Splinters

Michael Wood reviews Colm T?ib?n's novel about Henry James - The Master. It's one of those long LRB reviews. I'm always going on about how special James' novella The Beast in the Jungle is - I have an edition of the stories introduced by Tom Paulin in which he sneers at the story, which makes me revere it even more - so I was delighted to read Wood's confirmation of my assessment, that is why it's so special:

"I remembered that T?ib?n ... characterised James's story ... by saying: 'It is as though some traces of Kafka had arrived in Lamb House.' But I had forgotten the extended discussion of James, where T?ib?n argues, against James's more recent biographers and many of his critics, that the novelist did not express his 'homoerotic sensuality' in his books. 'It is astonishing how James managed to withhold his homosexuality from his work.' What he managed to do, T?ib?n suggests, is depict the damage such withholding can cause, the waste and desolation it leaves in a life."

Mmm ... withholding.