an opinion on TRP and HJ

[Mark Kohut]

Henry James' "Art of Fiction" is so open-minded in wanting to allow all
kinds of fiction into the "house of fiction"--his phrase.

As has been posted, some narrowed his openness prescriptively.

James himself, that deep, dense psychological realist, mostly wrote about
writers of a similar kind in his own criticism, appreciating some who might be said to manifest more of a "sense of humor" than he did. 

But the comic tradition of savage satire, Menippean as one scholar of Pynchon finds it, comic satire from Rabelais, through always-angry Jonathon Swift, the unique Laurence Sterne for Tristram Shandy, let's add Dante shakily, very obliquely, you can scratch him if you'll breathe easier, since he is an Italian poet, but we know a great love of TRP's; from Fielding through the Dickens of James' time, is not a tradition about which James had much of anything to say. No piercing appreciation, as with Hawthorne, or creative informed understanding, it seems.

Philip Roth, praised by being mentioned by OBA in the Slow Learner intro, say, started with Henry James as the prime model for his work. James' influence went deep inside him as a grad student at Chicago, which Chicago School (of criticism) is also mentioned by OBA in that SL intro BUT is contrasted to the Chicago literary crisis of OBA's time: "Chicago Review" "turning into the Beat-oriented Big Table Magazine".  With a segue into TRPs praise of "On the Road". An anti-Jamesian novel?

Henry James' relentless talent, his dense psychological insight and his genius for character and deep American-English themes lead him to write not a few masterpieces, although "Princess Casmassima" might not be one of them. But that is for another list forum.

For this, I suggest, that Thomas Pynchon is one of the major writers in English who has been among the least influenced by Henry James---except that, yes, he too, wants every line to be interesting and every book to be called a work of art. 

Mr. 2 Cent