F. O. Matthiessen argues that The Golden Bowl closes the 'final and major phase' of the career of Henry James and that in his last years he was 'distracted from his proper work,' fiction. Matthiessen's argument seems to have contributed to a critical neglect of some of the post-1904 prose: The American Scene, the Prefaces to The Novels and Tales of Henry James, A Small Boy and Others, and Notes of a Son and Brother. A close reading of these texts reveals that however various in genre, they are thematically similar as James recalls his past. They should be read, therefore, as forming the final period, an autobiographical phase Theories about the autobiographical impulse suggest that in these works James seeks to justify himself. In each text's central metaphor--restless analyst, artist, 'man of imagination'--one can see both a moral motivation (service to the community) and a psychological one (fulfillment of innate potentiality). At the heart of the self-justification lies his belief in his imagination and consciousness. Because this effort in self-justification also extends and refines James's concept of consciousness, these volumes should not be viewed as if he were 'distracted from his proper work.' Instead these texts evidence the distinctive Jamesian interest in the 'sensitive register' and are intricately related to the rest of his work
