James the Minimalist: An Essay on the Late Novels

An experiment in criticism that explores Henry James’s late works through the lens of minimalism.

Henry James’s last completed novels—The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl—are among the greatest and most demanding achievements of modern fiction. The stories they tell are perverse: characters are compelling even at their most cruel, their actions often calculating and loving at the same time. The novels draw on deep-seated myths but end with an unsettling lack of finali...