“The Master” by Colm Toibin

The Master: A Novel

By Colm Tóibín
2005
338 pages. Audio: 12 hours and 32 minutes
Fiction

—

Colm Tóibín is a highly regarded gay Irish writer. I include the adjectives only because the themes of his stories and novels often have something to do with this identity, though I suppose that’s true of every writer. He is also a great writer. In 2012 he wrote a tiny novel called The Testament of Mary, which looks at the story of Jesus from his mother’s point of view. It is disturbing and revelatory, if you are into that sort of imaginative retelling.

I’m quite certain that his greatest book is The Master. Selected by the New York Times as one of its 10 Best Books of the year, it is most worthy of that accolade. The master from the title is Henry James. That’s right—the novelist Henry James. The Henry James whose novels you were supposed to read but could never quite manage to get through.

But to say the book is about James almost misses the point. This is not fictionalized biography; rather, it is more like Tóibín is channeling James. The effect is difficult to explain, and I know of no other novel like it.

The James of this book is the great observer. He is the great noticer. In fact, the substance of his life is largely observing others live life. He is better at observing life than he is at doing it, which forms the pathos of the book. But watching Tóibín observing James observing life is a hypnotic experience. It is likely as close as one will get to the experience of a great artist doing his work.

For preachers, the great lesson here comes in the form of a command: “PAY ATTENTION!” One of the most underrated skills of truly great preaching is attentiveness. If one doesn’t just meander through her day but really pays attention, one can describe and wonder at much in the world. This attentiveness to the world around us lends our preaching an authenticity that we cannot attain otherwise.

On the other hand, if you always stand aside and observe, you may miss actually living life. And James’s life is something of a cipher—including his ambiguous sexuality. What made him the master of observing and describing life hardly made him the master of living it.

This is one of those books that can only be described with aesthetic words. The writing is both precise and gorgeous. It is a lovely book. If you love intricate plots with mysteries to be solved and stunning revelations at the end, you probably won’t like this book. John Grisham it is not. But of all the novels I am covering in these reviews, this is certainly one of the most unique. I never much cared for Henry James though I greatly admire his little ghost story, The Turn of the Screw. Even so, there are few novels written in the new century that I admire more than this one. Henry James isn’t the only master in the house.