Oh, Henry!

ToibĂ­n’s skill and authority are such that the line between fact and authorial fancy is largely invisible. James’ struggle with a pair of alcoholic servants; his disposal of Constance Woolson’s dresses in the sea near Venice; the collusion of his mother with his hypochondria are rendered with breathtaking vividness. I did, however, take issue with ToibĂ­n’s portrayal of sibling rivalry between Henry and his older brother, the philosopher and psychologist William James — because he shows the latter to a great disadvantage. Granted, William James often played the smug, condescending older brother, but does he really deserve to be portrayed as writhing, moaning and whimpering in terror in a fetal curl on the floor in Henry’s guest bedroom? Wasn’t that, I asked ToibĂ­n, just a little bit naughty?

ToibĂ­n defended his take on the rivalry (“Some of the letters from William to Henry are astonishing”); he said he based the “fit” on fact (in an essay, Louis Menand suggested that William James had such episodes throughout his life). When I persisted in defending William, ToibĂ­n put his foot down. “This is Henry’s book, in which William is a nuisance!”

All told, ToibĂ­n’s portrait of Henry James is powerful, moving and whole; nevertheless, it is the portrait of a man who is unremittingly restrained, repressed, often almost grim and devoid of the humor and wit and cleverness that shine through James’ fiction and letters, even during these treacherous years. The Spoils of Poynton, the first book written after his theatrical failure, is an exquisite comedy, full of quiet wit.

“There is that orotund, jocular, sometimes very sharply comic tone of his,” ToibĂ­n agreed. “And no, I didn’t do that. In the Oscar Wilde chapter, there’s some of it. But I was trying to deal with the solitary self rather than the social one . . . I was trying to deal with him alone,” ToibĂ­n said, then dropped his voice to a whisper. “I don’t think people are funny when they’re alone . . . I don’t really.”

In writing a book about James, ToibĂ­n wisely, even brilliantly, did not attempt to imitate James’ idiosyncratic sentences. “I tried just to find a style that was slightly less Hemingwayesque than what I’ve done before, to pretend that Hemingway had never existed.” Nor has his immersion in James’ work, he said, made a lasting impact on his prose. As the author of five distinctly different novels, he normally shifts gears rather drastically between projects. Currently, he is writing a book of short stories about provincial life in Ireland — “written very simply” — and says he has “a novel in my head, a very different novel, set in provincial Ireland in the very last years of the ’60s, but not a ’60s anyone will recognize.” ToibĂ­n has also finished his first play that will be produced at the Peacock Theater in Dublin in mid-August. We wish him the best of luck with that — and a far merrier opening night than that accorded to The Master.

THE MASTER| BY COLM TOIBÎN| Scribner | 338 pages | $25 hardcover