Bernal Heights has two hills with parks on both of them, Bernal Heights Park and Holly Park. Both are dog walkers’ havens. This afternoon the fog began rolling in from the Bay. The sun was intense and the wind was cold. It seemed like an image of a city on another planet, which San Francisco is, in a way. I couldn’t resist taking a picture. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Heard this song on The Current this morning. Amazing voice. Karen Paris. Gives me goose bumps. “Bright As Yellow” from Glow by The Innocence Mission.

And you live life with your arms stretched out.
Eye to eye when speaking.
Enter rooms with great joy shouts,
happy to be meeting.
And bright,
bright,
bright, bright as yellow,
warm as yellow.
And I do not want to be a rose.
I do not wish to be pale pink,
but flower scarlet, flower gold.
And have no thorns to distance me,
but be bright,
bright,
bright, bright as yellow,
warm as yellow.
Even if I’m shouting, even if I’m shouting here
inside.
Even if I’m shouting, do you see that I’m wanting,
that I want to be so so
bright,
bright,
bright, bright as yellow,
warm as yellow.

Since high school, I have been trying to read Henry James’s The Ambassadors after enjoying his much easier novel, The American, on the same theme—the corrupting influence of Europe on Americans. I tried again in college and, after that, as a young man and, then later, as middle-aged one—but always without success. The problem was that The American was written in 1877 and The Ambassadors in 1903. James’s style grew more convoluted with each passing year, until by the turn of the century, his writing resembled an intricately assembled patchwork of refined and intricate observations, not always consistent with the others, which James impudently leaves the reader to work out for himself.

For example, take this sentence that describes Strether’s meeting Waymarsh in Europe for the first time with Miss Gostrey by his side: “He left it to Miss Gostrey to name, with the fine full bravado as it almost struck him, of her “Mr. Waymarsh!” what was to have been, what—he more than ever felt as his short stare of suspended welcome took things in—would have been, but for herself, his doom. It was already upon him even at that distance—Mr. Waymarsh was for HIS part joyless.”

The mind almost chokes on it. But there is a certain beauty as well, if you have the patience to dig it out. Of course, Miss Gostrey does the talking to save Strether the embarrassment of dealing with his own ambivalent feelings toward Waymarsh.

On this current reading (hopefully I’ll get through it this time), I’m struck by the charm and irony of Henry James, even at his stuffy and eccentric worst. He loves his characters, especially the female ones, and lavishes upon them his full, undivided attention, and we must have the patience–and pretend we have the leisure–to fully enjoy them.

This photo found its way to my in-box. It’s a sculpture, of course, done with loving precision and sits in front of a field of Californian grapes. Anyone know who did it?

Consider this statement about Maugham’s prose: “…the plain style can help the dishonest, pusillanimous writer get himself off every of ideological or ethical hook. Just the facts, ma’am. In this regard, Hemingway, a literary shadow self to Maugham, was our time’s most artful dodger, all busy advancing verbs and stony nouns. Surfaces coldly rendered. Interiors unexplored. Manner all.” Or, consider this quote from Edmund Wilson, which Vidal throws in for good measure, in case anyone had any doubts about what he thinks of Maugham: “The language is such a tissue of clichés that one’s wonder is finally aroused at the writer’s ability to assemble so many and his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way.” Truly disparaging stuff.

Of course, this accurately sums up Somerset Maugham’s writing style, but in a rather unflattering way. His prose is unadorned and plain to the point of being flat and ugly. No one is arguing this. Still, I think both Vidal and Wilson secretly admired Maugham because he managed to achieve something neither of them could—he was wildly successful as a writer and, consequently, lived exactly as he pleased.

Naturally, I don’t agree with either Vidal or Wilson. Just because Maugham had limited resources as a writer does not mean he wasn’t good. Quite the contrary. Despite his weaknesses in style and plotting and abundantly self-conscious workmanlike effort, Maugham was brilliant. His portraits of women, in particular, are inspired and complete—better than anything Henry James achieved—and his instinctive knowledge of the limitless capacity of human beings to cause harm (I’m thinking of Vidal and Wilson here) was something he knew his readers must never forgot.