The Bostonians

The rising tide of equality and freedom in America's burgeoning democracy . . . the inherently abstract and therefore often ambiguous quality of freedoms and equalities . . . the persistent presence of a seemingly archaic but ever-perceptive aristocratic perspective . . . With measure and complexity Henry James tackles all of the above in his tragic-comic political novel THE BOSTONIANS. The plot revolves around one of those triangles of desire so familiar in the great works of...
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The rising tide of equality and freedom in America's burgeoning democracy . . . the inherently abstract and therefore often ambiguous quality of freedoms and equalities . . . the persistent presence of a seemingly archaic but ever-perceptive aristocratic perspective . . . With measure and complexity Henry James tackles all of the above in his tragic-comic political novel THE BOSTONIANS. The plot revolves around one of those triangles of desire so familiar in the great works of literature-from Stendhal to Dostoevsky, Katherine Anne Porter to Walker Percy. In THE BOSTONIANS we have Olive, a vehement bohemian humanitarian bent on bringing the young and talented Verena under her influence. Olive's wealth allows the impressionable Verena to become a star lecturer on the radical feminist lecture circuit. Enter Olive's cousin Basil, an ex-Confederate soldier from Mississippi come north to escape poverty and find good work. The "progressive" Olive and the "conservative" Basil vie for Verena amidst a panorama of activists, journalists, and eccentrics as James probes the psychological and political dilemmas of democracy with characteristic detail and acumen. This Wiseblood Classics edition includes excerpts from Tocqueville's DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA that heighten the reader's attentiveness to problems of liberty and servitude, equality and difference. Wiseblood Books is a publishing line that fosters fiction, poetry, and philosophy that render truths with what Flannery O'Connor called an unyielding "realism of distances." Such works find redemption in uncanny places and people; wrestle us from the tyranny of boredom; mock the pretensions of respectability; engage the hidden mysteries of the human heart, be they sources of either violence or courage; articulate faith and doubt in their incarnate complexity; dare an unflinching gaze at human beings as "political animals"; and suffer through this world's trials without forfeiting hope. Visit us at www.wisebloodbooks.com. We are wide-eyed for new epiphanies of beauty.