Suppose you were a scholar (and no one could say that Colm Tóibín is anything less than a scholar), who was interested in Henry James. Not only did you like his life, but his times as well, and the personalities of his many eminent contemporaries. You enjoyed studying not only the houses where he stayed, but the influence of his past and present upon his writing–for instance, the evolution of The Turn of the Screw. Additionally you found that Freudian, or at least psychological, criticism was the most natural way of opening up and understanding the masterful author.
Given all of this, why – in heaven’s name why? – would you write a novel instead of a biography?
My objection to The Master, shortlisted, to my surprise, for the Man Booker Prize in 2004, is that it is not fiction; it is an extremely artistic biography of Henry James. It is an exceptional, a genre-breaking biography for all its wide (but not too wide) interpretation of the man’s memories and motivations. It is a beautifully crafted, nonlinear biography, which is concerned with understanding rather than with knowledge. As a novel, however, it lacks any sort of plot or conflict, except perhaps whether Henry James had homosexual desires; but since the book jacket told us so, I would suppose that he did. I feel a little sad vilifying Tóibín’s most acclaimed work, but if you’re a biographer (his wonderful little Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush about the female Irish playwright is another excellent biography), then don’t subtitle your work “A Novel.”
If it’s narrative biography you’re looking for, read The Master, but if you’re wanting to encounter some actual fiction, try – oh, I don’t know – Jane Austen or Agatha Christie or Miguel de Cervantes or Arundhati Roy or Herodotus or someone.
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