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Hello, I'm Jack Wilson. Welcome to the Henry James episode of The History of Literature.

Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast, et cetera, et cetera.

I'm recording this on Easter. Hope you're all having a nice Easter.

I'm going to share a good Easter story with you and know it's not the one about my friend who hit a rabbit in his car.

Poor little rabbit ran across the road.

My friend's little sister was in the car too and she started crying because my friend happened to mention that he was sure the entire basket of eggs had been smashed as well.

This story is much better than that. This one is uplifting. It's about our country's labor movement and the sugary marshmallow treat called peeps.

A lot of people enjoy those for Easter, eating those little peeps apparently.

The factory that makes peeps is a union factory and there was some unrest between management and labor a few years ago and the workers went on strike.

I'm not making this up their chant when they were on strike was no justice, no peeps, which is sheer brilliance.

Speaking of which, we have a brilliant author today, Henry James, what a figure and yet let me let you in on a bit of a secret, my friends.

I've started and restarted this episode many times. Many times this was the first one that had the Easter stories.

So maybe this is the maybe this is the one that will stick was the three part episode I had planned at one point and then I just thought why.

According and talking about James and thinking why why why why I know there are Henry James fans out there who are saying.

What do you mean why why only three there should be 10 episodes.

Okay, this isn't for you. You will need to get your James fix elsewhere.

This episode is you know what I'm going to do I'm going to give you five ways to read Henry James five different people you can be when you open up that James book or maybe even before that maybe even when you go to the library or go to the bookstore five different approaches to take to Henry James really you might be five different people.

The overlap of course because people are complex and here we go we already have some parallels with our subject Henry James because he was complex himself.

And he definitely believed that human beings were complex creatures the human personality the human collection of wants and fears the backgrounds the ancestry.

The desires the decision the psychology the decision making I should say.

All that that goes into the psychology and the way the psychology feeds into all of that complex if there was one person in the entire history of literature who stands for the notion that people are complicated creatures human beings are complex animals it's probably.

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