The Figure In The Carpet Annotated

The Figure in the Carpet Annotated

"The Figure in the Carpet" is a short story (sometimes considered a novella) by American writer Henry James first published in 1896. It is told in the first person; the narrator, whose name is never revealed, meets his favorite author and becomes obsessed with discovering the secret meaning or intention of all the author's works. "The Figure in the Carpet" has evaded definitive interpretation. In his book Henry James (1913), Ford Madox Ford wrote that after it was published, James's contemporaries set themselves on a quest for the Figure as an identifiable physical entity. In the preface to his A Choice of Kipling's Verse (1941), T. S. Eliot wrote, "Nowadays, we all look for the Figure in the Carpet." It is possible that James's Figure is a palpable object that, like a talisman, facilitates interpretation of his own work. Having reviewed Hugh Vereker's latest fiction in The Middle, a literary weekly (this a result of the kind offices of his friend George Corvick), the nameless narrator is invited to a country-house weekend, during which he encounters Vereker. The novelist reads the narrator's notice and comments derisively on it, only to relent when he learns the identity of the author. In a gesture of compensation (one supposes), Vereker confides to the narrator that his fictions are all linked by a single idea or scheme that no critic has ever noticed but that is the very secret of all of his work. This is the famous "figure in the carpet" of the story's title, and it is what Vereker sets the narrator to discover....

Critical Companion to Henry James

Examines the life and writings of Henry James including detailed synopses of his works, explanations of literary terms, biographies of friends and family, and social and historical influences.

Articles on Twentieth Century Literature: an Annotated Bibliography, 1954 to 1970