Was the governess hysterical or quint actually haunting?

>>8441473

I just took a fat dump and didn't wipe before heading back to bead

James's preface in his New York edition don't indicate he meant this as anything but a conventional ghost story. But he probably realized the story works better if you can never know for certain, because both possibilities are pretty horrible.

>>8441473
The only book I've left unfinished in my life.

>>8441961
How do you not finish it? It's a short book.

>>8442380
I have finished long works that I didn't like, but this one I hated. Never happened before. There's something about his writing that I just can't stand.

freudians have such a field day with this book

>>8442397
He's a decent writer

>>8442397
>something about his writing I can't stand

You mean depth?
Pseud detected

>>8442575
I actually took a class called hysteria in fiction and the topic was this book.

>>8442397
Henry James is pretty much the greatest prose stylist in English desu. I mean, before he went off the deep end into self-parody with The Golden Bowl.

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49KB, 533x534px

>>8442660
>>8442736
>>8442751
I understand that, and I'm not a meme-chart-posmo lover like most people around here. There's just someone in his writing I couldn't stand, like I said. And it's the first time in my life dropping a book, like I said. No difficult, boring or shit book was left unfinished by me. No book but this one, and I don't think it was neither shit nor boring.

Basically shit Hamlet

>>8442751
You really think so? Like deep in the depths of your heart of hearts you believe this to be true?

He's like an English Flaubert, with all the drab psycho-social realism that implies. The Modernists absolutely smushed him under their boot heel without even realizing it or giving it a second thought.