Sunday 11 May 2014

Read in 2014 - 16: Eugene Pickering

A short book that kept me company on my kindle for the train ride to the second part of my course last week, "Eugene Pickering" is a story by Henry James and my very first read by that author. Originally, the story appeared in 1874 in three volumes of "The Atlantic Monthly", a "magazine of literature, art and politics", as it called itself. Later, the story found its way into several books containing some of Henry James' shorter novellas; apparently, it was never published on its own.


From the start, I found it interesting that the narrator not only remains unnamed, but appears as a spectator and advisor throughout, never as a prinicpal, acting character - except for when, towards the end of the story, he shows initiative by travelling to Cologne to look after his friend and then persuades him into further travelling with him.

Motherless Eugene has had a very secluded upbringing; his stern father wanted to make sure the boy was untouched by all bad influences. For a while, he was allowed a companion for his home schooling; the story's narrator was that companion and became the only friend he ever had.
Many years later, they incidentally meet again, and the narrator finds his old friend, now free of the omnipresent authority of his father, ready to embark on life with all its adventures. The inevitable happens - the naive, inexperienced Eugene falls in love with a woman who has the reputation of being an adventuress.

Taken on its own, that would not be so unusual, but Eugene has a promise to maintain he had no influence upon when it was first given...
The way things turn out in the end is more or less what I expected, but of course I won't tell you here. 

This was an interesting, althougn not exciting, first encounter with Henry James for me. He lived from 1843 to 1916, and of course you won't have difficulties to find out a lot about him on wikipedia and elsewhere on the web. I have some more of his works as free ebooks on my kindle, and I will read them... sooner or later.

By the way, the painting on the book cover has nothing at all to do with the story. I often wonder how such cover art is chosen; most of the time, whoever makes that choice has probably never read one single word of the book in question.

9 comments:

  1. I have never managed to get on with Henry James somehow. I should have another go. I find that my tastes can change. As for book covers I sometimes think they are chosen by computers!

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    1. I don't know how I will get on with Henry James when I'll start reading one of his longer works. It could be that all of this introspective gets a little too much, but I'll see.
      As for your theory about book covers, that is very likely! The computer does a quick-scan of the first few chapters of the book and finds some key words on which it bases the choice of cover. In this case, the computer would have found the words "woman" and "white dress", and fed the picture search engine with those words - sure enough, there IS a woman in a white dress in the painting, but that's about it :-)

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  2. I feel pretty much the same as Jenny about Henry James. Book covers are chosen to make the book sell, I suppose :-)

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    1. They don't always work - sometimes the cover "art" produces the opposite effect, when it is chosen badly and makes a perfectly well written novel appear like just another piece of average chick lit :-)

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  3. You won't believe it but I've never read anything by Henry James. This story sounds interesting, you got me curious now.

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    1. I do believe it, Francesca - after all, I, as a Librarian, have never read anything by him until now!

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  4. I can't remember reading any of his novels although I did have one or two so I may have done - many years ago. If I did they obviously made no impression. I think I saw The Turning of the Screw as a play but I can't remember the details of that either. I'm not much use as a commenter therefore am I?

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    1. I find it interesting to know that what (if) you read by Henry James did not make a lasting impression, and I'm afraid "Eugene Pickering" did not stay in my mind for very long after having read it, either.

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    2. I'd be interested to know as well Meike. I think I had The American and The Bostonian and Portrait of a Lady but I couldn't tell you anything about them at all.

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