The Ambassadors by Henry James

[[deleted user]]

3 Stars

At just over 500 pages this book does require the reader to make a pretty hefty commitment to it and what do they get in return…not a lot.

There is a lot of wondering around Paris, a lot of thinking, a lot of moralising and a lot of confusion and at the end I was left thinking was that it?

I liked the central premise that rather than saving the son the “ambassador” instead finds himself saved by Paris and the alternative lifestyle which appears to be superior to the American lifestyle he has left behind.

[Tatjana]

My rating: 2 stars

Well, I agree there is not much happening in this pretty long novel by Henry James.
Strether, an older American gentleman is sent to Europe to find and bring home young Chad Newsome by his rich family. It is, therefore, that Strether becomes "the Ambassador" of Mrs. Newsome in Europe. On his way to England, and in particular France and Paris he meets old and new friends and decides to "live" his life.

[Rosemary]

Rating: 3 stars

Lewis Lambert Strether, an American in his fifties, arrives in Europe tasked with rescuing a widowed ladyfriend's son from the clutches of the wicked Frenchwoman that everyone assumes has got her hooks into him. But both the woman and her effects on Chad turn out to be charming, and Strether is soon questioning where his loyalties lie.

Reading this book was like fishing for tasty nuggets in a thick and murky soup of words. The dialogue has some wonderful moments, but there were other sentences I couldn't puzzle out at all, and some of the characters seemed as lifeless as furniture. What was the point of Waymarsh or Miss Barrace?

Overall it was an interesting read, but I'd have preferred the same story told by, say, Edith Wharton.

[Patrick]

**

- in fine: an expression I have seen more than 100 times in this book and don't want to see again. I hope James got lambasted as much as Zola was for his overuse of the word vautré in Thérèse Raquin.
- come out: considering how often the expression was used in the novel, one would assume that you are reading a LGTBIQ+ novel. Well, far from that, and it appeared it had more than one meaning in this novel (and not even one close to the contemporary meaning).
- I read the 470-page Penguin Classics edition, and it was excrutiating. My advice for other readers is just to stick to Book Tenth Chapter III: this gives you enough of the story without ruining your enjoyment.
- This was meant as an exploration of different American responses to a European environment. Well, it felt like an American movie director trying to shoot a French movie following the French style of moviemaking. And it failed. Because he overemphasized some subtle traits to the point of ridicule. Worse: he even made some of his characters behave as if they were 100% European.
- As Rosemary pointed out, what was the point of Waymarsh (a boorish delator?), Miss Barrace (an ornamental plant? M. Barracing...) or even Little Bilham (so cuuute little puppy?)?
- Mind games where people try to guess or understand what other people might or might not do/say/feel/want, these were all described and elaborated in a very dour and painful way by James; it was quite easy to lose the plot, not because it was complicated, but because it was boresome.

[Pamela]

The Ambassadors are actually just ordinary middle class people sent from the US by the forbidding Mrs Newsome to bring her errant son Chad home from Paris. First comes Strether, Mrs Newsome’s ‘possible’ fiancé, but he finds himself captivated by Paris, and by Chad and his amour Madame de Vionnet. So Mrs Newsome sends the big guns - her unwavering daughter Sarah with her husband and sister-in-law, and Strether is forced to choose his course of action and its consequences.

I feel I just don’t have the patience for Henry James, and I fully agree with Rosemary’s comments about fishing for tasty nuggets. The essence of the story is a compelling one, with the comparison between European and American attitudes, and there are some perceptive observations and snatches of witty dialogue scattered around.

However, I got very bogged down and frustrated with the sheer wordiness of it all, with Strether’s dithering and over analysing, and with the refusal of any character to clearly define what they thought and then clearly state it to others. This mirrored James’ refusal to show rather than tell why anyone found Mme de Vionnet so alluring or ‘wonderful’, or in what way Chad had changed, we just had to take their word for it.

I did enjoy the ending, and there were moments of brilliance, but overall too exhausting for me.

[Jenna]

I am definitely the lone fan so far :) But I'm an experimental fiction kinda gal and this is definitely pretty wacky modern for how old it is. My review below:

From the first, indeed exemplary, broken sentence, or rather the perpetually interrupted delivery, as if always reflecting mid-thought, perhaps as one does in life, but still making it jarringly hard to find a rhythm as a reader, I realized why I had not yet really read James. Okay sorry, I couldn’t resist. But the truth is this is a terrible reason to not have read James, because one does get into his rhythm eventually - and even though I found it rather foreign to my rhythms of thought, in some ways it put me even more forcefully into Strether’s mind instead. And what an incredible tour de force it is to evoke one mind and one perspective so intensely and acutely – to see the whole social situation unfold only from this one vantage, not a fly on the wall, but one nestled in the flower pinned to his button hole, overhearing one conversation at a time. It's wild, there are no intervening passages of plot driven by anyone doing anything – we only ever hear of events (eg someone left town) when it is reported from one friend to another. And so the reader experiences first hand that role of the Ambassador, negotiating between parties, not knowing what is happening behind closed doors, trying to bring two sides together based on some knowledge of each, trying to read the eddies and currents, sound out friends and foes without giving too much away, without losing one’s own assurance. The situation here is not amenable to compromise; to the extent he has any, Strether’s successes and failures equally arise from his sensibility and sensitivity, and most importantly from his own openness to experience. And yet at the same time, he maintains his own extreme integrity to his mission as an Ambassador to try to do right by all parties as he sees their true interests to be, and not have a great Parisian adventure for himself, although he does/almost/could have had one (depending on how adventurous things need to be to count - life altering it is, sexy it isn't). I walked miles in his shoes and I felt a little sad, but not sorry, since he makes his own choices, for his quiet, and so romantically outdated, sacrifice.