never not learning something

on discovering Henry James, and gifting myself with the time to think things through.

in which our humble writer rambles about life, literature, and the impact of both on his mind.

A few weeks ago I really wanted to write something on my discovery of Henry James and how reading The Beast in the Jungle for Uni felt like a euphoric kind of moment in my life, revolutionary, rejuvenating. However, I got swept up in uni reading and writing this new novel I’m working on, and the moment kind of slipped away from me.

I don’t why I felt like there was a finite moment in which to express my thoughts, as if they have an expiration date, but I did. I kept going to write this and then stopping, the pull of newer ideas, fresher thoughts, tugging at me. I guess that is one of the many influences of social media, the instantaneous nature of it, the way we can have a thought and immediately put that thought out in the world to let people know that we thought something, that we exist on the other side of their phones. The trouble with that though, is that thoughts are always changing, at least they should be. The impulse to comment or post our thoughts in the moment of them being born in our minds can be wonderful, but it can also pin that thought to an early point in its development. Once the likes or replies or whatever come in we end up reading that thought over and over again and it becomes more ingrained. Can it evolve from that? Would we admit it if it does?

For the last few months, I have withdrawn from social media in a substantial way. I simply have way too much reading for Uni, and a novel to draft, to risk a stumble into the endless doom scroll. Actually, that is not completely true. I was in a real bad way mentally and the combination of endless horrors, vicious arguments over basic human rights, ‘hot takes’ designed to induce further rage and argument was scorching the ends of my already delicate nerves. The obsessive nature of my brain latches onto these things, and they get added to the anxiety swirl in the back of my mind. I needed to get out. So I did.

Withdrawing from the ADHD nightmare of the endless scroll apps, and being more mindful with what I give my attention and time too has been incredible for the day to day functioning of my mind. Don’t worry, this is not a life hack, oooh look at me, I’m better than you post; I know there are a million books and threads and podcasts about this kind of thing, I am not adding to that cacophony. I will say however that my mind has been a lot clearer these passed couple months. I can hear my own voice, my own thoughts and ideas, again. My brain is no longer trying to formulate those thoughts and ideas into the confines of a tweet so that I can post it and prove I’m still alive to all the avatars and usernames in my phone. I have found, much like in writing this piece, deeper pleasure in writing long form again.

There is a freedom, not just of character limit but of thought expression, and openness in the long form I feel. I am not the same person, nor do I think the same, as the version of me that started writing this newsletter, the very one you are reading now (that is if I finish and publish it. Who knows?). The way I think and feel changes in the process of writing, and that is a huge part of the reason I write anything at all. That space and scope to work things out on the page, in the journey of construction, is simply not possible within the limits of a tweet, for example.

This kind of brings me to the Henry James of it all. I am not the same person I was before reading Henry James for the first time. It is shocking that, as a queer bookseller with a passion for classics, it took a masters module in modernism for me to read Henry James, but I truly believe I was meant to discover him right in this now. The universe had my back with this one. For years I have been getting caught up in the bright shiny newness of contemporary fiction, reading the latest releases and looking for the next big thing; it is a part of my job, one I enjoy, and I love sharing the new books I find with readers. However, the endless volume of new books that drop every single week, and the various recommendations from other bookseller friends, quietly overwhelmed me to the point of changing my reading habits. I realised recently I had shifted quite significantly from reading what I wanted to read, to what I felt I should read. The masters, though arguably more prescriptive in its reading, has forced me to look back again, to delve into the classics, the kinds of books that made me fall in love with reading to begin with.

For my modernism module this semester we were tasked with reading James’ The Beast in the Jungle, alongside Eve Sedgwick’s revolutionary reading The Beast in the Closet. Now, it may have been a weird place for me to start with James – a novella that by all accounts perfectly encapsulates his late style that many view as difficult at best, impenetrable at worst – but it has made me an immediate devotee to James, and, because I am incapable of enjoying anything casually, I have now set myself the task of reading all of James, from first to last, in any spare moment I find around my masters reading.

What I loved the most about The Beast in the Jungle was James’ depiction of anxiety. The story, from my reading, is about a man named Marcher who is gay and lives his entire life under the fear of being discovered as such. But he had confided his secret to one woman long in the past who now, through some chance meeting, comes back into his life and offers some solace and comfort for his anxieties. I say some comfort because he is still very much an anxious and internally conflicted person throughout, but, again, that’s my opinion and my reading. Reading the Sedgwick piece alongside it – her analysis of the story in relation to homosexual panic and the Freud of it all – showed me that, while I felt it was obviously about Marcher struggling with homosexuality in an inhospitable society, the story was not clearly about that at all (though, c’mon. Really?) and is indeed heavily debated among James scholars.

In class we all talked about our own ideas and opinions about both pieces for some time. Though I went into the session not seeing for a moment how anyone could read the story as anything other than queer, the more we talked and the deeper we dove into, it I could sense the way all of us thought and felt about Marcher gently shifting, expanding even. I made space in my reading for different perspectives, different approaches, and it enriched the story even further for me. It made me think about the word discourse, and the idea that word summons in the era of social media. Often modern discourse, played out online, is reduced to the binaries of right and wrong (whichever side of the topic you fall on) and nuance is nowhere to be seen. Rarely, if ever, do you witness common ground being discovered, or people’s opinions expanding. Even in the book world, often, the opinions are good/bad, art/trash, and you are ignored or shouted down if you come across someone on an opposing side. If that is our primary method of interacting with others, of voicing our opinions and ideas, one where we are either seen as right or wrong, where we are then expected to come to the table with a solid sense of an idea, willing to defend it with our reputation, what kind of atmosphere is that for ideas to develop in? For people to develop, evolve, change?

I feel very fortunate that all these fragmented elements have converged in my life at the same time because the result has been somewhat transformational. I have slowed down my life. I have sunk into beautiful, complex novels, that rekindled my love of reading and inspired me to reach for more in my own writing. I have given myself the gift of time, time away from socials, to engage with things in a more focused and deliberate way. I have no way of knowing if, or how long, this might last. I hope for a long time. I did not realise how much the expectations of others, even people I have never met and will never know, played into the way I interacted with the world.

I had not realised how much I missed the sound of my own thoughts in my mind.

Until next time,

– NUCOSI