The Bright Book of Life by Harold Bloom

HENRY JAMES considered The Ambassadors the crown of his work. The book has divided qualified critics, the problem being the protagonist, Lewis Lambert Strether. Once, I wondered if Strether deserved to be compared to Isabel Archer, Milly Theale, and Maggie Verver. I thought that, though he is profoundly sympathetic and admirable, he does not give us enough grief to be truly memorable, since his saga is not painful to us. Nietzsche insisted that memory depends upon pain.

At fifty-five, Strether considers himself elderly. He is evidently betrothed to the fearsome and widowed Mrs. Newsome, who wishes her son, Chad, to break off his sojourn in Paris, where he has been greatly improved by his affair with Marie de Vionnet, a beautiful woman alive with tact and sensibility, who has separated from her unpleasant husband. On its surface The Ambassadors manifests the progressive re-education of Strether, largely by his conversations with Marie de Vionnet and with an American, Maria Gostrey, who falls in love with Strether and is in every way winsome and open.