The Sacred Fount (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

First let's negotiate! I refuse to be held responsible if you, dear reader, attempt this book and find it unbearably verbose, obtuse, and tedious. I do not recommend it unless: a. you are already convinced of the special genius of Henry James, b. you relish books that are extremely convoluted, almost puzzle-like, in which the chief delight is to be found in the sense that you can grasp what the devil the author is up to (Nabokov's 'Pale Fire' is such a book), c. you have a demonic ability to keep track of details, to 'fix' items of syntax in your short term memory with enough attention to recompose them into units of meaning, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter, at least retentively enough to arrive at the last page with an impression, however vague, of the whole book.

Nothing happens. Nothing! If anything has happened, outside the framework of the book, you'll never know what it was, though being of a mind similar to Henry James's, you'll be endlessly stimulated by wondering what it might have been. The whole inaction takes place in one day. The narrator sets off early, by train, for a country estate, Newmarch, to spend the day immersed in his social circle of 'brilliant' friends. [The narrator is never given a name, but no one could mistake the truth that it's James himself. Thus the whole novel is a kind of confession, an embarrassed self-vivisection, of a man whose entire life consists of insufferable curiosity about the lives of others. James is revealing his own methodology of observation, obsessive/compulsive eavesdropping, the perhaps slightly repulsive basis of all his writing.] On the railroad platform, the narrator encounters another man on his way to Newmarch; this other, Gilbert Long, is "a fine piece of human furniture" but a dullard, in the narrator's opinion. However, Long enters into conversation with an astonishing vivacity, a new flair, and the narrator instantly surmises that he has been 'elevated' to wit by a secret romance. The rest of the day, until a final midnight conversational joust with a woman friend, Mrs. Brissenden, at Newmarch, will be spent on the narrator's prying into Long's personal business. Here's a sample:
"It could not but be exciting to talk, as we talked, on the basis of those suppressed processes and unavowed references which made the meaning of our meeting so different from its form. We knew ourselves -- what moved me, that is, was that she knew me -- to mean, at every point, immensely more than I said or than she answered; just as she saw me, at the same points, measure the spaces by which her answers fell short. This made my conversation with her a totally other and far more interesting thing than any colloquy I had ever enjoyed..."

Putting it simply, this is an epic of Gossip. It's all talk. The talk is the prize, as everybody talks about everybody and yet denies talking to anybody about anything of importance. The talk is presumed to be fiendishly witty; indeed, not to be witty is the final shame. In fact, most readers will find the talk annoyingly evasive, pretentious, and parenthetical. Personally, I think I would find a day at Newmarch an unutterable torment. But there is an element of historical realism in The Sacred Fount; I come away from reading it with the impression that such a place as Newmarch did exist, that such people did matter to each other's egos, and that Henry James swam through such English society like an ice-fish through Antarctic currents.

There is a touch of sorrow in the narrator's self-awareness, a recognition of the bloodless irrelevancy of his own role as a hypersensitive observer, a acknowledgement that in the end nobody is comfortable with his presence, however much they might cower before his invasive cleverness. Genius that he was, it could not always have been pleasant to be Henry James.

The Sacred Fount is the first great modernist novel, as well asan ignored one. The plot is kind of odd. The narrator, at a weekendparty, thinks that he is observing some sort of vampire-like transactions of vitality between the guests. He spends the next two days trying to find who has vampiric control over whom. Odd, but brilliant. END

I must admit, I have yet to actually read this novella. Then why, you ask, am I reviewing it? A local theater group that I am in is performing an dramatic adaptation of "The Sacred Fount." I am portraying the character of Ford Obert and must say that this is one of the most thought-provoking productions I have been involved in. I have been told that the novella itself is a very difficult read but, if my experience in performing it is any indication, a throughly rewarding one.