The Lesson of the Master

Synopsis

"You know as well as you sit there that you'd put a pistol-ball into your brain if you had written my books!" Exemplifying Henry James's famous belief that "Art makes life," The Lesson of the Master 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 the emotional costs of a life dedicated to art.