Thursday 5/16/24
Reread M.R. James's "The Mezzotint." His stories really were written to be read aloud to his friends. That's evident when you experience them on the page. The best ones--and I'm talking the best now--are rather...aerated. They're more befitting an oral delivery in front of people, with pauses and stopping to look about the room and have a sip of the whiskey with one's fellows.
They're indoor campfire tales, really. That's James at his best. James wasn't a natural writer. He knew a lot about language. He was a man of books. With his background, and his hobbies, his passions, his antiquarian lifestyle, the subjects about which he was extremely knowledgeable, and his interest in the supernatural, he could fashion stories to share with people like the professors in "The Mezzotint."
And James knew he wasn't a natural writer. He has more skill with language, though, than more natural writers. He's in this strange camp, I'd say. James's weaker stories were logy with words. He didn't know where to take them, so he kept writing and writing--I don't mean length-wise, so much as in these circles of obfuscation. Whereas with "Casting the Runes" he knew exactly where he want to go and how to get there and he did.
What amuses me about "The Mezzotint" is here's this crazy supernatural event playing out, and the professors won't let it take time away from their lounging and their chit-chatting and their late breakfasts and their golf.
I'd say that most readers of James rank "The Mezzotint" as his fourth or fifth best story--usually the fourth. And it's many of those readers' favorite. There really is this balance you have to achieve in fiction between aerated too much and aerated not enough. It's a density issue. How close is the air in the room, how breezy is the room, how do we fit within the room?
James writes people of what were once called the lowers classes very well. Think of the attendants with the disappearing advert on the glass--or, rather, in the glass--in "Casting the Runes." It's not only the dialogue, but the true-to-life gestures that tell/reveal. Like when the attendant uses his saliva to wet his rag and rub it against the glass.
He's also funny at times. James gets little credit for this. "The Mezzotint" doesn't have any funny spots, but it's most convivial. The mezzotint itself is treated as a scientific proposition. These men aren't so much scared as curious. They want to know how the changing drama is ultimately going to work out. You could say it's a story about psychical research. Informal psychical research.
The appeal of the story is putting yourself there with these characters. Get yourself a whiskey, Fleming, and tell me what you see. Well, a cranberry juice, anyway.
After you've read the story, you return to it--ready for this--in order to be back in it. Kind of like the baby-snatching figure in the mezzotint itself, minus abduction and murder.
The idea of sporting the door--about which much is made--also amuses me. It just means shutting the door. Not locking it. If you sported your door, that was a big thing. Gives us an idea of how mannerly and civil this particular social environment was understood to be by the people in it. Which helps us understand how the characters are all so phlegmatic, despite the presence of this otherworldly drama in literal miniature.
The ideal way I'd recommend to experience James's stories--personally speaking, I experience them every way I can; by reading them, hearing them, seeing filmed adaptations, listening to radio versions--is by listening to Jonathan Keeble reading them. He does an excellent job. If I could only go with one choice, that'd be it.
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