The Golden Bowl (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

If at first you don't understand, re-re-read again

The most subtle of James' collection, the last of his major phase (dictated not written), with the least dialogue of all his works, James accomplishes what many writers of literature strive for but never reach -- sustained ascending climax until the very last line of the very last page, what Edmund Wilson would have described as not a periodic sentence but a periodic novel (where the meaning is revealed not in the beginning or middle but at the very end). Yet many still will find it a difficult steep climb to make with great distances of exposition between two lines of character dialogue. Keep in mind James wrote at the turn of the twentieth century, his style reflecting back on the long prose of his 19th century predecessors rather than anticipating the short and concise sentences provided by the modern generation of writers to come. EM Forster, Edith Wharton, contemporaries of James, wrote with airier prose that moves if not at a faster pace (for James' sentences roll together forward like a smooth quick current), then less-heavily weighed down by looping syntax and meanings intimated but not directly communicated to the reader.

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