Author, Author

by David Lodge

Book Overview

"A cunning, audacious portait of Henry James."--The Boston Globe

Henry James takes center stage in this brilliant story about literary ambition, creativity, and rivalry as revealed in the public career and private life of this most singular writer. Framed by a moving and dramatic account of his last illness, Author opens in the early 1880s, describing James's close friendship with an illustrator named George du Maurier and his...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143036092
• ISBN13: 9780143036098
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 7.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

an excellent venture into a new subject matter for Lodge

I have been a fan of David Lodge for a long time. I like his choice of subjects and his witty style. I have also admired the novels by Henry James for about two years now, but I know little about his life, except dry facts. "Author, Author" seemed a logical following. I was spellbound from the very beginning of the book, which starts in 1915, with James bedridden after a second stroke. As we get more and more convinced that his death is imminent, the author travels back in time, to the period in James's life when he desperately tried to become a successful playwright, at the same time not abandoning his ideas for novels and novellas. The psychical torment associated with the creative process, combined with extraordinary sensitivity and shyness covered with a mask of ever proper behavior are depicted by Lodge with exceptional ability, evoking the image of James as very complex human being. James's financial struggle and his yearning for success, his perfectionism, his high hopes and constant disappointments make his life not dissimilar to the lives of talented authors, artists and scientists of today... Clearly, HJ, as he was called by friends, was not free from vices, but at the same time his imperfections made him real to me, a man of flesh and blood, not only an admired author of perfect novels. He had intense passionate feelings, and although he might have appeared cold to the outside observer, he was capable of great care for his family and friends. The descriptions of the people connected with James, especially, of course, George du Maurier and his family, as well as Edith Wharton and Constance Fenimore Woolson, are very perceptive. The mention of other famous characters, who at some point were in contact with James (to mention, as an example, Oscar Wilde, James Lowell, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells; I particularly like the encounter with Agatha Christie) are very stimulating for imagination. George du Maurier is almost as important for the novel as James and his life, work, constant worry to provide for his family and utter astonishment when, after the success of his popular novel "Trilby", George does not have to worry any more, are reconstructed in detail. After his death, and the death of many other people dear to James, Lodge takes us back to James's deathbed, to expect the end together with his family and faithful servants. As Lodge admits in the preface, he tried to be as accurate as possible with the facts (which he researched well, judging after acknowledgements at the end of the book, which were for me an excellent source!), but the dialogues are, obviously, his own invention. The prefect rendering of the spirit of the era and the theater adds to the novel's charm. It is not so easy to categorize "Author, author" so quickly as pure biography, because it reads as the most exciting fiction. And although (as Lodge also admitted himself at the end of the book) Henry James attracts more and more biographers (Colm Toibin's "The

Praise and a question

An excellent book: perceptive, passionate, meticulous, and intelligent. Lodge accompanies his subject wisely, sympathetically, but never indulgently. He's especially good at showing how literature can never transform itself into a performance art, and what makes the theatre a precursor to the book, an implacable mechanism. The novel is an entire education in taste, literacy, fashion, and the essentials of fiction. Lodge's account of literary friendships and of the curse of Envy is spot-on. James himself would have blanched at its accuracy. I have a question. The UK edition (paperback) is printed in 8-pt type, virtually unreadable to those over 24, which is surprising, since people under 24 don't read books. And especially novels about dead white American-Victorian Anglophiles. So how about it? Is there any edition, anywhere, printed in something bigger than 9 points?

intriguing project, scintillating execution

This novel takes the life of Henry James as its subject and interpolates fact with fiction without losing its energy. Lodge does a wonderful job of lighting up the things that we do know about James and adding some conjecture. His rendering of the opening night of "Guy Domville"--James's flop of a play--is both comic and tragic, and would itself be worth the price of the book. Unlike Colm Toibin's "The Master" (another fictionalized biography of James), Lodge doesn't succumb to saccharine or sentimental devices to close the book, but remains sharp from beginning to end.

Novel about An Interesting Novelist

"Author, Author" is a well researched and entertaining novel about the novelist, Henry James. Its a must read for James'fans. Interestingly, his writings are remembered, studied and reprinted while more popular novels of his time ('best sellers') have been forgotten.( There is a lesson in that fact somewhere!) Beginning and ending with the deathbed scene of James the novel focuses on his later years and his time in England, and especially with his relationship with Constance Fenimore Woolson and George DuMaurier. At the book's end, author Lodge, specifies what details he has made up. I found this book to be a page turner.

"It was a dream but the dream is past."

The writer's life, the artistic temperament, and the world of the English stage are bought to life in this beautifully written, complex novel of history and ideas from author David Lodge. Author Author, while totally succeeding as an intricate recounting of Henry James's halcyon days as one of England's most famous men of letters, is also a vividly creative tale of penmanship, literary irony, the collision of values, and the transformation and courage it takes to reinvent oneself artistically. The novel also works as a sprawling account of Edwardian England, from the pastoral countryside, to the quaint seaside towns, to the gas lit and foggy London suburbs, to the stuffiness and sense of moralistic propriety of the upper-class drawing rooms. Lodge paints a portrait of a society and a culture that is undergoing profound social and artistic changes. It is amidst these changes, that author Henry James is radically trying to reinvent himself as a playwright. Framed by two deathbed scenes, the bulk of the story involves James's life-long friendship with George du Maurier, and his cautious relationship with the writer Constance Fenimore Woolson the one most influential woman in his life, who later commits suicide in Venice. James was frustrated and vexed by his dwindling book sales, and rather jealous of du Maurier who had recently achieved fame with the runaway success of his novel, Trilby. Seeking to redefine his work, James stakes his professional reputation and five years of work on a series of plays, the crowning achievement of which was to be Guy Domville. The centerpiece of the story recounts his humiliation and mortification at being savagely booed at the London premier when the lower classes nastily laugh and jeer at the silliness of the leading lady's plumed hat. From his years dining with the literary and artistic society in London to his self imposed sequester at Lamb House, Rye where he enacted his instinct for bachelorly self-preservation, Lodge paints a picture of a man who was totally devoted to a philosophical and literary life. James, through his work, wanted to refine, intensify and preserve human consciousness believing that consciousness was a type of religion. He understood that the author of fictional narratives should represent life as it is experienced in reality, by an individual consciousness, and he developed a firm faith in the superior expressiveness and verisimilitude of the limited point of view. James with his "his bushy beard, balding pate and incipient paunch," comes across as sexuality ambiguous, and his attitudes to sex "and the spilling of one's seed" were to him extremely distasteful. His views on sexuality were formed in childhood when he saw a male nude posing for a portrait and the image haunted him for days afterwards "with disturbing effects that were physical as well as mental." James also actively distances himself from Oscar Wilde and his aura of sexual scandal. And it is almost a relief when he rea