- Category: Books » Fiction & Literature » Literary
- Format: Paperback Learn more about the Paperback format using Tower WIKI.
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster
- ISBN: 0743250419
- WAPI (Tower ID): 100415511
- Release Date: May 1, 2005
- Average Customer Review: There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review!
- Tower.com Sales Rank: #74250 in Books (See Top 100 Books Bestsellers)
- #8734 in Fiction & Literature (See Top 100 Fiction & Literature Bestsellers)
- #749 in Literary (See Top 100 Literary Bestsellers)
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Product DescriptionRun a Quick Search on "The Master" by Colm Toibin to Browse Related Products:Browse more products related to "The Master"Browse more products related to "Colm Toibin"Review"Mr. T=ibfn's language is sometimes genuinely elegant, sometimes derivative, in a book that is a compelling hybrid of biography, fiction and ventriloquism. But one could hardly expect a fictionalized James to sound like Hemingway or Joyce. Whatever else it may be, THE MASTER is a book with a life of its own. And it has clear forward momentum even when it stops to dwell on minor matters....The best parts fathom the configurations of the extended James family and explore Henry's role vis-a-vis the others....The best way to appreciate THE MASTER is to set aside any misgivings about the literary reanimation of anyone who, like James, had no trouble speaking for himself. Mr. T=ibfn has thoughtfully located certain lacunae in James's life and found imaginative ways to fill them. And he has seen in James's larger story the triumph of literature as a saving grace, and the redemptive power of art to express what cannot otherwise be said." "T=ibfn takes James's mind and life as a subject, but for a novel that is all his own....T=ibfn's own mastery of his subject is undemonstrative, but not less than absolute for that. All the James family come alive as he recreates them from the perspective of Henry's inner thoughts." "If Leon Edel's five-volume life of Henry James is the literary equivalent of a vast but perfectly articulated symphony, this novel can best be described as a series of brilliant Ttudes based on themes derived from it....T=ibfn is remarkably successful in conveying the two most important facts about James. First, here was a writer totally dedicated to his art. Second, here was a writer who...brought to his depiction of human travails and torments a psychological understanding unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries." "T=ibfn in THE MASTER has grafted a novelist's imaginative sympathy and human insight onto the armature of real-life events. As with James, the result is both aesthetically and psychologically potent....Whatever T=ibfn's literary-critical and ideological interest in James, THE MASTER is unquestionably the work of a first-rate novelist....T=ibfn, of course, has more on his mind than just painting a novelistic portrait of Henry James. What he seeks to illuminate is the opacity, the failure of passion, that he sees at the core of James's work, as well as of his life....The deft wielding of the facts...would be mere window dressing without the acute psychological perceptiveness that informs the author's portrait of his subject. This intelligent sense of the bigger picture enables T=ibfn to come up with sensible solutions to some famous conundrums in James scholarship." "Few writers have been so well written about as Henry James. T=ibfn is a wise and rapacious citizen of the Jamesian universe, an excellent reader of the biographies and of the literary criticism. In the end, though, he does all those works a disservice. For the James whom he creates on the page is a man who seems so utterly real, a creature of such vitality and pain, that he threatens to obscure or to overwhelm the actual man. I imagine that James would have been horrified by such a quality of vitality; but when in the future I think of James, it will be Colm T=ibfn's." "[THE MASTER] is so beautifully imagined that I had the sensation as I read it of being in as close contact with James as I am when I'm ensconced in his sentences....Among T=ibfn's many triumphs, perhaps his finest is the skill with which he conveys James's incessant longing for the consolation of work; no doubt he understands it. T=ibfn's James is the opposite of pitiful. That's why the title of his book is so well-chosen...." First lineSometimes in the night he dreamed about the dead--familiar faces and the others, half-forgotten ones, fleetingly summoned up. Publisher's noteNineteenth-century writer Henry James is heartbroken when his first play performs poorly in contrast to Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and struggles with subsequent doubts about his sexual identity, his decision not to marry, and his difficulties with emotional intimacy. AnnotationColm T=ibfn's novel follows the life of Henry James during the last five years of the 19th century. T=ibfn tells the story of the great novelist obliquely by concentrating on events, both big and small, that had a large impact, such as the devastating failure of his play GUY DOMVILLE, his guilt over the suicide of a woman who loved him (and whom he rejected), and his comic but poignant problems with servants. Throughout, T=ibfn looks at James in relation to his work, finding connections between life and fiction and pondering their significance, in an attempt to decode the life of a man who was both very public--writing streams of letters and memoirs about his own life--and intensely private. Named by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2004. If You Enjoy "The Master (Paperback)", May We Also Recommend:Customer Reviews for "The Master (Paperback)" by Colm Toibin (Author)There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review! Fiction & Literature Bestselling Books
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