The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James

Henry James’s “The Portrait of a Lady” saved me from a mental ulcer.

The Crimson’s books editor hates Henry James. I believe his exact statement to me, while discussing the venerable author, was “Ew.” I admit, the prose style is a little dusty, and James certainly takes his sweet time unspooling his stories. But I had an appetite, and he just hit the spot.

My spring academic schedule was the intellectual equivalent of a triple-shot espresso. I took my first timid sips of philosophy and modern literature, and by the end of the semester I was spending entire Saturdays curled in a chair at Darwin’s, gulping down “Ulysses” and Kant. I left Harvard on a stream-of-consciousness buzz, bound for home in Omaha, Neb., with a suitcase full of the 20th century’s greatest literary inventors, intending to keep riding the high straight through “Finnegan’s Wake.”

And then the buzz died. From June to August I couldn’t read more than 30 pages of a book before I got bored or frustrated or distracted by another rerun of “America’s Next Top Model.” After all of that brain java, I needed something to settle my stomach (so to speak), and when I pulled my mother’s 1975 paperback edition of “The Portrait of a Lady” off the shelf, I knew I had found it. The language was pleasantly buffered, and as crunchy and satisfying as a piece of toast. I swore off coffee and spent the next two or three weeks chewing my way, at a thoughtful, decaffeinated pace, through the book.

I’ve gone back to the brew by now—both literally and metaphorically—but I did it knowing that my literary antacid is always at the ready.