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"The Master" by Colm Toibin

In January 1895 Henry James anticipates the opening of his first play, Guy Domville, in London. The production fails, and he returns, chastened and humiliated, to his writing desk. The result is a string of masterpieces, but they are produced at a high personal cost. In The Master Colm Toibin captures the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe, who was astonishingly vibrant and alive in his art, and yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love. It is a powerful account of the hazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the heart.

Greed and romance

My book has a "reader questions" section that refers to the greed of the squire and the doctor in going after the treasure. I was a little taken aback by that because I didn't see them as greedy per se. Maybe they were, though. But more so than a run-of-the-mill person? Anyway, it got me thinking about their reasons for going vs. Jim's. Jim was certainly interested in the money to repair the financial damage to his family's inn, but the money seemed secondary to the romance of sailing and treasure-hunting. Maybe that's also why Jim harbored more sympathy for Long John Silver, because he was swept up — in a way the literal-minded, mission-oriented adults weren't — in the romance of the voyage.

Jim again

What did you think of Jim as a hero?

Jim

I found Jim's relationship to his parents curious, especially for a "children's" book. He seemed sympathetic to them, but not especially close. He didn't seem terribly upset by his father's death; he seemed more preoccupied with the pirate's doings while his father was dying. And he didn't seem overly fond of his mother; for example, he wasn't pining for home while he was on his voyage.

A lot of great children's stories involve orphans, and Jim seemed like an orphan, even though he wasn't. I sort of wondered whether Stevenson made him a kind of honorary orphan just for the sake of the story. Thoughts?

Villainy!

What did you think of Long John Silver eluding justice in the end?