51 8
PARTISAN REVIEW
opment of Freudian theories of love by a writer who understands
those theories clinically rather than only academically and has,
indeed, contributed to them. It includes, for instance, a taxonomy
of possible love relationships from narcissistic permutations to
object-related variations which should be of interest to many.
Taken on its own terms, rather than on those of a more familiar,
contemporary, academic volume, it is a useful source both of
information and creative insight.
GAIL S. REED
THE CLASSICS IN HENRY JAMES
THE BOOK WORLD OF HENRY JAMES: APPROPRIATING
THE CLASSICS. By Adeline R. Tintner.
UMI
Research Press. $49.95.
Adeline Tintner has written an arresting book on a
subject which would have daunted lesser critics because of its pit–
falls and invitations into blind alleys, both epistemological and
semantic. Henry James wrote in his essay on Pierre Loti that "an
achievement in art or letters grows more interesting when we
begin to perceive its connections." Tintner's book reveals these
connections for the first time in James's fiction and shows how,
long before "appropriation" became a modern honorific critical
term, "throughout his life James made it quite clear to his inti–
mates and readers that his devouring interest in fiction lay in
measuring his mind against the works of others and that his
pleasure arose from rewriting them in his own way." Tintner
uncovers for us his "free rearrangements" of European classics
from Shakespeare through Balzac and includes such contempo–
raries as Flaubert, Pater, Ibsen and Meredith. She makes the point
that above all James did not suffer from any "anxiety of influ–
ence." As he said, "I take liberties with the greatest." She has re–
served his appropriation of the lowest (from fairy-tales to science
fiction) for another volume in her series of James's worlds.
Though certainly not identical, James's "book world" is coexten-
