SOURCE: "Father and Son: Style and Criticism," in The Thought and Character of William James, Vol. I: Inheritance and Vocation, Little, Brown, and Company, 1935, pp. 125-45.

In the following excerpt from the first part of his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, The Thought and Character of William James, Perry assesses James, Sr. 's literary style and his critical methods and theories. The critic also discusses the elder James's influence on his son William, both personally and professionally.

[For Henry James, Sr.] the most natural form of art, if art it can be called, was talk. Of all the arts, unless it be dancing, talk is the directest and most contemporaneous form of expression, the least detached and externalized. It is infused with bodily heat: like a blush or a gesture it reflects the feeling and the insight of the moment as it passes. The style of the natural talker is...