A Screw Loose

I finished Turn of the Screw last night and started reading some of the essays that follow the story. Seems that critics since publication have been in one of two camps--either it was a straight ghost story, or the governess is crazy.

I'm firmly with the governess-is-crazy crowd. This occurred to me midway through and became increasingly obvious that either she (nameless, just like the heroine of Rebecca!) was crazy or James was.

This was truly one of the least satisfying books I've had the pleasure of reading...yes, pleasure, because despite the obtuseness of James's style, there is a fluency and competency in his writing that still gives some pleasure. I generally don't have a problem with ambiguity but Turn of the Screw does try my patience. I ended up being frustrated with the lack of information the author shared with me. I can live with arguing about whether the governess really saw ghosts or was simply nuts, but I want to know how and why Quint and Jessel died, what Miles did that was so horrific at school that he was expelled (somehow I can't swallow that it was simply swearing), if he truly was expelled or if that was a figment of the governess's madness, and what Mrs. Grose really thought of the governess and where she and Flora fled to. Finally, of course, is the question as to whether Miles is really dead at the end, and if so, whether the governess killed him.

Frustration aside, one of the themes I was thinking about whilst reading this book is the 70's slogan "The Devil Made Me Do It!" If you take the story at face value and accept that the children were possessed by the ghosts of Quint and Jessel, then it's pretty clear that their "bad" behavior is exonerated because they are possessed. I put the word bad in quotes because the story doesn't show them doing much beyond excelling at their schoolwork and lessons, looking out windows, wandering about outside, using swear words (which they allegedly learned from Quint and Jessel) and being at first first confused and then alarmed at the behavior of their governess.

I wonder how true the Benjamin Britten operatic version is to the original story. Anyone seen it?

The Turn of the Phrase

For some reason, I have barely read any Henry James--Daisy Miller so long ago it really doesn't count and The Aspern Papers a year or so ago as a follow up to John Berendt's City of Falling Angels.

The RIP challenge that is make the blog rounds got me to thinking that a good ghost story would be a fun read, and since The Turn of the Screw has so many fans, is by a classic writer I haven't really read, I decided to give it a go. Plus, I had picked up this version of the story (The Turn of the Screw (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism)) at my used bookstore and it's been just collecting dust for awhile.

In a nutshell, James is not a walk in the park.

On the upside, I can understand Hemingway better after having attempted to read James. He makes me want to write short, direct sentences as well!

The story itself (i.e., Turn of the Screw) is really good, but I feel like I have to diagram each sentence to make sense of it. I have to reread sections, and the parentheticals are driving me crazy. I like his vocabulary, but the denseness of his style tends to undercut his ability to build tension. The story just loses momentum when the reader is forced to reread for meaning.

In a way, I'm looking forward to reading the essays that follow the text at least as much as the story itself.

All my ranting aside, the story really is good. I know the current governess gets out alive because the framed part of the story is that the narrator is reading her manuscript, which she wrote after leaving Bly. I've got my eye on Mrs. Grose--she knows more than she is letting on. Those kids are getting spookier by the minute. Maybe James really did know what he was doing...

Here's an image from the movie The Innocents, which is based on the book. I imagine I'll be watching it sometime this fall.