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    The American (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
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    The American (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
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    The American (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
    Ebook556 pages8 hours

    The American (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

    By Henry James and Jeryl Prescott Sales

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.

     "The American" is Henry James novel about American businessman and civil war veteran Christopher Newman, a man who has found early fortune in business and having retired decides to take a tour of Europe. There he meets Claire de Cintre, a young widow from an aristocratic Parisian family, whom he falls in love with. The novel is primarily concerned with this courtship. "The American" is a melodramatic social comedy that exemplifies the stark contrasts between America and Europe at the end of the 19th century.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnes & Noble
    Release dateMar 13, 2012
    ISBN9781411465992
    Unavailable
    The American (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)
    Author

    Henry James

    Henry James (1843-1916), the son of the religious philosopher Henry James Sr. and brother of the psychologist and philosopher William James, published many important novels including Daisy Miller, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl, and The Ambassadors.

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    Reviews for The American (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

    3.5/5

    223 ratings11 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I'd only read 'the Europeans' of the early James before this. That was good, but hey, it's really short, not much he could do. This is justly celebrated. Not one to read if you're after a black and white morality tale about the evils of American Commercialism - which does end up looking a bit empty - or the evils of European stuffiness - which does end up looking more than a bit evil; or the great goodness (both also look good in their own way) of either of them. And that's what the book is about. It's not much of a love story, if that's what you're after.

      I wonder what it would be like reading this as an American? Hmmm....
    • 4/5
      Recommended by a book on writing. Henry James has an engaging detail of description, yet in this novel, the story is alternatively dramatic and romantic, showing both flaws and features. The development takes as many turns as a mountain road on the Tour de France, but with more enjoyment.
    • 3/5
      This is a long novel that boiled down to a bunch of annoyingly dense, tradition-laden, foolish people making stupid choices to avoid accepting good things that they already know they want to accept. If the characters weren't so dumb, the book would have been a novella or a short story, and far more likable.
    • 3/5
      I decided to pick up this old classic piece of literature and give it a try. One of the things I wonder sometimes is how books move from being unquestioned parts of the Canon to being afterthoughts, and I think this is an example. It's a product of its time, and gives some insight into what life among the French aristocracy was like in the late 19th century; great literature takes a particular story set in a particular place, and leaves one struck by the universality of the themes. I would imagine this accomplished that at one time, but I'm not sure how relevant it feels in the 21st century.The title refers to an American, Newman, a fabulously wealthy businessman living in Paris and mixing with the French elite in the 1870s. He falls in love with Claire de Cintre, a young widow born of the Bellegarde's, an aristocratic old French family. He courts and becomes engaged to her before her mother and brother intervene to try to stop the marriage to a mere mercantilist, wealthy though he may be.And one striking thing is how incredibly wealthy he is- he has apparently made so much money that he can live a life of leisure indefinitely.One complaint is that the book starts with Newman in Paris, and gives very little backstory. It explains that he is of a very calm and pleasant disposition, which is actually quite important to the plot at the end, but it doesn't really explain why he is like that, which would have been more interesting.Anyway, the book moves slowly, with long bouts of dialogue. James turns a phrase well, and there are some good descriptions of scenery, but generally I think this book deserves to have been dropped from the canon. Lots of great new books get written every year, and though we shouldn't stop reading Steinbeck just yet, I think James can be consigned to a little corner of obscure writers that were once famous.
    • 5/5
      Prompted by a sudden disgust for a payback stock market revenge, the central character of Henry James' novel, "The American"; Christopher Newman, who made his fortune in San-Francisco, becomes a reversed Christopher Columbus and discovers Europe, a continent made for him.
    • 4/5
      One of his better works, but still not great. It appears as though his earlier works were better written. By the time I got to "The Wings of the Dove" (1902) I had grown tired of him. By the end of his career, there wasn't a simple action or thought that he couldn't convey in an unending stream of words. His mantra seemed to be, "I could be succinct, but why? I enjoy writing. I couldn't give a damn whether I burden the reader with my verbal diarrhea." A highly overrated writer, maybe because he was an ex-patriot.
    • 5/5
      When I finished reading this book on May 4, 1963, I said to myself: "A work of consummate skill. The last third of the book caught me up--maybe because I had grown used to its style. Christoper Newman's final walk from the Carmelite convent to Notre Dame, and his visit thereto, are expertly done: "He wandered some distance up the nave and sat down in the splendid dimness. He sat a long time; he heard far away bells chiming off into space, at long intervals, the big bronze syllables of the Word..." On May 25, 1963 I made a postscript to this enrty: ":in Leon Edel's Volume II of his biography of James : "He goes to Notre Dame, and sitting there, he hears 'far away bells chiming off, at long intervals, to the rest fo the world,' [Into his revision of this passage many years later Henry infused more poetry, speaking of 'far away bells chiming off into space at long intervals, the big bronze syllables of the Word'}] and decides that revenge isn't his game.'"
    • 3/5
      This was my introduction to the novels of Henry James. I first read this book in my American Literature course in college and remember the experience to this day. Starting with his second novel, Roderick Hudson, Henry James featured mostly American characters in a European setting. James made the Europe–America contrast even more explicit in his next novel. In fact, the contrast could be considered the leading theme of The American. This book is a combination of social comedy and melodrama concerning the adventures and misadventures of Christopher Newman, an essentially good-hearted but rather gauche American businessman on his first tour of Europe. Newman is looking for a world different from the simple, harsh realities of 19th century American business. He encounters both the beauty and the ugliness of Europe, and learns not to take either for granted. Coming as it did as my first taste of reading Henry James it laid the groundwork for my enjoyment of many of his more mature novels.
    • 4/5
      While the James's rigid stylistic control over language is dated, the story line and characters are well developed.
    • 5/5
      America meets France meets England in this transporting novel of suspense by the transatlantic master of mysteries of the heart. When American millionaire Christopher Newman travels to Paris to find the perfect bride, he is plunged into a perfect storm of intrigue. His bold pursuit of the woman he loves is met with icy opposition and fatal secrets.
    • 4/5
      4.5 stars



      James makes great headway from Roderick Hudson, where he really begins to hone his dialogue; here, in The American, one almost feels the influence of Trollope on the first half of the novel—the society scenes, the scenes of being lost in crowds, the dialogue that is suggestive rather than overt—all while making Paris come alive for the reader in such a way that we’re able to see it through Christopher Newman’s eyes as a privileged, hard-working, status-obsessed American who’s earned his millions and is taking the Continental tour. Love and Old World tradition sidetrack him, as do a few well-drawn characters who come and go at literally just the right times: in other hands, these characters would be mere caricatures, but in James’s hands, the balance is struck and the bell tolls, tolls, tolls. 



      This novel sees him much more masterful with his dialogue measured equally with the interiority/figural narratives that place us inside (mostly) Newman’s head as he navigates the Old—but new-to-him—World of tradition, religion, society, and a pride he can’t wholly fathom. The scenes in the Louvre are some of the most breathtaking scenes in James’s work thus far—as I begin to re-read his novels in order, as this mad project of mine—and the countryside of France comes alive, too, in a suffocating, claustrophobic manner that suits the plot and the theme of The American to the letter.



      And that ending! What perfection, with the mise-en-scène and the dialogic build-up! And there is a kind of behind-the-curtains duel! And nuns! And backstabbing aplenty… but the latter is James for you, almost across the board. James begins his ambiguity here, in part, and his fascination with a particular classical element that figures heavily in much of his novels and short fiction. 


      On to The Europeans which I recall feeling was one of his weaker earlier novels (it is, after all, subtitled A Sketch), but perhaps my mind will change after many years away from it, and on the heels of his previous three novels—yes, I count Watch and Ward, though James later disowned it.