I have become obsessed with two brothers, William and Henry James. Born in the mid-1800s, each achieved fame in different fields of study and work. William James makes everyone’s short list of history’s most influential psychologists, laying the groundwork for others, sometimes called the father of American psychology. His younger brother Henry makes the same kind of list for the most influential novelists of the English language.
I am immersing myself in the works and the lives of both men. I practiced psychiatry for 40 years and am now trying to find my way as an author of fiction and memoir. Need I say more about the attraction to me of these men? The question that presents is who knows best the human heart, those who analyze and study it, or the writer who observes and describes it? In my exploration of the writing and the life of Henry James, the novelist, I have come upon one of the most remarkable books I have read, The Master, by Colm Toibin. The book is not easily described. Toibin, Professor of Humanities at Columbia University, takes the voluminous information about James’s life and work and creates a novel that attempts to describe the mind and heart of this great writer. One way to describe the book is an imagined inner life of a very private man, indeed, even a description of the creative process itself. The Master is not a biography. Some reviewers hesitate to endorse the book as truly capturing James’s experiences. Others, including John Berendt (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil), praise Toibin as doing “more than observe Henry James, he inhabits him.” Beyond the question of fidelity to James, Toibin’s skill and beauty as a novelist himself is stunning. Should one read The Master simultaneously with Portrait of a Lady by James, one might say that James inhabits Toibin and delivers through him the emotional intimacy and psychological subtlety for which James is known.
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AuthorI read. I write. I learn. I’m in a writing group and I have four published books. I’m still pretty sure I’m not Steinbeck, but my heart and soul have found their way back to where they should be. Archives
February 2022
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