aug 31, 2012 Piperitapitta rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: autrici-usa, letteratura-usa, racconti, racconti-d-autore-il-sole-24-ore

Filigrana di parole.

C'è un passaggio, nel quarto capitolo, in cui Marcher nota, quasi per la prima volta l'aspetto di May, quando HJ scrive «Pallida quasi come cera, con in volto una serie di rughe e di segni tanto numerosi e sottili che parevano incisi con un ago, con drappeggi d'un bianco tenue messi in rilievo da una sciarpa verde sbiadita, il cui tono delicato risultava ancor più ingentilito dagli anni, May era l'immagine d'una serena e squisita, ma impenetrabile sfinge, la cui testa, per no...more

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Jul 06, 2012 míol mór rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: finished, on, dec, 2, 2008, copyleft, dodo, press, short, stories, anglo-america, 900, gay

Versione italiana qui: http://bit.ly/sxIqx4

Jamesian studies in my department were so strong that three courses of my curriculum dealt with Henry James, of which one was monographic and a second analyzed American history and institutions through the works of the James Bros. (I shan��t dwell). As a consequence I developed a barely-concealed and equally strong dislike for the novelist. I still can��t stand his novels, and some of his novellas. On the other hand, years afterwards I still maintain...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Jesse rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

While James' style can be rigid and damn near petrified, he makes up for it with a wondrous portrait of psychological horror. showing us that one of the scariest monsters in the world is the one that resides within: the ego. this, a monster that feeds off of insecurity, self-doubt and an unyielding desire to be loved. this villian that lives within and can take innocuous yearnings (the desire to be unique) and transform them into beasts that lurk inside the jungle of the mind - waiting. the best...more While James' style can be rigid and damn near petrified, he makes up for it with a wondrous portrait of psychological horror. showing us that one of the scariest monsters in the world is the one that resides within: the ego. this, a monster that feeds off of insecurity, self-doubt and an unyielding desire to be loved. this villian that lives within and can take innocuous yearnings (the desire to be unique) and transform them into beasts that lurk inside the jungle of the mind - waiting. the best part of this story was the almost time-travel-like inevitability of john marcher's personal prediction. a self-fulfilling prophecy, that may bartram tried, in the moments before her end, to get him to betray. but marcham couldn't resist the pull of individuality and still desired to know, to possess the knowledge of what his special and prodigous beast actually was. the irony being that this intransigence opened the very cage that was holding the beast at bay. much like the myth of pandora's box, in this case the beast was pure knowledge: the knowledge of failure, the knowledge of a quotidian existence despite the overwhelming feeling of specialness that is the dirty byproduct of consiousness. and yet human love, and self-sacrifice can clean the feeling of filth, can allow us to feel truly special and - in a sense - to transform us into something larger than our petty need to overcome mortality. this was what may bartram wanted for john. but he could not resist; and like adam in the garden (with a helpful eve this time, admonishing him to AVOID the apple), marcher swallowed the knowledge that destoyed him. at heart religious, spiritual, didactic, and filled with a message of love, the 'beast in the jungle' pounces on the reader as well - as we realize WE wanted the information also. the dangerous instict of curiosity is raised in the reader early on: as we want to know what the beast is as much as marcher does. and just like him, we march on in spite of warnings and admonishments from the only character who actually loves: may bartram. and james' novella acts as a clear bell, ringing the need of love and fellowship over curiosity and ego - lest the beast track you as well, annihilating you in the foliage of your own personal jungle.(less)

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Oct 04, 2011 Lady Jane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is truly an unforgettable psychological portrait. John Marcher, the protagonist, is re-acquainted with May Bartram, a woman he knew ten years earlier, who remembers his odd secret-- Marcher is seized with the belief that his life is to be defined by some catastrophic or spectacular event, lying in wait for him like a "beast in the jungle." Miss Bartram is stupefied by this, but does nothing to make him think that she thinks him odd for such a belief. In fact, she takes him very seriously an...more This is truly an unforgettable psychological portrait. John Marcher, the protagonist, is re-acquainted with May Bartram, a woman he knew ten years earlier, who remembers his odd secret-- Marcher is seized with the belief that his life is to be defined by some catastrophic or spectacular event, lying in wait for him like a "beast in the jungle." Miss Bartram is stupefied by this, but does nothing to make him think that she thinks him odd for such a belief. In fact, she takes him very seriously and promises to stand by him and wait with him for this catastrophe to occur.

Thus, Miss Bartram decides to take a flat nearby in London, and to spend her days with Marcher curiously awaiting what fate has in stall for John. Of course Marcher is a self-centered egoist, believing that he is precluded from marrying so that he does not subject his wife to his "spectacular fate". The saddest part of the story is that as he sits idly by and allows the best years of his life to pass, he takes May down as well, until the denouement wherein he learns that the great misfortune of his life was to throw it away, and to ignore the love of a good woman, based upon his preposterous sense of foreboding.

This is the perfect example of a man who ruins his life by being extremely careful and fearful of "the bad things that might occur if he marries…." He abstained from marrying the woman who eventually turned out to be his life partner, just because he was too afraid about the treacherous events that he wrongly predicted for himself. That Miss Bartram would be willing to waste her life with him with no guarantees of anything is even more tragic. Marcher's behaviour, in its very essence, is an extreme case of egotism and childishness, while Miss Bartram is a deep, poetic, mature, and intelligent woman. My question is, then, what does she find in Marcher? Why does she sacrifice her life for him? These are questions that yet need to be answered. What initially began as a trivial interest in Marcher and his silly occurrences turned into a fixation, perhaps love for him. As he takes her with him, she can no longer escape and is immersed in his world. She becomes the victim of his downfall and ignorance.

It is a beautiful and haunting tale of egotism, fear of the unknown, and unrequited love. Henry James invented Marcher as a way to show us the mirror. After all, don't we all fear the unknown to a certain extent? Marcher is a man frozen by his fears and a sense of impending disaster, and the moral of the story teaches us all that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.(less)

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Oct 26, 2010 Casey Merritt rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a story that is essentially about nothing. I don't mean to say that all stories are somehow about nothing, I quite literally mean that this story is about nothing. It has a frame of course, because then it would not be a story, but the frame is that it is about a man, Marcher, who does nothing with his life. He believes that some great catastrophe will happen to him, and to avoid it he essentially stops living life. He feels passionate about nothing, and while he loves himself a great de...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Brian by: Proustitute

**** SPOILER ALERT **** (But please, before reading this review, invest the time in reading James's short story. You will be glad you did, regardless of whether you return to read the following)

In one of the best reviews I've ever read of a piece of fiction (Note: any review, not just a Goodreads review), friend Aubrey pens in her opening thoughts on Infinite Jest: "Real life is a pain. Real life is a bitch." Note the double use of the word "real", for it isn't just life that is a pain and a bit...more **** SPOILER ALERT **** (But please, before reading this review, invest the time in reading James's short story. You will be glad you did, regardless of whether you return to read the following)

In one of the best reviews I've ever read of a piece of fiction (Note: any review, not just a Goodreads review), friend Aubrey pens in her opening thoughts on Infinite Jest: "Real life is a pain. Real life is a bitch." Note the double use of the word "real", for it isn't just life that is a pain and a bitch, it's life that is real.

Forget the Socratic maxim that the unexamined life is not worth living, it is the unexperienced life, Real Life, that isn't worth living. If you are reading this review, you didn't get to Goodreads by accident, and you certainly didn't click on this review of a Henry James novella for kicks. You are a lover of the written word, of literature, story writ of conflict that exists as a telling of the human condition. And how do we approach these tales of conflict, stories often with unhappy endings, of humans suffering? Why do we keep coming back for more, sifting these stories through our own filters of pain? Because this is all we have. Let's face it, as lovers of literature, poetry, biographies and plays we are invested in exploring, experiencing and living the human condition. Without our own daily commitment to living the personal story we find ourselves in, these written words would be meaningless. Real life is a pain. Real life is a bitch. Yes.

This masterful short piece by James, a literay exposition of the importance of engaging in Real Life, is presented in a manner both very accessible and opaque. After reading this story twice in succession, I fully understand how GR friend Proustitute claims to find new ways of approaching the text after a dozen readings. Here is the opening sentence of the story. Friendly reader, do me a kindness and read it three or four times as I did before continuing with this review:

"What determined the speech that startled him in the course of their encounter scarcely matters, being probably but some words spoken by himself without intention - spoken as they lingered and slowly moved together after their renewal of acquaintance."

If you've read this story at least once, I hope that this opening sentence resounds with hidden meaning and is as haunting to you as it was to me. "What determined the speech that startled him ... scarcely matters" - that is a falsehood. It does matter. The protagnoist Marcher needs more meaning, more self examination into those compass points in his life that go uncharted. For what truly is the Beast that awaits us in the Jungle? For Marcher it is some unknown, unspeakable rare and strange terror that will happen to him, and presumably ruin his life. But by creating the traps in his life to snare the tiger, he neglected the asp. You see, Marcher, the Beast isn't the tragic event. It's the loss of a life not lived, of not investing in the You, even with full knowledge that it could yield real pain while living alongside the potential of bearing the fruit of real joy. James deftly shows us that the unexperienced life has the capacity to give us the pain without ever experiencing the joy.

It is clear where James's feelings lie on the answer to Hamlet's existential question. Yes, it is nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Give us a healthy does of that fortune so outrageous. We are ready to take our chances. Fire when ready.(less)

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Dec 03, 2012 Eric Byrnes rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have the suspicion that Henry James' writing will grow on me the more I've read of his oeuvre. My reading of "The Beast in the Jungle," initially tried my patience, as it seemed unnecessarily prolix with parentheticals, and self-indulgently self-analytical; by the end of the story I'd realized that this style was par for course and, in fact, intimately tied to the story's psychological plot and moral purpose.

I'd initially given this a two-star review but upgraded it to three when I considered...more I have the suspicion that Henry James' writing will grow on me the more I've read of his oeuvre. My reading of "The Beast in the Jungle," initially tried my patience, as it seemed unnecessarily prolix with parentheticals, and self-indulgently self-analytical; by the end of the story I'd realized that this style was par for course and, in fact, intimately tied to the story's psychological plot and moral purpose.

I'd initially given this a two-star review but upgraded it to three when I considered how the very ending of the story tied the ornate and somewhat confusing spaghetti-network of thoughts into a seemly bow. One needs to consider this story as a tale told from the perspective of John Marcher, a man whose very modus vivendi is to remain chronically stymied from living life, paralyzed with psychological fear of the vicissitudes of life itself. In my adjusted reckoning, the cumbersome parentheticals and the ornate language that seem to say so little ultimately said so much more by nature of their saying little in words. What those fearful, meandering, and excessive words of hand-wringing self-analysis spell out clearly is this: whatever misfortunes life may bring, if we spend life analyzing auguries of our uncertain future and hiding in the shadow of the impending doom of happenstance, we risk suffering the greatest misfortune of all. That greatest of misfortunes, James reminds us, is the realization that in fearing life we had never allowed ourselves to have truly lived. In that realization, all of our ornately tangled thoughts and theories, all of our fearful analyses of our once uncertain future become certain vanities in the perfect hindsight of our squandered past; we recognize them too late as our missed opportunities for living life. So, having finished the story, I'd have to say that, "The Beast in the Jungle," succeeds not in spite of its messily ornate, yet vapid, prose style but very much due to it, for it functions in underscoring the vast emptiness of a life experienced only tentatively and marked by a frenetic thought process ruled by fear and avoidance.

The moral of this story appears in other works by Henry James—this doesn't surprise me as the ethos is as clear as it is simple, and perhaps for this reason it's all too easily ignored by many as platitudinous advice—and James expresses it succinctly in his novel The Ambassadors: “Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?” What one should take away from reading "The Beast in the Jungle" was beautifully and simply expressed by a present-day writer of a more colloquial bent: "Get busy living, or get busy dying."
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Oct 31, 2012 Caitlin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Henry James, the great American writer. This one took me awhile to get into it but I am really glad I stuck with it. I am reading it in a collection called, "Eleven Modern Short Novels." The anthology is in chronological order and this was in between Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and Kafka's "Metamorphosis." Its position gave it an old-fashioned feel, both in terms of style and content. The writing is beautiful and wordy, as it always is with James. The story however is of a man who the reader di...more

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Feb 21, 2013 Mike Puma rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

Briefly; it’s a novella after all.

Apparently, enough time had lapsed after reading Proustitute’s fine review and Lee’s (perhaps, due to the good news of his new daughter) and Jesse’s, that I’d completely forgotten the story/novella’s subtext. All well and good. What remained was seeing three reviews for a short Henry James title, and it was a short title I was in need of; I will catch up on my 2013 reading goal, I will dammit. So, when I started reading this story, it wasn’t long before I was th

...more

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Dec 26, 2011 Dusty rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: graduate-school, read-in-2011

I read this novella reprinted, in full, in The Portable American Realism Reader. Henry James is himself something like a beast in the jungle of American literature: His stories are intricate and (arguably) verbose to the point that his words occlude the events they allegedly describe. I nearly always either avoid or postpone reading them. And yet, when I finally do slow myself down to process his work, he pounces. Essentially, The Beast in the Jungle is the story of a man who's so convinced some...more

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Jan 27, 2011 William Ramsay rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Continuing on with Henry James. This is a very short work. It's about a man who is convinced that something great is in store for him. This knowledge affects his entire life. Only one other person knows of his great secret, a girl he meets by chance on a trip to Italy. They become friends and over the years she helps him watch for his great moment to arrive.

In a way the book is a bit predictable and it also seems to me a bit amateurish, as it was written by a first year English major.

James, as...more

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Jul 18, 2012 Piperitapitta rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: autori-usa, letteratura-usa, racconti

«Vorrei vivere ancora per voi, se potessi.»

È la terza volta che lo rileggo nel giro di pochi mesi, ed ogni volta aggiungo una parola, sottolineo una frase, afferro qualcosa che la volta precedente mi era sfuggita.
In questa edizione mi aiuta a comprendere meglio il significato di alcuni particolari anche una preziosissima introduzione che mi fa notare, sottolineando il fatto che nessun nome in Henry James è casuale, che «La casa dell'incontro cruciale tra i due si chiama Weatherend e il nome di l...more

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Jan 15, 2013 James Morton rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I started this book after a long read of another thick fantasy tome which I subject myself to (I love it really), and I think anything would have been refreshing to my palate after it, but I was completely unready for what I was about to read. I think this is one of the most powerful books I've ever read. Short, or maybe 'concise' would be a better word. Zero fat. From the blurb you expect something of action and excitement to happen (rather like the lead character does), and that made it so the...more

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Jan 05, 2008 Melissa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If only all bachelors aged 26 and older would read this...the world would be a different place indeed.

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Jan 27, 2013 Kristina Pasko rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Henry James is not easy to read. I had to re-read sentences a few times to understand what the subject is; he uses "it" a lot, not ambiguously, but some effort is required to trace what the "it" refers to. Also, this was not exactly an uplifting book. Marcher is so self-centered he allows (and encourages) May to waste her life "waiting" with him for the Beast. But she's complicit; the two share an almost-impenetrable language in their dialogue that only ever relates to the wait or to the Beast/c...more

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Apr 07, 2013 Denise Avitia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Most pivotal book for me during college when I was trying to find myself or be who I was or stop being so self-absorbed and depressive...Henry James' style of writing is hard to get through but the message still sticks with me today...worth the 40 some pages to read now :) if you haven't and struggle with issues of meaning or purpose in life...understanding yourself and your place in this world...i want to add a spoiler alert and summarize what this book meant for me but I'd rather you read it c...more

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Mar 11, 2012 B.E. Scully rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I’m a big Henry James fan—the gorgeous prose, the nuanced understanding of the equally nuanced human condition(s)—even those twisting, turning sentences that, half a page later, leave me as wonderfully wrung out as they are. Now, having said that, I must admit that The Beast in the Jungle is a challenge even by Henry James standards, and about twenty pages in, I was beginning to regret having started in the first place.

So, warning thus in place, here we go… The conceit that begins and determines

...more

So, warning thus in place, here we go… The conceit that begins and determines the story is protagonist John Marcher’s deeply ingrained, unshakable belief that his life is to be defined by some catastrophic or spectacular event that is lying in wait for him like a "beast in the jungle." He has only shared this belief with one person, a woman named May Bartram who by a chance encounter comes back into his life years after they first met. Thus reunited, May decides to spend her life with Marcher awaiting the fate that is in store for him, despite the fact that Marcher never allows her to get too close to him lest she, or anyone, be subjected to his “spectacular fate.” Only when it is too late does Marcher realize that the jungle is his own barren life, and that the Beast has been there all along--his refusal of passion and love rendering him “the man of his time…to whom nothing on earth was to have happened.”

All of this comes together at the end of the novella to reveal some breath-taking insights and reflections about love and devotion even, as in May’s case, without any hope of return; about the egoism and fear that can sneak up and slowly lay waste to one’s soul; about loneliness, fate, loss, and the ultimate worth and meaning of a life. These themes alone make the struggle through the sometimes dense narrative and cryptic dialogue worth the journey; in addition, even though James’s prose is not quite as consistently galvanizing as in masterpieces like Portrait of a Lady, he doesn’t fail to deliver, on occasion, those breath-taking phrases and dream-like sentences. This is definitely not light afternoon reading, but if you’re looking for a dive into the bottom of some deep and poignant waters, take the plunge with this one—and despite the sad ending, for some reason I felt a strange comfort that stayed with me long after the last page, perhaps a bit like the not-in-vain whispers of the little bit of May Bartram and John Marcher in all of us.

Favorite Quotes:

“…that long fresh light of waning April days which affects us often with a sadness sharper than the greyest hours of autumn.”

“It wouldn’t have been failure to be bankrupt, dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything.”

“What then has happened?”… “What was to,” she said.

“He kneeled on the stones, however, in vain; they kept what they concealed; and if the face of the tomb did become a face for him it was because her two names became a pair of eyes that didn’t know him.”

"The escape would have been to love her; then, then he would have lived."

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Jun 26, 2012 Nicolle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, classics, 1900s, short-stories

I wasn't sure about this novella at first as it was just nothing like I expected and to me this wasn't a good thing. I wasn't entirely sure what was going on but a few pages in when the dialogue started upon the introduction of May Bartram I really started to understand the title of the book and the whole purpose - waiting for the 'beast' to pounce and in the meantime contemplating in what form the 'beast' will take.

It was a short read, only taking me a couple of hours all in. I have to be hone...more

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Nov 29, 2011 shanties rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-century, anglo-america, copyleft, dodo-press, homosex, short-stories

The Jamesian Reread #1

Jamesian studies in my department were so strong that three courses of my curriculum dealt with Henry James, of which one was monographic and a second analyzed American history and institutions through the works of the James Bros. (I shan’t dwell). As a consequence I developed a barely-concealed and equally strong dislike for the novelist. I still can’t stand his novels, and some of his novellas. On the other hand, years afterwards I still maintain a fond memory about his...more

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Apr 30, 2011 Phil Mc rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Moving? Well, the narrative is reasonably clever and certainly created its share of pathos when I think back; however, James' obfuscatory sentence structure turns what should be a touching and poignant novella into a heavy slog through clause after clause of unnecessary information which serves only to obscure the intial point of the sentence.

This could and should have been greater than it is. A real disappointment but still well worth wading through for the tragic, human denouement.

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Apr 08, 2012 Andrew Pessin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

boy, what a lot of words to say so little. i've never gotten the henry james thing. this long story (novella?) has a pretty ridiculous premise, and strikes me as extremely overblown emotionally. or at least i think it is, given how hard it is to plow one's way through james's endless sentences with their innumerable sub-clauses. don't get me wrong: i like words as much as the next guy. but my brain is too small to handle them in more than, say, 35 or 40-word chunks.

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Sep 04, 2011 Peter Dunn rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Loved the idea of a man sure that an unknown terrible event will happen to him at some point. The tale loses its punch towards the end when it begins to get obvious roughly what is coming ( to everyone bar the protagonist - though that in itself is the point). I do like this Penguin short classics series – they do provide nice novellas/short story sized tasters and I might indeed try some more Henry James at some point.

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Aug 23, 2009 Catinbody rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: long-time-favorites

James managed to slowly build my own sense of dread for "the beast in the jungle" so that in the final pages, when John Marcher finally realizes precisely what has dogged him throughout his life, I was entirely heartbroken for him, and full of dread for myself. It creeped me out! It's a cautionary tale, and the final blow is so good, I don't want to say anything to spoil it for anyone.

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Apr 19, 2011 Claudio Chagas rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The narrative gradually evolves in flashback and there is tremendous suspense throughout the story, the painstaking construction of an existential quest to know the truth about his imagination. I usually prefer stories which offer a little more hope for a brighter future, but this was a very good read. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough.

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Aug 26, 2012 Enrico rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

John Marcher met agai May Bartram ,a woman formerly met 10 years before.He told that he waited for an "unforeseeable huge fact" ..sort of a beast in the jungle.This book tells the story of this man's obsession until May dies.The unpredictable huge fact remains unknown.This book tells about ...nothing.Boring book -(read the Italian edition La Bestia nella giungla, Il Sole 24 Ore,2011)

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Mar 02, 2013 Peter rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: penguin-classics, penguin-modern-classics

I know the style is dense and unique, a style that demands the reader's full concentration. But this novella, a portrait of a man's self-obsession leading to deep psychological tragedy, is so real, so human as to be truly a deeply moving cautionary tale for real grown-ups.

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May 12, 2011 Julie Rylie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

At first this book bored me to hell, you are totally expecting something different from the title "the beast and the jungle", and then you get two weird human beings having strange conversations about "the mistery of their lives" and how to figure it out.

And the book goes on with those strange conversations sometimes allusive to "a jungle" and a "beast" as in a weird metaphore that will make you read the whole book and then finally understand what that was about, because until then it was just...more

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Dec 30, 2010 Hayley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is what I would call a Good Reads. It's the one Henry James piece I've truly been able to get into. It's also a book that I take to be a cautionary tale in my life as it's just so heartbreaking and so plausable to happen to me. Good reads!

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About Henry James

Henry James, OM, son of theologian Henry James Sr., brother of the philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James, was an American-born author, one of the founders and leaders of a school of realism in fiction. He spent much of his life in England and became a British subject shortly before his death. He is primarily known for a series of major novels in which he portrayed the...more

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Quotes from The Beast in the Jungle

“It was as if these depths, constantly bridged over by a structure that was firm enough in spite of its lightness and of its occasional oscillation in the somewhat vertiginous air, invited on occasion, in the interest of their nerves, a dropping of the plummet and a measurement of the abyss. A difference had been made moreover, once for all, by the fact that she had, all the while, not appeared to feel the need of rebutting his charge of an idea within her that she didn't dare express, uttered just before one of the fullest of their later discussions ended.” — 3 people liked it

“I’ll watch with you.” — 3 people liked it

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