“The more I taught my Henry James course, the fewer seemed the students who appeared able to stay alert even to the point of following the plot. The last time I taught James, I felt that only perhaps six out of a room of thirty could really return the master’s brilliant American twist serve.
“Toward the end of this course, I led off one of the three sessions devoted to The Portrait of a Lady by asking a nice young man to describe Gilbert Osmond, one of the richest characters in nineteenth-century fiction. ‘Well,’ he said, without any malice toward me or any intention of shocking his classmates, ‘he’s an asshole.’ (I suppose this marked an advance over the student who, in a longish essay two years earlier, had consistently referred to Osmond as Oswald.) Shocked his classmates may not have been, but I have to confess I was. Something, I realized, had changed in the nature of civilized discourse in America. I decided right then never to teach Henry James again.”
Joseph Epstein, In a Cardboard Belt!
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
An ArtsJournal Blog