Word: ghosts
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...except for a few sickly sketches in the Hawthorne manner but without the Hawthorne skill, James, wrote few ghost stories until he was 48. Then he burst out with a spate of them. Editor Leon Edel speculates that this middle-aged absorption in the supernatural helped James compensate for the critical and popular rejection of his later novels and dismally unsuccessful plays ; in the ghostly stories, James could work off his resentments, regrets and anxieties...
Live It. James's ghosts represent not so much creatures intended to frighten readers on a lonely evening as obsessive reminders of the experiences his characters have evaded and the responsibilities they have shirked. A girl is haunted by the ghost of her mother's neglected lover; a playwright dreams of a creature who, unlike the actress in the role, knows how to play his heroine; a scruple-torn pacifist meets the stern spirit of his strong-willed military ancestor; a young man abandons his girl friend to consort with the ghost of a woman he has never...
...mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had? . . ." The idea of experiences missed or untaken was the ghost that haunted Henry James...
...Palace had humbled itself with low-budget acts and no headliners. In a famed Variety phrase, the new show's hoofers, illusionists and comics were "good for the smalltime." But Variety itself, pointing to the Palace's low admission scale (55? to 95? on weekdays), gave the ghost a good chance for survival...
...What does the Church think of God the Holy Ghost...