Volume 46, Number 19 · December 2, 1999
On 'The Portrait of a Lady'
By John Updike
With some books, the reading of them leaves an impression as vivid as their contents. I first read The Portrait of a Lady as a young man of twenty-three in New York City, in the very World's Classics edition which I am invited, forty-three years later, to introduce. Back then, because the book was physically small, and James one of the great names of literature that my formal education had but nominally included, I would slip the handy volume, with its pleasingly severe blue cover, in my coat pocket before leaving the modest, triangular apartment I shared with my wife and infant daughter on Riverside Drive near 85th Street; I would walk over to Broadway, catch the subway at 86th Street, and stare into the closely printed pages for the seven stops and twenty minutes it took to arrive at Times Square. And so, in reverse, on the way back.
Feature, 2741 words
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