“He saw the Jungle of his life and saw the lurking Beast; then, while he looked, perceived it, as by a stir of the air, rise, huge and hideous, for the leap that was to settle him.”
The best novella in the English language. It describes the two most important forces in life, anticipation and loss, in a way that has probably never been bettered. The idea of the spectacular, of a life-defining catastrophe, lies in so many hearts. This is what James plays on, and in doing so gets closer to the nub of our shared pain, that substance that life is and history crystallises, than almost any writer I can think of. Experience is only able to become what it is once a distance has been established that keeps it from our grasp. That’s life.
First published in the collection The Better Sort, Methuen & Co., 1903. Currently available in the Everyman Collected Stories Vol 2, 2000. Published as a Penguin Mini Modern Classic in 2011
A Personal Anthology 