The Year of Henry James: The Story of a Novel With Other Essays on the Genesis, Composition and Reception of Literary Fiction

by David Lodge

Throws light on the dominant literary form of two centuries, in its twin aspects as work of art and commodity. The first part of this book traces the history of the author's novel about Henry James. The essays in the second part pursue the themes of genesis, composition and reception in the work of other novelists.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Literary Fiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

David John Lodge was an English author and critic. A literature professor at the University of Birmingham until 1987, some of his novels satirise academic life, notably the "Campus Trilogy" – Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) and Nice Work (1988). The second two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Another theme is Roman Catholicism, beginning from his first published novel The Picturegoers (1960). Lodge also wrote television screenplays and three stage plays. After retiring, he continued to publish literary criticism. His edition of Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (1972) includes essays on 20th-century writers such as T.S. Eliot. In 1992, he published The Art of Fiction, a collection of essays on literary techniques with illustrative examples from great authors, such as Point of View (Henry James), The Stream of Consciousness (Virginia Woolf) and Interior Monologue (James Joyce), beginning with Beginning and ending with Ending.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is literarily the most incestuous book – literarily not literally, I am not suggesting anything about these guys’ families. It’s all about how two prominent novelists hit on the same idea at the same time – a biographical novel about Henry James (a writer who also liked to write about writers) - but not just that, taking the exact same pivotal period in his long life and exploring the tragicomic implications – but they didn’t realise it until the last moment when the first one, Colm Toibin’s The Master was published in March 2004 followed miserably by David Lodge’s Author Author in September 2004.

This kind of co-incidence has happened before – Antz and A Bug’s Life, Capote and Infamous, Marguerite and Florence Foster Jenkins - not to mention ten guys inventing television in 1927, and three different guys all independently deciding to shoot JFK in Dallas. It’s just the zeitgeist, no need to read too much into it. But of course very awkward if you come up with the second biographical novel about Henry James published in 6 months, especially when the first one is shortlisted for the Booker prize and yours isn’t.

So David Lodge gets his revenge by writing about this farcical situation and thus gets a second book out of it. He also beautifully exposes the lifestyle of these novelist grandees, swanning around the world from one literary festival to the next book fair, making documentaries for public television, reviewing each other’s books and coming up with gems like this

It is always disconcerting to encounter a description of yourself unexpectedly in someone else’s book

This is when Lodge is reading Toibin’s travel book Signs of the Cross, and comes across the bit about when they met in Cebrero, Galicia, in Spain, when Lodge was making a documentary about the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella and Toibin was actually doing the pilgrimage. But consider – this statement tells us that it’s not the first time our David has unexpectedly found a description of himself in a book he was reading – leaving aside all the times when an author had fore-warned him that there would be a description of him in their new book. I myself have read a fair number of books and never once found a description of myself in any of them, either unexpectedly or expectedly. For someone like David Lodge this happens multiple times!

Mr Lodge is also a master of backdoor bragging, described by Jenna Maroney in 30 Rock as follows:

Backdoor bragging is sneaking something wonderful about yourself in everyday conversation. Like when I tell people it's hard for me to watch American Idol cause I have perfect pitch.

Here’s David Lodge explaining that eight years after his first Spanish encounter with Colm Toibin, he met him again, but this time had later completely forgotten about it :

If this seems improbable, bear in mind that I had only seen Colm Toibin in the flesh for about an hour, eight years previously, and in the meantime his physical appearance had altered. It is not surprising he recognized me : I am famous among my acquaintance for not changing much in appearance, and looking younger than my years… when Toibin described me in his book as being in my late forties I was in fact fifty-seven.

As well as these two novels, there was, all around the years 2003 and 2004, Felony by Emma Tennant which had Henry James as a minor character and The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (the Booker winner) which had his main character writing a thesis on Henry James; plus DL became aware of another novel manuscript which was seeking a publisher called The Typewriter’s Tale by Michiel Heyns, which had Henry James’ secretary as the protagonist. That one came out in 2005.

More than a little odd.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm confused. All the educational programs I see on my local public TV channel about the brain, or aging, or the aging brain (oh, boomer generation, you have a lot to answer for!), are unanimous: one of the few consolations of the whole built-in obsolescence that lies ahead is that our judgement should improve with age.

Apparently not in every case. Last year, the onset of late middle age spooked the normally sensible Julian Barnes into publishing the eructation of fatuously narcissistic bloviation titled (quite inaccurately) "Nothing to be Afraid Of". And now, one of my favorite British authors, the eminently sane David Lodge, comes out with this unfortunate book. Though it comes nowhere close to matching the self-important narcissism of Barnes's mistake, it is nevertheless a regrettable lapse of judgement from an author who is smart enough to know better.

I'm sure we can all empathize, Professor Lodge - it must have been a real bummer when you submitted the final manuscript of your Henry James book "Author, Author" only to learn that another author had just finished a similar book, scheduled to be published six months ahead of yours. Particularly when the competition was the ultra-talented Colm Toibin. You have every right to feel bad. But you really didn't need to write a book about it. No matter what you write, it will be perceived as whining. Believe me, nobody else cares about this as much as you do. And the more you write, the less the reader cares. This is how one alienates one's fanbase. Next time, consider the dignified silence option.

To be fair, only 100 pages of the book are given over to snivelling about being beaten to the punch by Colm Toibin and, objectively speaking, Professor Lodge doesn't actually snivel - it just seems that way. But after ploughing through those 100 pages, the reader is unlikely to be favorably disposed towards the remaining essays (on works by H.G. Wells, Graham Greene, George Eliot among others). I found the remarks on Nabokov's "Pnin" and on writers who influenced Graham Greene interesting - the other essays were readable, if a little dull; Professor Lodge's apparent awe for Umberto Eco renders that essay a little mushy.

There is no real reason for anyone outside of Professor Lodge's immediate family to read this book.

[Sanjay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes self-effacing, sometimes defensive, but always revealing of the plight of an author who finds that his book dealing with episodes in the life of the Master has been trumped -- both in terms of reviews and publication date -- by another novelist. The other essays and reviews, most of which have been published earlier, are equally incisive and readable, especially the one on Graham Greene's 'anxiety of influence'.

[Tessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ce recueil d'essais sur la littérature m'a beaucoup intéressée. Sauf le premier chapitre qui traite de la polémique entre Colm Toibin et Lodge à propos de leur biographie romancée respective publiées à quelques mois d'intervalle. Je connaissais le sujet et les états d'âme de Lodge ne m'ont pas touchée outre mesure. Par contre les autres essaies, notamment sur Vladimir Nabokov, J. M. Coetzee et Umberto Eco m'ont passionnée. Fine analyse des styles de ces auteurs, de leur immense talent et de l'impact de leur publication (Pninn et Lolita, Elizabeth Costello, Le nom de la rose), ces écrits m'ont vraiment donné envie de lire ces livres que je n'ai pas encore lu. Je connaissais le romancier David Lodge et je le savais professeur de littérature mais je ne soupçonnais pas qu'il puisse me captiver à ce point avec ses analyses littéraires. Un grand plaisir de lecture.

[Rebecca Sloane]

Very entertaining book of literary criticism. He is a bit gossipy, but not afraid to be self critical, so he comes across well. The first long essay that is the title of the book is interesting and funny. I had no idea how books come to be published and how the timing means everything in terms of sales and prizes. Reading his pieces on other authors inspired me to read or re-read those authors.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful as always

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great read for would-be writers, as Lodge does a masterful description of what it was like for him to conceive of an idea, spend years working on it, and---all unknowing--publish it in the same year as 3 other books on the same topic and in the same genre of biographical-novel-about-a-writer. Though a bit rendolent of sour grapes (one of the other books made the Booker short list that year), Lodge's description of the horror he felt when he found out about the other novels rang true and his analysis of the zeitgeist that led to this fiasco is masterful. The rest of the book is a series of different talks he's given on other writers and seemed more like a way to flesh out the book and also make sure his talks got a second go. For the non-writer, he gets a bit professory and literary, especially in the latter chapters. But the first chapter, while not my normal fare, was quite interesting.

[Mary Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about 2004, when David Lodge's book Author, Author was the third among three books published that year on Henry James. And while some of this work is told from an inevitable position of defensiveness, it is also a tale of human emotion and behavior. The reader also gains insight into the world of publishing.
Really, it seems a wonder that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often. After all, how many original and interesting subjects are there? Add to that query the question of whether the subject would be an interesting novel instead of a biography. So Lodge here describes his perspective, and the unenviable position of weakness for a project and subject that he clearly loved.
I have not read any of the three books described, but I hope to do so soon, as well as read more Henry James!

[Marie Bouteille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dealing with the same topics as Author, Author, different writers' approach of writing, but in a different way. You don't feel that you're reading critics.