The Real Thing and Other Tales

An artist is visited by Major Monarch and his wife, genuine aristocrats fallen on hard times who wish to model for him. They are, in every observable way, 'the real thing' - and yet something is terribly wrong. James constructs an uncomfortable, quietly devastating premise: what happens when authenticity fails to transcend itself? The artist finds himself drawn instead to a shameless charwoman and a guttersnipe with theatrical instincts, because they possess what the Monarchs cannot - range, hunger, the capacity to become something other than themselves. The tragedy deepens when the Monarchs, dignified and ruined, cannot understand why their impeccable breeding produces nothing of artistic value. This is James at his most precise, dissecting the uneasy distance between genuine article and genuine art. The collection continues to resonate because it asks questions we still avoid: What is the relationship between authenticity and art? Between class and possibility? Who deserves to be represented, and by whom?