Fiction: Henry James, a great American novelist certainly, but, more importantly, the personification of the career writer who saw his art as consummate vocation as much as an expression of self.
He set out to write for posterity - and did. His novels and short stories represent benchmarks in fiction writing. The longer the novel as a diverse genre continues to survive, the greater the achievement of James becomes for all to consider. He was, and remains, through a body of subtle "international" fiction of manners, both pioneer and master of the psychological novel. The sheer sophistication and near-architectural splendour of his complex, fraught work makes the ham-fisted crudeness of David Lodge's clumsy performance all the more bewildering to endure.
Basing a fiction on known facts, particularly the facts of one famous individual's life, is to enter tricky territory. All too often the factionalised effort is reduced to little more than exactly how much research was undertaken and what sources were used. In the case of James, an American who spent most of his life in mainland Europe and England, where he established his main residences, his routine was that of a solitary by choice, who had many friends but never married.
When in London he moved in city society. Elsewhere, he invariably joined the circle of arty expatriates who travelled Italy and France seeking inspiration. He had close, if never physically intimate, relationships with several women, including fellow US writer Constance Fenimore Woolson.
It is ironic that James's quiet life of inner turmoil and endless dinner parties should have inspired a magisterial five-volume biography by Leon Edel. That study was later published in a shorter, single-volume edition. It was Edel who also edited the letters of Henry James.
James, the privileged and protected son of parents who ensured that their elder sons, Henry and his older brother, William, the psychologist/philosopher, did not enlist in the US civil war - although the two younger sons did serve - was a natural observer. His sexuality fuelled much speculation but James the outsider was discreet. Urbane and reserved, he remained a Victorian gentleman until his death in 1916.
It is obvious that David Lodge, academic and critic as well as long-established English novelist, reveres the art of Henry James. Lodge sees the connections between the work and the writer, and also understands the self-imposed turmoil of an author desperate for recognition.
Yet in attempting to recreate the life, he has rendered James as a bumbling, self-obsessed egoist plagued by ambition and ever resentful of the success of others. It is clear that James the artist suffered as his elite narratives were over-shadowed by more popular but lesser writers, who spun lively yarns instead of shaping the long sentences through which James explored the tensions of Americans in Europe.
An interest in James does make it, just about, possible to persist with Author, Author. Lodge is particularly fascinated by the mid-career trauma of James's failure as a playwright. The respected novelist finds the world of theatre full of wiles, business tricks, evasions and, above all, rejection. His unhappy experiences are balanced against the success of Oscar Wilde, an individual James despised.
Perhaps Lodge's intention is to present the elusive, dignified James at his most human - insecure and regarded by his family as a writer of unreadable books. Throughout the narrative the abiding sense is one of "here are the facts, now watch while I inject a bit of comedy". Alas, Lodge's vaudevillian comedy never approaches the mildly funny. Among the several weak elements is the dialogue. It is as if Lodge, who admittedly has always written novels set firmly in the present, repeatedly forgets that his characters were products of the late 19th-century Victorian/Edwardian world that endured until the end of the first World War. Theatre caused him endless frustration, much of which he apparently, at least according to Lodge, shared with his kindly friend, the Punch illustrator, George Du Maurier.
Long dependent on the sight of his one healthy eye, Du Maurier's sight was by then failing to such an extent that he began to think of writing instead. The illustrator is depicted as humble and very proud of his friendship with the famous author, who is preoccupied with falling sales and is losing confidence.
When James admits "I find it more and more difficult to think up plots", Du Maurier cries: "My head's full of plots! I just wish I had your skill with words to tell 'em." This exchange leads on to Du Maurier reminding James of a story he had told him a year earlier. Cue for an outline of the story that will become Du Maurier's surprise hit, Trilby. He offers James the story. Naturally, the famous writer thanks his friend, while remarking: "I don't know if it's quite my line."
Don't worry if you feel James would never have expressed himself in such a way. This poorly written novel abounds with equally improbable exchanges and sloppily explicit modern dialogue. Would the famous writer's primly ambitious female secretary really have referred to him as "H.J."? Although Lodge has mined the life and work of Henry James with a diligence worthy of a career detective, he spectacularly manages to allow the artist to slip through his fingers.
In this, at least, there is some justice for James, if little for the reader who trudges on aghast at the vulgarity and the self- consciousness of it all - after all, this is the 13th novel from a veteran British novelist. Also ridiculous are the walk-on parts assigned to George Bernard Shaw ("'Twas the people in the gallery who booed, and the pit and the cheap upper boxes. They didn't understand or appreciate the play"), H.G. Wells and others, including Oscar Wilde, whom James recalls as having "patronised him, capped his remarks with silly epigrams, dropped the names of people with whom Henry was much better acquainted than himself, and generally behaved in a vain and exhibitionist manner". Historical detail, facts and real-life persons are all assembled, yet for all the descriptions carefully based on research, the narrative never convinces.
It opens with James waiting for death, it closes with him just about to grasp that final release. In between lumbers a book that simply can not be salvaged by virtue of biographical evidence.
Just when it seems Lodge can inflict no further insult on his outraged reader, he then invents an appalling sequence in which Burgess Noakes, the famous author's trusty manservant, finally breaks his silence about his experiences at the Front.
James lies dying, but Noakes decides to tell him what being in the war was like: "The battalion lost 200 men that day, killed, missing or wounded. And what did we gain? Sweet Fanny Adams."
As his monologue lurches to a close, Noakes says to his unconscious boss: "Thank you for listening, sir." To which James replies: "Thank you, Burgess, that will be all."
Yet for all the sentimentality of the Du Maurier passages, and just about everything else, Lodge is surprisingly restrained when it comes to dealing with James's relationship with Constance Fenimore Woolson.
Every novel should be reviewed in its own right. But even had Lodge's messy, intrusive excursion not been published within months of Colm Tóibín's sophisticated, subtle and superior work, The Master, also based on the life of James, Author, Author would still be second-rate and arch. To compare the two is to insult Tóibín.
Lodge's closing quip, addressed to his subject, "Henry, wherever you are - take a bow", is a fitting finale for what is a sloppy, overly casual, and at times embarrassing effort from a veteran writer and critic, who does know better but has, with this contrived novel, served himself almost as badly as he has Henry James.
Author, Author By David Lodge. Secker, 389pp. £16.99.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
