Oh gosh I know! I think the ideal of objectivity in reviews is a bit of a red herring — taste isn’t about objectivity, or else you’d be able to argue people into liking what you like. When I write reviews, I’m definitely bringing my own biases to it, and I absolutely don’t claim to being objective. I do try to admit my biases up front, though.

I am a big fan of James and Wilde and I think that this review isn’t really objective. In this novella there IS scheming and there IS a point to why the ending is what it is and why we don’t read much details about Aspern’s person. What makes a writer good or bad isn’t about how many times he got laid!! it’s irrelevent in writing a review. the French writer Céline is probably a nazi, it doesn’t make him a bad writer. Reviews are about objectivity, what’s good, what’s bad AND at the end what we think about the book we’re writing about.

I have no idea what you are talking about. No such post about Ian Hamilton has ever existed. I definitely didn’t post it accidentally instead of scheduling it for January and then hastily delete it. THAT DID NOT HAPPEN.

Portrait of a Lady is long but not crazy long. IIRC a couple of people commented when I read it that they like Henry James better when he writes long books that when he writes short ones. I liked it because I like almost any Victorian/Edwardian novel about messed up relationships between women and men.

I’d never seen that cartoon, but I’m looking at it now and I love it. Oh Max Beerbohm. That guy was awesome.

EH TO YOU MUMSY. Portrait of Dorian Gray is delectably insane.

Okay I hadn’t really thought of it that way Aarti, but since you bring it up — yeah. That is the basic reason I am not reading Turn of the Screw. It’s because I’m psychotically loyal! I just can’t take the cognitive dissonance! Aaaaaa.

THAT IS OKAY. I really love Oscar Wilde for his life and personality not his writing, although I am very fond of his writing too.

Ha, good to know Turn of the Screw isn’t that great. I’ll adopt that as the reason I’m not reading it — my friend Teresa says it’s bad! — rather than the much less rational thing of just not liking Henry James. Isn’t Portrait of a Lady crazy long? If I decided to give in and read a full length James novel, it would be Portrait of a Lady, because I read a book when I was a kid where the main character was reading that and loving it. Shallow reasons…