The Figure in the Carpet and Other Stories

Oct 11, 2024 4:27 AM

Author:Henry James,Frank Kermode

The stories in this collection were written mostly between 1888 and 1897, a time when Henry James’s writing was concerned with the art of fiction and the position of the artist in society. The motif and title story, ‘The Figure in the Carpet’, is an inspired joke, a masterpiece of double-entendre that demands the reader’s undivided love and attention and continues to baffle its critics. Also included are ‘The Author of Beltraffio’, an absorbing story of family infighting, authorship and tragedy, and ‘The Private Life’, a spirited tale that considers the contrast between the artist alone and at work. While many of these stories appear to be elaborate Jamesian games, all employ irony and humour to allegorize artistic creation.

Reviews

A most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale

—— Oscar Wilde

It really does turn your blood cold

—— Colm Tóibín

Technically, he is extraordinarily brilliant, and stylistically he's wonderful

—— David Lodge

Henry James is as solitary in the history of the novel as Shakespeare is in the history of poetry

—— Graham Greene

[James] is the most intelligent man of his generation

—— T. S. Eliot

The Turn of the Screw is the most hopelessly evil story that we have ever read in any literature, ancient or modern

—— Independent

We are afraid of something unnamed, of something, perhaps, in ourselves... Henry James...can still make us afraid of the dark

—— Virginia Woolf

Dark, funny and disturbing

—— London Review of Books

These 10 inventive stories, set mostly in the Florida Everglades, mix satire and sophisticated whimsy

—— New York Times

Karen Russell has produced an engaging debut. Her ability to integrate mythology and the supernatural with the very contemporary...is reminiscent of Angela Carter, but unlike Carter's many imitators, Russell never descends into whimsy... In St Lucy's, humans, ghosts and animals are utterly real; and Russell sells the genuine article, a seemingly effortless writer

—— Alisa Cox , Mslexia

These are stories that will sneak into the back of your brain and lurk there long after you are finished reading.

—— Global Review

Poignant and wonderful story...concentrates, without effort, all Malouf's themes...it needs to be read

—— Prospect

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