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The Real Thing
Henry James
Book Overview:
The Real Thing is, on one level, a somewhat ironic tale of an artist and two rather particular models. Yet it also raises questions about the relationship between the notion of reality in our humdrum world, and the means that an artist must use in trying to achieve, or reflect, that reality. Though the protagonist is an artist and illustrator of books, not a writer, it's not hard to imagine that James has himself, and other writers, in mind.
The Real Thing is, on one level, a somewhat ironic tale of an artist and two rather particular models. Yet it also raises questions about the relationship between the notion of reality in our humdrum world, and the means that an artist must use in trying to achieve, or reflect, that reality. Though the protagonist is an artist and illustrator of books, not a writer, it's not hard to imagine that James has himself, and other writers, in mind.
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"Oh, SHE can keep quiet," said Major Monarch. Then he added, jocosely: "I've always kept her quiet."
"I'm not a nasty fidget, am I?" Mrs. Monarch appealed to her husband.
He addressed his answer to me. "Perhaps it isn't out of place to mention—because we ought to be quite business-like, oughtn't we?— that when I married her she was known as the Beautiful Statue."
"Oh dear!" s. . . Read More
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Community Reviews
Major and Mrs Monarch, upper class types fallen on hard times offer to pose for an artist/illustrator as ‘the real thing’. For the artist though, their inflexibility as sitters (they are always themselves) make them less suitable than the working class models he usually uses. A quiet and subtly humo
After the spontaneous [young Italian] Oronte had been with me a month, and after I had given him to understand several different times that his native exuberance would presently constitute an insurmountable barrier to our further intercourse, I waked to a sense of his heroic capacity. He was only fi
The Real Thing (1892) is both an aesthetic parable and a social satire in the manner of Maupassant. In typical Jamesian style, the narrative is witty, delicate, multi-layered, and ambiguous, with twists and false bottoms (in the same way as, say, The Turn of the Screw).
The story is about a painter a