Talk:Henry James
I agree that the tone of the piece is unnecessarily opinionated. It contains some statements that many scholars/readers of James would find problematic, including the attack on James' prose style as impenetrable and a preference for the novellas over the novels. Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove, and The Ambassadors are generally considered some of the greatest works in the English language. The discussion of James's sexuality is also a problem. While no thoughtful critic would deny that he had strong homoerotic attachments and in a different age might have been an active gay man, there is no evidence that he ever had a sexual relationship with either gender during his life. The automatic linkage between 'homosexual' and 'feminine' is stereotypical and offensive.
Am I the only one who finds the recent update to the Henry James page (everything after the first paragraph) to be a little bit more opinionated than the usual "neutral Wiki" tone? And also to include specific points of fact that are detailed enough to require either citation or specific indication of the author's knowledge? (in other words, much of this sounds like material from specific biographies/critical works/lectures that would need to be cited as "the opinion of" the source in question). As an academic with an interest in this page and this subject (and who authored the IMO neutral, descriptive paragraph that heads the entry), I'm wondering what other Wikipedians think.
- Yes. It needs citation. Also, formatting according to English standards (italics for book titles, etc.). --KQ
- Indeed. I note such phrases as "his short fiction tends to be easier to read than his novels", etc. Unfortunately I myself am relatively uninformed with regards to this author, so I cannot comment on the accuracy of other statements made in this article. --KA
Also, the statement that he "was a male homosexual" is complete speculation; I remember reading a review of a James biography a couple years ago where the author speculated James and Oliver Wendell Holmes were lovers as young men; the reviewer said there is no proof of this, or that James ever had sexual relations with anyone. What is known is that he proposed to a young lady once, but that she rejected him b/c he had not been brave enough to already enlist in the Union Army (this was during the Civil War) -- jleybov
Also, and more generally, does anyone else object to all these links to etexts at Abacci books? I object because Abacci doesn't actually provide anything other than links to the Project Gutenberg plain texts, and there are better (as in more readable) editions out there on the web (e.g. my own ebooks site). Not to mention that Abacci is somewhat commercial -- when you go there, links to Amazon are prominent. I'd prefer to link users to one of the free etext directories, either the IPL or the Online Books page, both of which are pretty good at indexing available etexts (although neither indexes everything). User:pamplemousse
- I've replaced them with a link to the Online Books page. You could have done it yourself.
—Paul A 06:48, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)