I overheard earlier today an alcohlic beggar explaining the following to his scruffy dog, so apologies if it offends any social or artistic sensibilities:
Vanity can of course be one of life's great all-consuming passions and one manifestation is that of the somewhat intellectually tinged upper-bourgeois, living hard at the coal-face of respectable unreality, who, not content merely with the material pleasures of his cushioned existence, yet desires it to be 'important', the very stuff of art, immortalised; and so follows his love of the Henry Jameses of this world. His life isn't an exchange of truth for comfort and the mutual vanity of the society of his fellow carpet-galley-slaves, but actually some sad but wise sacrifice!
I've only read one Henry James book myself, some time ago, and can't really remember much about it but the boredom it provoked, so I do of course realise the above may be very unfair.
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