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In January 1895 Henry James anticipates the opening of his first play, Guy Domville, in London. The production fails, and he returns, chastened and humiliated, to his writing desk. The result is a string of masterpieces, but they are produced at a high personal cost.
This humiliation made him concentrate his talents on fiction and the course of the novel shows James becoming 'The Master' of his craft. There is only one scene of sexual experience for young Henry, but Oscar Wilde appears throughout the novel as an example of someone who has unashamedly given himself over to eroticism. Henry James, however, remains a pillar of suppression, avoidance and renunciation.
In The Master Colm Tóibín captures the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe, who was astonishingly vibrant and alive in his art, and yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love. It is a powerful account of the hazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the heart.
Paperback Published 9 April 2024 359 Pages
Orig. Published 2004, This Edition Publ. 2019
Author: Colm Toibin