IN "THE ART OF FICTION" (1884), AN ESSAY WRITTEN a few years before his ill-fated attempt to start a new career as a playwright, Henry James wrote that the novelist, like the historian, seeks truth — the truth that follows the premises he assumes — and that "the air of reality seems to me to be the supreme virtue of a novel" (James 1984:53). Thirteen years later, having given up writing for the stage, James published What Maisie Knew (James 1991, henceforward abbreviated WMK), a work that stands on the threshold of his so-called late style — a style that has stricken so many readers and critics as impenetrable, manneristic, and downright exasperating.
