The Ambassadors (Oxford World's Classics)

... before any character in "The Ambassadors" let it out of the bag! This is a novel of delayed revelations, each of its twelve "books" a psychological cliff-hanger! It's a slow sultry striptease of 'character development'. Or you could call it a voluptuous seduction ... America seduced by Europe, that is.Voluptuous? Henry James? Well, amigos, this is a novel about adultery, discovered in the end by an elderly man whose morals are absurdly straight-laced and who hopes to marry a rich New England widow whose statuary propriety is as starchy as the real Queen Victoria's secret. The widow, Mrs. Newsome, never appears in the flesh in this novel, but her ponderous presence is felt in every scene. She has dispatched her suitor, a middle-aged American of no particular distinction, who is mildly resigned to his own mediocrity, to Paris, to fetch home her son Chad, a lad of little grace or wit who has fallen prey to - gasp! - a woman of easy virtue! That's the supposition, anyway, back home in Woollett, Massachusetts. The 'ambassador', Lambert Strether, will be stunned to discover that Chad is not the coarse lout he expects to meet. There is indeed a "woman", but she's a 'lady' of culture and charm incommunicable to Woollett, Massachusetts, USA. And then Strether finds himself susceptible to other seductions, both aesthetic and emotional ...Lambert Strether is the whole novel. It's his Character that's ineluctably, richly, plausibly Developed, even as his encounter with Paris is challenging every fiber of his selfhood. He's an odd blend of perspicacity and naivete, socially incorruptible yet emotionally vulnerable. One comes to like the the dear old guy, to want the best for him, to root for him to escape the dire decency of Mrs. Newsome and the ghastly gravity of Woollett, to find an orbit in Paris even if he burns meteor-like in its atmosphere of cultural maturity. It's rare to feel such empathy for a central character in a Henry james novel; most of them are amusingly repulsive. Strether is admirable. Lovable! But perhaps the reader needs to be middle-aged and aware of his own hapless mediocrity to fully empathize with James's so human antihero.I know, oh yes I know, that it's quixotic to try to persuade any skeptical reader of the pleasures awaiting her/him in a novel by Henry James. This novel is long, labyrinthine in syntax, allusive and elusive. James tells his tale with damnable patience and infernal delicacy. Honestly, I've delayed the writing of this review, lacking confidence in my ability to express my appreciation of it. In the end, all I can say is "Give it a chance!"

Immediately after I finished reading Henry James' (1843-1916) early short romance novel Washington Square (1880), I began this late novel - which he viewed as his chef-d'oeuvre - THE AMBASSADORS (1903), in the Oxford World Classics trade paperback (printed in England and with English spellings, punctuation, etc. ).This reprint edition has annoyingly small print, so I'd recommend an edition with larger print. This Oxford edition also contains quite a lot of thorough and analytical historical and interpretive information/notes, which some might find interesting.Although I very much enjoyed Washington Square, I cannot quite say the same for THE AMBASSADORS. Although beautifully written, as we'd expect from a writer of James' caliber, it never "got off the ground" for me. It never engaged me emotionally and ended up becoming a bit of a chore to get through. (And the small print size in this edition certainly didn't help.)I won't go into the book's plot - which you can read in the Amazon product description or Wikipedia - but there's a frustrating lack of drama and conflict in this quite lengthy tale (483 pages). And James' penchant for prolix and extended, labyrinthine and florid narrative writing, is almost suffocating in its excessively descriptive circumlocutions, all of which tend to thwart the momentum (such as it is).The welcome but too-infrequent dialog sections between characters are, more often than not, overly polite, formally stilted, sometimes humorous, often ambiguous and evasively cagey... to the extent that quite often, after having read a page or two, I wondered what exactly had happened or what was the intended meaning.Things continually get so bogged down in the often tedious wordiness, the interrupting commentary and asides, the endless social gesturing, the parenthetical sentences and inscrutable insinuations, that the reader's comprehension and involvement become stupifyingly muddled, if not lost entirely.These frustrating stylistic encumbrances and drawbacks keep the momentum moving at a snail's pace.Finally, and most disappointingly, there is no satisfying denouement or resolution - no closure - at the end of this beleaguered, though elegant, Parisian saga. We are left standing on a balcony, cigarette in hand, in a beautiful French fog, wondering what in the world became of everyone... and ultimately unsatisfied....I certainly do not want to discourage anyone from reading this important book. It's worth reading just to taste James' rich psychological understanding, his unique beauty of expression, and our partaking in the life of the City of Lights after the turn of the 20th century. It's like viewing, perhaps too closely, a long and sometimes excruciatingly intricate Renaissance tapestry.But, nevertheless, do get a copy of THE AMBASSADORS and be prepared to "bite the bullet," take your time, savor it and persevere. Henry James is always worth the effort.

This is one of James's most difficult novels to read as a result of his subtle, convoluted late style. It is, I think, worth persevering with and even re-reading, in fact re-reading it is probably essential to begin to appreciate the many intricacies of the story. The notes to the Oxford World's Classics edition are very helpful in alerting the reader to the significance of what is happening on the page. So it is all the more disappointing that the Kindle version does not boast the interlink facility which takes the reader from text to endnote and back again very quickly.Another irritation is the failure to scan French words and phrases accurately: ampersands and other curious print errors replace French accents or circumflexes. Surely a university press can do better than this?

I'm afraid I have no idea whether this book or worth reading as this particular edition is essentially unreadable - the font is tiny and the print quality is poor with a 'smudged' effect. Best avoided.