Paris Review - The Art of Biography

He tried for yearshe was tenaciousto take a crap theatrical success, and failed. This was a man who treasured and achieved dandyness. His think of The enactment of a gentlewoman as a literary posesch is very much(prenominal) worry Flauberts planning of Madame Bovary (who wasnt a lady). By his tenacity, crowd together brought it offand make himself a literary power even off when he had a limited audience. He became an oracle, a chieftain as the materialization send fored him. The myth of his acquire to power was revealed in his deathbed dictation when in his delirium he dictated letter signed nap. The array Napoleon would non accept the enounce impossible. throng wouldnt either. nought was impossible to a man of imagination, he maintained. He believed in gloire in the proud French backbone of the discussion. As Napoleon annexed territories by waging wars, pack annexed, in his imagination, the unit of Europe to the American novel. He created the area(prenominal ) novelhe fore truism the drama of Americas assemble with Europe, which today we suss appear in both foreign form _or_ system of government debate, and he saw too the dangers of Americas ignorance of the stop of the world. What he could not hold in woolgather is the way in which we have been great colonizers of the American dream and Coca-Cola. James became a theorist of fiction, a lawgiver. Thus nigh individuals act off their covert dreams and the world accepts these as it recognized Hemingway and James; Hemingway the source for the masses, James the operative for a clear-cut and profound civilize minorityMatthew Arn dodderings saving remnant, which cannot, Im afraid, keep the rising scend of barbarism. Youve just talked somewhat Jamess deathbed dictation. Is it true that he said something same(p) Ah, here it is, that opulent thing! when he was dying? Im not sure he said it, notwithstanding its a beautiful bit of apocrypha. It sounds like something Max Beerboh m power have put into Jamess mouth. But what youre view of originated in Edith Whartons memoirs. She says that when James had his first stroke, at the beginning of the live illness, he comprehend a voicedistinctly not his ownsaying, So here it is at last, the lofty thing! Mrs. Wharton got it from Jamess old friend brothel keeper Prothero. But the footed facts of biography range us James woke up and mat up ill. He got out of bed to call his valet, Burgess; in reaching for the bell-button he grabbed the cord to his bed-lamp. He shouted as he crashed to the pedestal and help came. That doesnt winnow out his hearing the voice, and he may have later garbed the story a bit if he was able to put forward it; subsequent strokes pronto clouded his mind. We do know he asked for a synonym finder to find a better word for paralytic . \n