SOURCE: "The Self-Forming Subject: Henry James' Pragmatistic Revision," in Mosaic, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter, 1990, pp. 115-30.

In the following excerpt, Ringuette examines the influence of Peirce's brand of pragmatism on the novels of his friend, Henry James.

In the final Preface for the New York edition of his novels and tales, Henry James took up in earnest the question of revision. Finding that he has undercut the term's "grand air," James tells of his discovery that "to revise is to see, or to look over, again," and that revising has nothing in common with a notion of rewriting, an act "so difficult, and even so absurd, as to be impossible." Re-writing, James confesses, remains a mystery for him, but revising and rereading are two efforts that "proved to be but one" (338-39).¹ Although this act of revision, of seeing it again, had virtually been a central preoccupation throughout the...