Henry James and "the forces of violence": On the Track of "big game" in "The Jolly Corner"

Abstract

This paper tries to increase the range and complexity of the connection between Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt. They only met on four occasions, yet the greatest American statesman and the greatest American writer of their age were intensely conscious of each other. Each one's sense of the other, which certainly involves some misreading of that other's aims and achievements, is formative and representative. The story of James and Roosevelt raises a ghost of inward, metaphorical adventure and shows James's spirit as more hauntedly, more directly, more adventurously engaged with the forces of violence than might have been thought.