William Dean HowellsBesprekingen

F/SF

$150 as used first edition signed in good condition. . Lithiograph pic of Howells, gold engraved cover, good condition, signed on paper page. Good condition but pencil writing notes on inside cover by previous owner and slightly stained cover.

$128 to $28 on Abe. Excellent Condition. Hardcover. Condition: excellent. No Jacket. 1st Edition. Fiirst edition. "Copyright 1895" stated. Date on title page. . Fine hardback. No dust jacket.

SILAS LAPHAM - The dialogue is dazzling in its realism. Outside of that, I found the novel mediocre.

William Dean Howells was born in 1837 and wrote prolifically until his death in 1920. The Rise of Silas Lapham is likely the best remembered, and most often read, of his works. It is a humorous novel with twin, intertwined plots. The first of business and social success, and then failure, in Gilded Age Boston. The other a love farce, and a commentary on ideas of romance in then current novels.

The book starts out slowly with a magazine writer interviewing Silas Lapham about his rise to success. Silas has had the good fortune of having a “paint mine” on his farm in Vermont, from which he’s been able to produce paint of such high quality that it has made him a fortune. The interview gambit serves to introduce the main characters and set up some of the tension that will play out through the book. After that slow start the plots start boiling.

The nouveau riche Laphams have relocated to Boston, and, owing to their country ways, they’ve stayed to themselves and haven’t tried to climb the social ladder to Boston’s high society. That all changes when a young man from a well established family seems to take an interest in one of their two daughters, and then flatters Silas by asking to come to work for him.

What follows is a series of misunderstandings, both in business and in love, between the honest country bred Laphams and the Boston Brahmins they find themselves mixing with.

The book stands the test of time. The language is perhaps formal, but not too formal. The style is perhaps dated, but not too dated. The humor comes through clearly. I often had a smile on my face as I raced through the pages. There are things going on in this book that make it “important” enough that it is still taught in some classrooms. But it is very accessible and easy to read as entertainment.

Reading this today, in 2022, with its young lovers and its social climbing, the whole thing struck me as being kind of an American version of Bridgerton (the TV show - I’ve not read the book). Or perhaps Bridgerton, being the later creation, is a British version of Silas Lapham. I guess the comparison is inevitable for a male reader like me, as Howells is often seen as a “women’s writer”.

As is true today, the primary audience for fiction in the 1880s was women. Howells knew that, and that is likely why he's given a prominent role to Silas's wife Persis Lapham. She is both a moral guide in business to her husband (and an equal partner in the early years), and the one the family looks to for guidance through the thicket of etiquette and expectation in Boston society. She is a fully fledged, complex character with both strengths and flaws.

Howells was also known as a “realist”. As to his place in American writing, he is sometimes said to fall between Mark Twain and Henry James. He was friends with both. James said of him that “[h]e adores the real, the natural, the colloquial, the moderate, the optimistic, the domestic, and the democratic...” That sensibility is, I think, the main reason this book has held up so well.

It doesn’t feel right to me to put Star ratings on classics like this. I recommend this book. I found that I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. “Silas Lapham” sounds like such an old-fashioned name that it does the book it's attached to a disservice. The book holds up much better than that old-fashioned name.

review of
W.D. Howells' The Landlord at Lion's Head
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 11, 2012

I got this at a bkstore that's closing up shop. This is at least the 7th bkstore to do so in PGH in the 17 yrs I've lived here. Only 1 bkstore that I can think of has replaced them. Not a good sign. On the spine of this 1897 hardback the author's name is written as "HOWELLS". When I bought it (for a dollar) I thought it read "HGWELLS". This bk is almost physically identical in size & color to 2 H.G. Wells bks I already have (The Research Magnificent & Mr. Britling Sees It Through) - even down to the gold ink of the lettering. Hence the ease of my mistake. & I got another Howells bk under the same conditions.

So here I am w/ 2 bks by an author I don't recall ever having heard of. As it turns out, he's an American who lived, according to Wikipedia, from March 1, 1837 to May 11, 1920. Then again, this novel is listed there as from 1908 & my edition is from 1897, copyrighted 1896 - so much for Wikipedia's accuracy. Wikipedia also lists at least 50 bks by him including a collaboration w/ his friend Mark Twain. I reckon most Americans have heard of Mark Twain but how many have heard of William Dean Howells?! Only the title of what's reputed to've been his most famous novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham, seems even vaguely familiar.

SO, what we have here is a prolific American author, supposedly nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters" (presumably a pun off his middle name), now largely forgotten a mere 92 yrs after his death. Looking on one online bkstore that brags of over "8,000,000" bks I find ONE by Howells. I find a few more on Amazon, 1st editions from the 19th century, reasonably priced. What's going on here?

Howells is, by reputation, a 'realist'. I usually prefer works of the imagination to works based more on observation of human nature but I like both. If I were to choose between Lautrémont's Les Chants de Maldoror (1868) & this bk, it wd be no contest. Lautrémont was a visionary genius. But Howells is far from deserving this apparent post-mortem neglect. It seems to me that, once again, canonization is rearing its ugly head. How many highly literate Americans even know much about 19th century American authors? A friend of mine (who's taught 19th c American lit) & I listed how many such authors we cd think of off the tops of our heads. We came up w/ something like 16. That's less than 1 for every 6 yrs of the century! Surely there were many more remarkable writers of the time!

When reading a 'realist' work I reckon the test, for me, is: how convinced am I of the 'realism'? What seems realistic in a novel about a hotel to a person who doesn't run one might be very different indeed to someone who actually run one. What was interesting for me about this novel was that, even tho it's framed by a very different time of societal proprieties, it still rang 'true' in terms of subtleties of human nature & issues of human conduct.

I wdn't credit this bk w/ having any formal innovations. It's a classic 19th century novel of a nature that, it seems to me, was already decades old. No matter, that doesn't completely devalue it for me despite my thirst for innovation. Having the main locale be a country summer hotel provides a solid pretext for a rotating cast of traveling characters & Howells uses this to advantage w/o just milking it as a gimmick.

While there's plenty of subtle drama here, it doesn't depend on tragedy - unlike so much these days, no-one has to be murdered in order for the plot to be engrossing. Reading it, & enjoying it, & caring about the characters, made me feel like I am, indeed, 'old-fashioned' - despite my having been about as immersed in the 'avant-garde' my whole life as just about anyone who ever has been.

Howells doesn't oversimplify, always a relief to me. The ultimate character of the title is somewhat annoying, somewhat sympathetic, & not overly depicted in stereotyping ways. He's an individual - at the same time that he's presented as a person involved in ordinary day-to-day class struggle - ie: he's not political but he's caught up in class struggle in a personal way.

A crucial scene is one where Jeff, the landlord of the title, has brought food out to clients of the hotel on a picnic. One of the 'ladies' treats him like a servant & tries to put a good face on trying to get him out of the way so he doesn't 'contaminate' (my word choice) their little party. Jeff is aware of how he's being treated. His mother, the actual landlady of the hotel at the time, learns of this & evicts the offending woman from the hotel. In a sense, this conflict then fuels much of what happens later as Jeff grows into a young man at Harvard & manipulates people who look down on him from their privileged positions.

The novel's rich enuf in details: the people who populate the hotel, Boston, alluded-to trips to Europe & Egypt, Theosophists (only mentioned as "them Blavetsky fellers" (p 190) but still present) & the use of the planchette for 'spirit communication'. I'll be reading more by Howells (maybe) but not anytime soon. If I can help revive interest in him, I'm happy to do so. At the very least, reading this made me want to visit the country in New England where Lion's Head mountain is.

review of
William Dean Howells's A Modern Instance
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 25, 2013

WARNING: This review has spoilers but is hopefully written in such a way that even if you read it thru it won't actually spoil yr enjoyment of reading the novel b/c the review doesn't give you the plot as much as it does my meta-take on the plot.

Ah.. yes, yet-another "too long" review of mine. For the full thing go here: http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/347703-review-of-william-dean-howells-s-a-mo...

It seems almost inevitable to me that reading a bk entitled A Modern Instance over 130 yrs after it was originally published is going to yield a bit of 'how modern does it seem now?' type thinking - much as a Science Fiction novel written predicting what was then the future & now the past will undergo scrutiny as to its accuracy. In this case, Howells is a very good observer of human nature & I found myself emotionally engaged in his characters in a way I wdn't have if they didn't still ring true.

As seems to be usually the case when I read a 19th century novel these days I find myself wondering why I bother when I have so many other bks to read & review that're more immediately relevant to my current life & interests. Nonetheless, I generally find the descriptions to be written w/ detail that appeals. Furthermore, what ultimately endeared me to this bk, & wch was something completely unexpected to me, was that I ended up w/ a personal take on the people in it that brought to my introspective attn some of my takes on people in general.

In particular, I found myself at odds w/ the author of the Introduction, noted Howells scholar Edwin H. Cady. Ordinarily, I read such framing material in full expectation of being illuminated by the scholarship. I accept as a given the superior knowledge of the commentator. I read Cady's Intro &, not having read the novel yet, just read it w/o having any understanding of what he was referring to. THEN I read the novel & gradually began to find Cady's introduction to it.. repulsive.. almost like a malicious gossip's unfair maligning. It was as if Cady, himself, was a particular type of person in real life who was envious of the type of person represented by the main character Bartley Hubbard & who was taking out his own frustrations on the character.

"Bartley was not a villain. There wasn't enough of him to furnish forth villainy. He was just a run-of-the-mill scoundrel with nothing much in him but a large, tender ego and a great deal of shallow cleverness. He had not an unselfish bone in his body, nor one that wasn't lazy. Is he not a modern man? Is he not the modern man, the "new man," a foregone failure?" - p xvi

The reader is certainly being set up for a completely negative perception of Bartley, in much the same way an 'expert witness' at a trial acts like a spin doctor to ruin the reputation of whoever he's being pd top dollar to defame. &, yet, consider this tidbit from a few pp later:

"But scarcely half of A Modern Instance had been serialized before Mark Twain, lost in admiration at the portrayal of the drunken scoundrel Bartley, claimed emphatically that Howells had taken Bartley from Sam Clemens. Promptly denying it, Howells said he had used himself for Bartley." - p xviii

Interesting, eh? Clemens/Twain liked the character enuf to identify w/ him & so did Howells. Given that they both may've had a sense of humor & probably more than a little bit of self-deprecating humor, they might've still felt that Bartley Hubbard wasn't w/o his redeeming qualities. So is he really "the drunken scoundrel" Cady makes him out to be? I think not. From my POV, Hubbard actually has MORE qualities than most of the other characters in the novel - most of whom are envious & contemptuous of him w/o any trace of introspection about themselves & their own privileges & weaknesses.

The novel's action precedes, happens during, & follows the contested presidential election of 1876 in wch the people voted for Samuel J. Tilden but the Electoral College voted for Rutherford B. Hayes. Hence Hayes became president against the voting public's wishes. From Howells's perspective of the 'modernity' of these times, youth was having a pretty unrestrained time of it:

"It was midnight, as the sharp strokes of a wooden clock declared from the kitchen; and they were alone together and all the other inmates of the house were asleep. This situation, hardly conceivable to another civilization, is so common in ours, where youth commands its fate, and trusts solely to itself, that it may be said to be characteristic of the New England civilization wherever it keeps its simplicity. It was not stolen or clandestine; it would have shocked no one in the village if the whole village had known it; all that a girl's parents ordinarily exacted was that they should not be waked up." - p 7

Hubbard, "the drunken scoundrel", as Cady wd have the reader think, is a handsome & witty man who gets the girls. Does Cady envy him & his counterparts in real life? After reading the whole bk, I tend to think so. In fact, much of the hatred in the novel directed against Hubbard seems to be based on such envy by people who never acknowledge it to themselves or anyone else. Whether Howells intended this to be read that way or not, I can't say. Here's Bartley flirting w/ Marcia, the girl who eventually becomes his wife, by trying to get her to write a letter accepting his invite to go on a ride thru the snow w/ him:

""Now the address. Dear"—

""No, no!" she protested.

""Yes, yes! dear Mr. Hubbard. There, that will do! Now the signature: Yours"—

""I wont write that. I wont, indeed!"

""Oh, yes you will. You only think you wont. Yours gratefully, Marcia Gaylord. That's right. The Gaylord is not very legible, on account of a slight tremor in the writer's arm, resulting from a constrained posture, perhaps. Thanks, Miss Gaylord, I will be here promptly at the hour indicated"—

"The noises renewed themselves overhead; some one seemed to be moving about. Hubbard laid his hand on that of the girl still resting on the table, and grasped it in burlesque alarm; she could scarcely stifle her mirth." - p 13

Marcia can "scarcely stifle her mirth" b/c Bartley's flirtation is doing exactly what he wants it to do: it's making her have fun, making her attracted to him. Is this "shallow cleverness" or "lazy", as Cady describes him? I think not. It's both hard work & ACTUALLY CLEVER. Cady strikes me as a type of man who ENVIES Hubbard b/c he's good at what less successful men only wish they were. The above passages are from the beginning of the novel. Cady says that "When A Modern Instance opens, Bartley is, though mildly, already demonic." (p xvii)

"Bartley is the first fully drawn worshipper of William James's "bitch-goddess Success" in American fiction. He is the new "success" type (who would so confuse later writers like Norris and Dreiser and London). Cozy, he is quick to spot a hole and dive through it to advantage. Easy-going , cynical, he lives by an unrationalized code of social Darwinism. When he can, he will 'take' anybody for anything and in any way; he will exploit and devour; never a lover or a giver, he lives psychically and professionally by grasping and extorting." - p xvii

Cady even quotes character Ben Halleck in his condemnation of Hubbard: "As early as college he had achieved, as his generous, self-sacrificing friend Halleck perceived, "no more moral nature than a baseball."" (p xvii) But there are some very, very significant things lacking in Cady's characterization here. Ben Halleck's 'generosity' is w/ inherited wealth - he didn't work for it, it's from his father's leather business. Never is Ben's wealth questioned as potential ill-gotten gains. In fact, EVERYONE'S money, except for Hubbard's, is accepted as somehow deserved - even tho the 'charitable' Clara Kingsbury is depicted as more or less completely out of touch w/ the harsh realities that she's ostensibly dedicated to 'righting'.

In fact, Ben's hatred for Bartley is rooted in one simple thing far more than any other: Bartley gets the girl(s) - in this case, Bartley specifically gets the beautiful Marcia who Ben's been pining for in secret. But Ben has a somewhat crippled leg b/c as a child he injured it after being tripped by another child. I kept wondering if this wd be neatly tied together by having the malicious tripper turn out to be Bartley. I'm thankful to Howells that he didn't go that route. Ben never acknowledges to himself that he's sexually frustrated & inhibited by his leg. Instead, Bartley, who's not nearly as horrible a husband as the others frequently choose to believe, is under constant scrutiny for any action that can be blamed against him. Bartley is assertive, he has to be to survive. Unlike Ben, he isn't wallowing in inherited wealth that enables him to wander aimlessly in a self-deluding miasma of impotent self-righteousness. Interestingly, Ben asks the lawyer Atherton, sometimes presented as one of the more ethical characters, this question about Marcia's reaction to Ben's taking Bartley home one night after Bartley had gotten uncharacteristically drunk (followed by Atherton's reply):

""Shouldn't you expect her to make you pay somehow for your privity to her disgrace, to revenge her misery upon you? Isn't there a theory that women forgive injuries, but never ignominies?"

""That's what the novelists teach, and we bachelors get most of our doctrine about women from them."" - p 283

Ben knows nothing about women, despite having 3 sisters, &, of course, there's plenty of novelistic self-reflexive humor in Atherton's reply. Ultimately, it's the moral posturing here that I can't relate to. B/c Bartley gets drunk ONCE Marcia is 'disgraced'. NOT. Was that really the way it was in that social milieu in the mid to late 19th century? I reckon yes b/c Howells seems to be an excellent realistic observer. But from my 21st century perspective that seems particularly stupid. Skipping back in the narrative a few paragraphs we have this:

""Atherton," he said, "if you found a blackguard of your acquaintance drunk on your doorstep early one morning, and had taken him home to his wife, how would you have expected her to treat you the next time you saw her?"" - pp 282-283

Ben refers to Bartley as a "blackguard", pompously passing judgment. &, yet, in one of the few instances that I see to Ben's credit, he saves Bartley from being arrested, in order to spare Marcia the misery:

""Do you know this man, Mr. Halleck?" asked the policeman.

""Yes—yes, I know him," said Ben, in a low voice. "Let's get him away quietly, please. He's all right. It's the first time I ever saw him so. Will you help me with him up to Johnson's stable? I'll get a carriage there and take him home." - p 272

Even Ben admits that "It's the first time I ever saw him so" drunk &, yet, b/c of this ONE incident & b/c he develops a habit of drinking light beer later on he's called by Cady a "drunken scoundrel".

From the Introduction, I got the impression that Bartley was a reporter. He was, but he was, more importantly, an editor. Howells was a magazine editor who transitioned away from that into full-time novelist thru this bk. Undoubtedly, Howells was critical of the ethics of mainstream publishing, undoubtedly Hubbard is used as a critical foil. But I see Hubbard as not so much a scoundrel as simply an energetic man who doesn't ethically scrutinize the givens of the social milieu he finds himself in. But neither does anyone else. All the characters are just un-self-critical players in the game they find themselves born into.

While Howells is still setting the atmosphere of the small town that the novel begins in, he writes that: "Religion had largely ceased to be a fact of spiritual experience and the visible church flourished on condition of providing for the social needs of the community." (p 24) Now given that I find religion to be one of the most malevolent forces in society b/c it encourages total obedience to a non-existent external authority that unscrupulous humans then present themselves as representatives of, I don't think that churches that provide "for the social needs of the community" are a bad idea at all. If they cd get rid of the 'god' shit & just serve an actual positive purpose for the community then they'd be much, much better from my POV.

But what surprised me here was the modernity of such a description. Throughout my adult life, as a performer I've often used church spaces for events. In BalTimOre, where I'm originally from, there were at least 4 inner-city churches that were open to political & cultural events that had no connection otherwise to the church & its dogma. EG: here's footage of a Franz Kamin performance called "A.S.R.B.#1 (Aleatoric Reactory Systemic Bulletin #1)" in a church: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tzwxfyPNTk & of another Franz Kamin peerformance of a piece called "Unknowing Games at the Hut"":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C32z98YpSDU at another church.

Cady says that Hubbard "will 'take' anybody for anything and in any way; he will exploit and devour; [& is] never a lover or a giver" but it seems to me that there are numerous instances in Howells's depiction of him that contradict this. Take this internal monolog of Hubbard's: "A distaste for their somewhat veteran ways in flirtation grew upon him as he thought of her; he philosophized against them to her advantage; he could not blame her if she did not know how to hide her feelings for him. Yet he knew that Marcia would rather have died than let him suppose that she cared for him, if she had known that she was doing it. The fun of it was that she should not know; this charmed him, it touched him even; he did not think of it exultantly, as the night before, but sweetly, fondly, and with a final curiosity to see her again, and enjoy the fact in her presence." (p 31) He thinks of Marcia "to her advantage", he's "charmed" & "touched", he thinks of matters related to her "sweetly" & "fondly" - these are hardly the characterizations of a completely hard-hearted man.

Cady prejudices the reader in advance by referring to Bartley as "the drunken scoundrel". However, this isn't born out by the narrative. Take, eg, this: "Ricker offered him his choice of beer or claret, and Bartley temperately preferred water to either; he could see that this raised him in Ricker's esteem." (p 171) Indeed, while Hubbard eventually develops a drinking habit, he's initially plagued by an actual drunkard whose excesses far exceed anything Hubbard ever reaches:

""Old Morrison was here, just before you came in, and said he wanted to see you. I think he was drunk," said Bird, anxiously. "He said he was coming back again."

[..]

"Where Morrison got his liquor from was a question that agitated Equity from time to time, and baffled the officer of the law empowered to see that no strong drink came into the town. Under conditions which made it impossible even in the logging camps, and rendered the sale of spirits too precarious for the apothecary, who might be supposed to deal in them medicinally, Morrison never failed of his spree when the mysterious mechanism of his appetite enforced it. Probably it was some form of bedevilled cider that supplied the material of his debauch; but even cider was not easily to be had." - pp 63-64

The ensuing encounter w/ the drunk Morrison is one of the key events leading to Hubbard's eventual downfall. In this encounter, Hubbard is sober. The misunderstanding deliberately fostered by Morrison's drunkenness leads to Hubbard's jealous assistant assaulting Bartley:

"Here his rage culminated, and with a blind cry of "Ay!" he struck the paper, which he had kept in his hand into Bartley's face.

"The demons, whatever they were, of anger, remorse, pride, shame, were at work in Bartley's heart too, and he returned the blow as instantly as if Bird's touch had set the mechanism of his arm in motion. In contempt of the other's weakness he struck with the flat of his hand, but the blow was enough. Bird fell headlong, and the concussion of his head upon the floor did the rest. He lay senseless." - p 69

Bartley, engaged to be married to Squire Gaylord's daughter, Marcia, is faced w/ the decision of how to break the news of his having hit Bird & of Bird's subsequent concussion: "If on the other hand, he went first to Squire Gaylord the old lawyer might insist that the engagement was already at an end by Bartley's violent act, and might well refuse to let a man in his position even see his daughter." (p 75) &, yes, Bartley is ill-perceived & treated. It appears that no-one seems to blame Bird much for the assault that resulted in his being struck back. "The more Bartley dwelt upon his hard case, during the week that followed, the more it appeared to him that he was punished out of all proportion to his offense." (p 83) Howells may've been ironically mocking Bartley's indignation here but I tend to agree w/ Hubbard's assessment & to take it even further. Hubbard was actually SORRY he'd struck Bird - & not for purely selfish reasons. I say Bird deserved it.

As for Cady's contention that Hubbard's "never a lover or a giver"? I say, once again, the narrative contradicts this. Marcia is understandably angry about a social affair she & Bartley have just gone to. She's sensitive to things that Bartley's willfully oblivious to. When they return home she rushes off to bed in a huff. Consider Bartley's reaction:

"Bartley stood a moment in the fury that tempted him to pursue her with a taunt, and then leave her to work herself out of the transport of senseless jealousy she had wrought herself into. But he set his teeth, and, full of inward cursing, he followed her upstairs with a slow, dogged step. He took her in his arms without a word, and held her fast, while his anger changed to pity, and then to laughing. When it came to that, she put up her arms, which she had kept rigidly at her side, and laid them round his neck, and began softly to cry on his breast." - p 228

Bartley chooses to de-escalate the situation rather than to give in to his anger. That strikes me as a loving & giving solution.

If you enjoy reading novels from late 19th century and early 20th century, you will enjoy this realistic novel of a man's rise to success in the United States.

Utopian fiction, without the utopian part of it :P. So this entire thing is done as a series of conversations, its like one big lecture, so not great.
Its a fairly easy read though and since its about the gap between rich and poor its still relevant today. In fact i would say too relevant, or at least too familiar.
There are things of interest here. The writing is easy and witty at times. There's some some very blinkered sexism which you can laugh or wince at. Plus a brief mention of a mega-corporation controlling all aspects of a country, perhaps one of the first appearances of such an idea.

However i'm getting more discerning with every book i read and in a world of infinite books i felt like deducting a star.

My first Howells novel, and sure, I'd probably read another one or two. Perhaps not the most terribly exciting book, and the characters are nowhere near as interesting or well-drawn as those of Trollope (for example). But it held my attention just fine, for the most part.½

This is a nice example of “be careful what you wish for because it might come true.” It’s a cautionary tale a father tells his young daughter. First published in 1908, this story was featured in Richard Paul Evans’ “The Christmas Box” and has been published again with a forward by him. It’s an interesting tale, but somehow it lacks that warm fuzzy feeling of modern Christmas stories.

An interesting book that could use maps and editing for the 21st century. I really have not the least idea of what a diligence is, other than "a vehicle of some sort" and when the author is sharing a "car" with a Swiss family, it doesn't seem like a railway carriage but I'm not at all sure. And I was often confused about the route, especially since there were detours due to natural disasters. The author was in Italy during the American Civil War and some of the conversations about the war were interesting (although again, editorial notes about the course of the war would be helpful). Howells had a lot to say about "the Italians" as an ethnic group, comes across as benignly bigoted at times ... apparently Italians always dress beyond their means etc. I was immensely interested in his trips to Pompeii and Herculaneum, but here again a little bit of background information and even better, illustrations, would be welcome. After some 200 pages of moderately to very interesting prose, Howells offers a chapter on "Ducal Mantua" which, unlike the rest of the travelogue, is purely history. It reads like his history notes or perhaps a term paper from an undergraduate class and it goes on and on and ON for at least twice the length of any of the other chapters. I hung on for forty pages of this and then caved without finishing the last ten pages of the book.

Another one I had to read for graduate school. I made minimal notes on my journal back then, but I remember liking it. I remember that back then I was interested in the tension between realism and romanticism in the novel.

A very good New York novel about the characters who emerge from the setting up of a literary and art fortnightly magazine sometime in the 1880's.

sort of boring. definitely masculine old style.

My first Howells book.....and living in Maine, I assumed there would be a Maine connection since our northern-most county is Aroostook County - Potato territory. However, 'Aroostook' was merely the name of a sailing ship that played an important part in this tale of an orphaned young lady travelling from a small village in Massachusetts to join an aunt in Venice, Italy, booking trans-Atlantic passage as a guest on the Aroostook.....not a passenger vessel. She finds herself the only woman on board, which is in the eyes of society, as well as others on the ship, a rather awkward delicate situation. She is innocently unaware of the concern, and 2 young gentlemen, also traveling to Europe, along with the Captain, decide to provide her the necessary protection and comfort that a young lady should have. And as usually goes with novels, relationships blossom and ebb on the ship. 2/3 + of this story covers the ship's journey, and became very tedious for me, specifically due the fact the one gentleman is a complete ass in my opinion, and i just wanted him to go away.....but Howells had others plans. The final section was a much better ride for me covering her arrival with her rather eclectic social-climbing aunt and her English husband completely taken with everything 'American'. The necessary resolutions take place at the end, but the guy is still a jerk! Don't look for this to be exciting sea-faring adventure, because the journey was rather uneventful. I did, however, love my particular old volume with the detailed gold embossed cover with the ship and Venice across the top......I've got a bunch more of Howells and this will not necessarily dissuade me, but I'm also not chafing at the bit.

Some great lines from the 1886 classic:

"Oh, how can you be yourself, and still be yourself?"

"His instinct of forbearance had served him better than the subtlest art. His submission was the best defense."

"She dropped on her knees beside her bed, and stretched out her arms upon it, an image of that desolation of soul which, when we are young, seems limitless, but which in later life we know has comparatively narrow bounds beyond the clouds that rest so blackly around us."

Maturity dallies with inexperience and youth and comes out stronger and more sure of itself on the other side. No passages of easy advantage, ripping spring flowers from trees, justifying existence by rubbing the soft skin of initial bloom with calloused fingers. The sickening cliché of the older man with the younger woman gets a far more even-eyed, verdancy-after-final-frost kind of treatment½

I enjoyed this book. Indian Summer was abt 350 pages. I enjoyed the author's writing style and the story itself. Good character developement and good characters! I just felt this was longer than it needed to be.I plan to read other stories by this author.The ending was disappointing considering how the story started. He was a contemporary of Mark Twain.

I enjoyed this book. Indian Summer was abt 350 pages. I enjoyed the author's writing style and the story itself. Good character developement and good characters! I just felt this was longer than it needed to be.I plan to read other stories by this author.He was a contemporary of Mark Twain.

Anthology of short works by Mark Twain and his contemporaries, including some well known stories and authors and others that were new to me.

If you're a big fan of 19th century American writers then this book is for you. Each chapter is written by a different author -- Henry James, William Dean Howells, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, to name a few. The story the writers collaboratively tell is a typical, 19th century, family-centered marriage plot. But as you read on, you realize the story is about fiction itself -- what is acceptable & what must be suppressed. The way some writers craft their chapters in response to previous ones becomes an absorbing plot in itself. I'd wholeheartedly recommend this to hardcore fans of the era and/or genre.½

If the plot of this novel doesn't quite hold up to the passage of time, it is still fascinating as a social study. The two intertwined plots follow Silas Lapham's fortuitous rise to immense wealth and his fall due to a combination of naiveté and high principles. The secondary, less satisfactory plot, which more or less takes over the novel, follows a romance between Tom Corey, the son of an old Bostonian family and one of the Lapham daughters. Howells's reproduction of the speech modes that differentiated regions and especially classes is fascinating, but paradoxically lessened the interest of the book to me because so very much of it takes places in dialogue, and so much of the dialogue relies on innuendo and indirection that the movement of the plot is slowed enormously. Still, it is only because of the inhibiting strictures on social speech at the time that the romantic misunderstanding that anchors the love plot could happen.

Although there's barely a narrator worth mentioning to get in the way with annoying moralizing platitudes, the complete lack of action on the part of what could be called the protagonist constantly makes you want to shake him up. Act! Do something! Anything! In that way the main character resembles the narrator a fair bit: both are continuously aloof while watching, always watching, what happens from afar.

Theodore Colvill, newly and abruptly retired from two decades in the newspaper business, returns to Florence to begin the second act of his life. He meets an old friend and her stunning ward and blunders into a romance with the younger woman which becomes more and more difficult to sustain. Howells ventures into Henry James territory with a lighter touch and a less compelling style but a more realistic resolution. At the end of the story, his characters mouth the same sort of tortured-sensibility stuff that James writes, but then it all slips away and the story ends happily and sensibly. I enjoyed it very much, but not much really happens and that got tedious toward the end.½

This book is worth reading simply because of the structure -- it is perfectly symmetrical. there is an epiphany at the exact center and the opening and closing chapters are two different confessions -- one public, one private. It's an amazing work, though most people don't read it at this point.