A time for resolutions

In the forthcoming volume of his Smoking Diaries (not out till April, but I’ve been reading a proof copy) my old friend Simon Gray makes a brave admission. Well, he makes a number of these, but this particular one struck me. ‘I haven’t read him [Henry James] for years. I don’t believe I have the powers of concentration any more, at least for the late ones, The Golden Bowl, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors.’ ‘Something in that’ was my immediate response, though actually I haven’t read The Ambassadors since I was 17, and persuaded myself, though frequently bored, that it was a masterpiece. Now all I remember is Strether’s advice ‘Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to’; and this only because I have seen it quoted. Interesting advice, good even, though it all depends on what you mean by ‘living’. Some might say that James himself didn’t do much of it; others that he didn’t need to, outwardly, living so intensely in mind and imagination.