James Web Paper 4

 William and Alice James:

Unsurprisingly Unable to See Eye-to-Eye

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Growing Up James: A Playlist for Haphazard Education and No Backyard Barbeques

Careful Meditations: A Poetry Exercise in Word Replacement

a collaboration of intellect by Gertrude Stein, William James, Mark Strand, and Isabel Holmes

Introduction:

 What follows is a fictional commencement speech given to a graduating class of Bryn Mawr women by the most notable members of the James family. Though Alice never stepped foot on this campus, I have put myself in her frame of mind and have come with what I feel she would have bestowed upon the women who were able to do what she had not been allowed. As for Henry, he did give a commencement speech here at Bryn Mawr, but I must say it was not what I had in mind after reading The Portrait of a Lady, so I have written him a new speech which I think speaks more to the women he was addressing than his own speech. William also spoke to the student body in his lifetime.

What has most captured my interest in House of Wits has been the question of representation and re-presentation as I have learned about the James family. Each of my papers has dealt with this topic of representation. A few months ago I mapped Alice’s diary with charts to see if the diary was a thorough and accurate representation of her life, and I learned that she wrote less than 15% of the time she kept the diary. This surprised me, for as a genre the reader assumes a diary gives a complete and moment-by-moment description of its author’s life, that a diary is as close to actually knowing what happened as the reader could ever get. Alice’s diary proved this assumption false.  A diary is not a life.&

If a course syllabus is a menu for a classroom experience, then here is my summary of the House of Wits Course 2010.  Each dish is a culinary representation of the James family member it is matched with opposite.  Anyone with allergies to pragmatism or relativism should avoid the preparations of William James.  They will result in a strong reaction.  They are arranged in reverse chronological order as the course primarily was.  Note how all the dishes work together... do they form a coherent meal?  Are their clashes in flavor?  Repetition?  All this is designed to bring out the family dynamics of the James.  Enjoy the meal!!!  And feel free to comment on your favorite dishes and personalities. 

At the beginning of this semester in House of Wits, I was amazed by how struck I was by Alice James’ diary. I immediately felt an inexplicable affinity with Alice, her commonplace book-cum-diary, and her infectious use of language. It was one of the first times that I explicitly recall feeling such camaraderie with an author, let alone one who penned her only published work (excluding her letters) nearly 120 years ago.

Vigil

The Death (or Life) of Alice James

By Arielle Seidman

April 29, 2010

House of Wits

Cast of Characters

ALICE – A dying diarist, who has spent most of her life in bed.

HENRY – Her brother, an unmarried novelist.

WILLIAM – Their brother, a conflicted philosopher, and teacher.

AUTHOR’S DISCLAIMER

It’s another depressing piece. I apologize. Next time, I’ll give you an example of my comedic writing. That stuff is much better.