a young henry james
In the article you read yesterday, “Can Intelligent Literature Survive in the Digital Age,” a college instructor describes his students’ struggle with a short story by author Henry James: “It turned out they were defeated by everything that James was trying to communicate. The narrative river of thoughts wasn’t one on which they could sail. The subtle moral distinctions between characters, the importance of their choices in the society through which they moved – it wasn’t just that the students found such things old-fashioned; they couldn’t grasp them at all.”
Let’s read the James story, and try to see why these students found the story difficult. What couldn’t they grasp? Why might they have had the reaction they did? Read the story and reflect on this quesiton in a short 200 word post, and we’ll discuss it tomorrow.
