Spent most of this morning watching the film version of Henry James' Washington Square with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Albert Finney and Maggie Smith. It's not bad (it's not great, either), even if looks a little too comfortably like an A&E period piece-- see, by the way, the much less periodic adaptation of James' The Wings of the Dove with Helena Bonham Carter, if you wonder what I mean by this. But I find myself thinking a few things.... that Jennnifer Jason Leigh is by no means plain enough to be Catherine Sloper.... that while Catherine may be slower witted than her father and her supposed suitor, the others, including her well-meaning aunt, succeed only in outsmarting themselves, with Catherine the tragic victim of this... that this a story about people who seek so much to fashion the world according to their own expectations, that ostensibly more important issues are treated coarsely and selfishly....

It's not a great novel, but it's a good one-- probably a good way to introduce uninitiated readeers to James. The film is so-so; the film's final scene is not well-played, and Ben Chaplin as Morris is horrible. Look for a very young Jennifer Garner (Alias) in the cast.
Don't think I've read Washington Square in almost five years. It's a short book (less than 200 pages, depending on edition), and worth a read, even if most Jamesians consider it the 'sore thumb' in his canon.

Of other matters, I once again did what had to be done and not per se what I wanted to do. When one is trapped in a situation of constant impossibility, sometimes the best one can do is steel oneself with necessity and move on, especially who one's options are pretty severely limited. My life itself seems all too often to resemble a James novel with lots of very fine thinking and feeling, but always impossibly complicated and veering toward tragic, even if the main players try to respond to that trajectory as if it were everyday occurrence.

I have an inexpicable desire to listen to Norah Jones right now. What a beautiful girl, with such a lovely voice. *sigh*