<p><b>"You know as well as you sit there that you'd put a pistol-ball into your brain if you had written my books!"</b><br><br>Exemplifying Henry James's famous belief that "Art makes life," <i>The Lesson of the Master</i> is a piercing study of the life that art makes. When the tale's protagonist--a gifted young writer--meets and befriends a famous author he has long idolized, he is both repelled by and attracted to the artist's great secret: the emotional costs of a life dedicated to art.<br><br> With extraordinary psychological insight and devastating wit, the novella asks the question of whether art is, ultimately, demeaning or ennobling for the artist, while capturing the ambiguities of a life devoted to art, and the choices artists must make. The expatriate James knew these choice well by the time he published the novella in the <i>Universal Review</i> in 1888, and the work reveals him at the height of his powers.<br><br> <b>The Art of The Novella Series<br><br>...