Uniquely Amphibious

Henry James: A Reader’s Guide by S. Gorley Putt. Cornell University Press, $6.95.

In his exhaustive and closely written Reader’s Guide to Henry James, Gorley Putt, the director of the Commonwealth Fund’s Division of International Fellowships, illuminates certain aspects of James’s art “with a success . . . unrivalled by any other critic.” (The quotation is from Arthur Mizener’s appreciative introduction.) This success is attributable partly, I think, to Mr. Putt’s uniquely amphibious position: he is an Englishman, uncommonly sensitive to literary matters and adept in the nuances of social comedy, who has lived and studied in the United States, and is enabled thereby to estimate more shrewdly than most writers the peculiar blend in James himself of the American and the European experience.