Henry James

The Beast In The Jungle
It is not lost on me that the preceding text was Twain's scathing review of the works of James F. Cooper. I am very nearly completely exasperated after reading this piece by Henry James, king of the comma. Rattle on, rattle on. What good point would take a paragraph to make takes 20 pages under the quill of Henry James. Twenty pages of my life for nothing. This makes him in my book not a gentleman. I am so incensed that I can scarce mention the two or three things I did like, the two or three things so hopelessly dulled by the unending, ad nauseum ugly, rearing head of run-on after run-on.

This story is the fellow who drives ten miles with the blinker on only to die 3 inches from the turn. It is the mistaken singer who tortures a measure by making a inescapable maze of one dreadful note. It is my somber punishment for unspeakable transgressions I have committed in younger years. I confess my sins and with each new page cry out to God to deliver me from the blazing inferno.

In short sentences he could have said:

"There was a man who had a terrible sense of foreboding. His female acquaintance both satiated and fed his egocentric neurosis and suffered him long because she loved him. He was too consumed with his neurosis to notice the treasure of life that loving her would have proved until at last the revelation was made upon her death, and the beast he had long feared was the real loss borne of this tragic missed opportunity."

Having said that, the good things:

The story did eventually end.

Visit Henry's grave (and be glad the epitaph was authored by someone else).