Relativism and the Expression of Value Judgments in Henry James's "The Next Time" - Critical Essay

Similarly, when the narrator decides to contribute to Limbert's journal below his own standards, he says that

   I exhibited it [the idea of a popular literature] month after month in the
   form of a monstrous levity, only praying heaven that my editor might now
   not tell me, as he had often told me, that my result was awfully good. I
   knew what that would signify--it would signify, sketchily speaking,
   disaster. (334; emphasis added)

The question here is, of course, to determine the frame of reference within which something "awfully good" can prove disastrous. If this phrase is employed in the frame of reference of literary pragmatism, its true meaning is just the opposite of its conventional meaning (i.e., "awfully bad"), because the levity of the narrator's concessions is clearly insufficient for the journal to survive and, as a consequence, there is no loss of semantic continuity in the passage quoted. But if "awfully good" retains its original meaning within the frame of literary quality, it cannot be made to tally with "disaster," and the literal comprehension of the fragment remains rather problematic. Two comparable instances of resemanticization are contained in the following fragments: "It gave me a pang to see how little after all he [Limbert] had improved since the days of his competition with Pat Moyle" (335; emphasis added); and "All one could say is that genius was a fatal disturber ..." (349; emphasis added). The first passage expresses the narrator's amazement at discovering that Ralph Limbert's expected trashy novel is again "a shameless, merciless masterpiece" (336). Of course, the word "improve" does not mean here to do things better, but rather to do things worse, so that they may become marketable within the frame of literary pragmatism. If we read "improve" according to its conventional meaning in a frame of literary quality, the sentence in question would be inconsistent with its surrounding context. In the second quotation, we find again that the word "genius" has been stripped of its conventional positive meaning to become a mere hindrance. Naturally, this resemanticization is also dependent on a framework of literary pragmatism that tends to sacrifice talent and originality on the altar of sales, and value negatively anything addressed to a cultivated minority.

Along the same lines, when the narrator asserts that a "failure now could make ... such a reputation" (308; emphasis added), the italicized word preserves its dictionary meaning only if interpreted in the frame of literary pragmatism and thus denotes an uncommercial enterprise; if made to work in a context of literary quality, its meaning is reversed and comes to signify "success," obviously more in agreement with "reputation," the term with which it is related. Another similar instance occurs in chapter 4. When Limbert announces his "second manner" (332)--i.e., his new works "more calculated for general acceptance" (335)--he begs the narrator not to read the serialization of his new novel until it appears in book form, because he is rather ashamed of his artistic abasement. The narrator complies, but then learns that harsh criticism is being leveled at Limbert's second manner by highbrow literati. This fact elicits from him the following hopeful reflection: "So much asperity cheered me a little--seemed to signify that he might really be doing something" (335). Given the negative overtones of the term "asperity" and the arguably positive ones of "doing something," there seems to be only one way in which critical adversity can hearten the narrator about Limbert's plight, and it is to interpret the whole fragment with reference to a frame of literary pragmatism, in which to be shunned by serious critics parallels high expectations of commercial success. If the expression "doing something" is viewed, however, from the angle of literary quality, the whole sentence and its preceding context remain fairly incongruous.