I went looking for criticism of this book and found little in Gale, but two essays from 1990s by Wendy Lesser and Alison Lurie. Lesser argues against the feminist line that the book is a misogynist polemic; she responds that Olive (the lesbian) and Basil (the Mississippian) are both complex characters, sometimes weak, sometimes strong and sympathetic. (She quotes Hardwick that James is our best female novelist because his women are powerful and interesting.) Lurie looks at the novel as more about politics than gender: James came home from Europe and found he hated America; showed the South re-conquering the North in Basil's conquest of Verena.
I disagree with Lesser: Basil is shown as naive and occasionally weak but dashing and full-hearted -- I'm sure he is an idealized self-portrait of James. Olive is honest and principled but so bleak and unhappy that her love is purely destructive. Her strength lies less in her principles (Mrs. Birdseye after all is equally principled but utterly weak) than in her vaulting ambition. She reminds me of Dixon's Thaddeus Stevens in The Klansman -- passionate, scheming, perversely principled, but essentially evil. Both come from Milton's Satan, seen as a Yankee.
Which brings me to Lurie's version. I agree with her that the novel is about politics, but disagree that he was writing against America -- I think he was just writing against Boston. The hostility the novel met at the time stemmed from his nasty portrait of the old transcendalist Elizabeth Peabody (his minor character Mrs. Birdseye); this is a less irrelevant reaction than critics portray it, since she's a stand-in for everything he despises about his own Boston roots, a hatred which drives the novel. An equally weak but even more despicable character is Verena's father, a mystical fraud whose nomadic career has certain resemblances to James's father's -- resemblances strengthened if Verena is modeled on Alice James. The Boston reform tradition is alternately weak-minded and hard-edged, and basically loveless -- a spirit of drafty wet lecturehalls. Where Basil is hot-blooded -- he feels about Mississippi a tragic love he can't bear to speak of in conversation -- Olive's New England feeling is only cold philosophy.
How real is the political alternative which Basil represents? We see much less of him than of Olive; James knew Boston but not Mississippi. But I think James like some of his peers yearned for a certain reactionary romanticism which northern intellectuals associated with the South -- a Burkean spirit of cavaliers and kings. (Basil's name means "king," and his emerging career is writing political essays said to be hundreds of years out of date.) Basil's defeat of Olive to marry Verena -- he imagines his own seizure of her from the podium of Fanuiel Hall as a political assassination, with shades of John Wilkes Booth -- is clearly a re-conquest of the North by the old South. What he offers for an American future is less Enlightenment, more Middle Ages -- less rights, more responsiblities -- less cold charity, more warm friendship.
James/ Basil reminds me of Henry Adams in the "Education." On the one hand, Adams saw the warm (mildly homoerotic) friendship of exceptional men (modeled on himself and John Hay) as a strategy for national progress. On the other, Adams developed a similarly St. Gaudensian aesthetic of the medieval -- the cathedral against the dynamo. This was the first, aesteticist reaction of the northern elite to the soullessness of postbellum America, which we forget because it was replaced by Teddy Roosevelt's more muscular alternative.
Anyways, this book seemed a little too wordy for me. A great book otherwise.
The authors jump right in using the Java language. While this makes it more interesting it leaves non-C programmers to wonder about the constructs. Examples area great IF they explain everything new that is introduced. For example, the following are used in the first part of the book:
String[ ] args
String args[ ]
String[ ][ ]
But it is not until nearly halfway through the book (end of Ch 4 of 10) that array constructs are discussed. And even then I don't recall any discussion of the difference between the first and second example above. Another example:
Sleep((int)(Math.random() ...))
What is this? Casting maybe? Casting is not even in the index so you just have to guess.
This book needs 2 things to make it excellent: First, an appendix that clearly and thoroughly explains the constructs, syntax rules, and naming conventions - all in one place. For example, what do the curly braces signify, why are empty parens or empty curly braces or semi-colons used, when do you use String[ ] args vs String args[ ] - the works. Secondly, it needs more comments in the examples, including the reasoning involved (eg why variable was declared outside instead of inside method) and an explanation when anything new is used. Admittedly, experienced programmers will not want heavily commented examples, so making those available on line would be a good solution.
- first read the Java Tutorial (3rd edition) and work through the exercises at end of each chapter
- second, read Peter van der Linden's "Just Java 2" for a very readable (sometimes funny) way to wade a little deeper into how Java does things.
- finally, and I have yet to do this myself, read Bruce Eckels' "Thinking in Java" to really wrap your head around object oriented programming and thinking like a Java guru.
i don't mean to overstate things, and no, i am not related to Sun OR any of the authors, but this is simply one of the best 'computer books' i've ever read, even though it came from a vendor, and even though it's title (not to mention its topic) is rather pedestrian. here's why:
1) unlike many of the 'teach yourself Java' books, it finds just the right level of metaphor. am i the only one tired of the use of fruit, etc. when explaining objects? this book does that a little, but it also relates everything back to real-world problems that are complex enough to matter but simple enough to be graspable.
2) no irritating humour. I'm sorry, but i have had enough of computer-book authors who can't restrain their wit (like Bill Vaughan, so is otherwise a great writer).
3) a great explanation of threading. in all the other java books, i gave up after a few pages. i read the threading chapter in this book while driving home, and it made complete sense the first time round!
4) NO TYPOS. actually, i found one this morning. page 372, line 4, there is an extra hyphen. but that's it! it is almost unheard of, in my experience, anyway, to find such high quality in a 'computer book'. and personally, i find it insulting to spend $... on a book only to find the author didn't even proof their work.
5) after reading an explanation of interfaces in at least 4 other places, i THINK i finally get it, thanks to this book!
ONE BIG BEEF: having the answers to the exercises available only on the web is a major irritation. what were they thinking? for one thing, sun.com always seems to be the slowest site on the web. and that's assuming you have a networked PC handy, which i did not when i read this book.
i also agree that the space taken up by references to sample code was distracting and useless. on the other hand, there were 1 or 2 places (in the Swing chapter in particular) where the book did NOT include a printout of the complete source, which it should have.
notwithstanding the preceding comment, i believe this book was about right. it wisely omitted JDBC and stopped at a fairly skimpy coverage of Swing, which is correct, IMHO, in a book at this level. i also don't need another 4" thick book full of screen prints and fluff, which is what many of the competing books have.
all in all, i found that despite my interest in Java being modest at best, i literally could not put this book down. i read it almost nonstop cover to cover. no, i am not a freak, normally i fall asleep after two chapters. solid writing, well scoped, and near-perfect execution earn this a *****.
It's impossible to appreciate Ann Radcliffe's intentions in writing this book and the complexities of The Italian without having first read Matthew "Monk" Lewis' The Monk. Lewis was so inspired by The Mysteries of Udolpho that he wrote The Monk, which has characters engaging in activities that are horrifying. (Lewis became so identified with his book that he was nicknamed Monk Lewis.) Mrs. Radcliffe was very upset that Lewis was inspired by her book to write his. In response to The Monk, Mrs. Radcliffe wrote The Italian. Mrs. Radcliffe "corrected" in The Italian what she felt was wrong and horrifying about The Monk.
For anyone who finds The Italian lacking at all, I highly recommend he or she read The Monk to gain a better understanding of what Ann Radcliffe was trying to accomplish. And for anyone who has not read The Italian yet, read The Monk first- then I'm sure you will find The Italian a much more enjoyable read.
The story is set primarily in Boston and somewhat in New York during the 1880's. At the request of his cousin Olive Chancellor, southern lawyer Basil Ransom comes to visit. He accompanies her to a meeting where the young Verena Tarrant speaks wonderfully on women's rights. Olive is so impressed with Verena, she starts what's debatably a lesbian relationship with her, but Ransom is taken with Verena as well and so a struggle begins between the two for Verena's affections.
I think Henry James does an excellent job of giving complete descriptions of each character and you really get a sense of who they are. Olive comes across as rigid and passionate, Verena as young, full of life and curious and Basil as sexist and determined. Basil uses all his ability to wrench Verena from Olive. As I mentioned, the relationship between Verena and Olive is debatable. There are no sex scenes in this novel, but the implication is there. Additionally, I've learned in the class for which I read this novel that many women during this time period engaged in very intense romantic relationships which may or may not be described as sexual.
There are of course other characters such as Verena's parents and other women's rights activists, but the whole focus of the novel is on this struggle for Verena. It wouldn't be completely unfair to say that in some ways nothing much happens in this novel. It's truly a character driven story. There aren't really antagonists and protagonists in the story, but more just people whom all have faults and are just trying to make the right decisions. Although my description of Basil above may sound like a bad guy and although he's unapologetically sexist, he perhaps is no worse than Olive who sometimes seems to be using Verena, a young woman whose thoughts and feelings are maleable. At its heart, the novel is still a love story. Overall, I'd say this is probably worth reading if you like novels about this time period, about love or if you like this author. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'd read another novel by James, but I don't regret reading this.