Читать книгу The Letters of Henry James. Vol. II - Генри Джеймс, Henry Foss James - Страница 6

Mr. Pinker was now acting, as he continued to do till the end, as H. J.'s literary agent. This letter refers to The Golden Bowl.

Lamb House, Rye.

May 20th, 1904.

Dear Mr. Pinker,

I will indeed let you have the whole of my MS. on the very first possible day, now not far off; but I have still, absolutely, to finish, and to finish right.... I have been working on the book with unremitting intensity the whole of every blessed morning since I began it, some thirteen months ago, and I am at present within but some twelve or fifteen thousand words of Finis. But I can work only in my own way—a deucedly good one, by the same token!—and am producing the best book, I seem to conceive, that I have ever done. I have really done it fast, for what it is, and for the way I do it—the way I seem condemned to; which is to overtreat my subject by developments and amplifications that have, in large part, eventually to be greatly compressed, but to the prior operation of which the thing afterwards owes what is most durable in its quality. I have written, in perfection, 200,000 words of the G.B.—with the rarest perfection!—and you can imagine how much of that, which has taken time, has had to come out. It is not, assuredly, an economical way of work in the short run, but it is, for me, in the long; and at any rate one can proceed but in one's own manner. My manner however is, at present, to be making every day—it is now a question of a very moderate number of days—a straight step nearer my last page, comparatively close at hand. You shall have it, I repeat, with the very minimum further delay of which I am capable. I do not seem to know, by the way, when it is Methuen's desire that the volume shall appear—I mean after the postponements we have had. The best time for me, I think, especially in America, will be about next October, and I promise you the thing in distinct time for that. But you will say that I am "over-treating" this subject too! Believe me yours ever,

HENRY JAMES.