The figure in the carpet is a short story sometimes considered a novella by american writer.
The figure in the carpet summary.
The figure in the carpet is partly about readers and the obsessions they can sometimes develop with writers who intrigue them.
This is the famous figure in the carpet of the story s title and it is what vereker sets the narrator to discover.
Vereker dismisses his efforts explaining that all critics have missed my little point the particular thing i ve written my books most for the thing for the critic to find my secret like a complex figure in a persian carpet.
In that sense it s a kind of warning not to associate writers lives too closely with their work so i won t try to figure out what it might mean in connection with henry james own life and work.
And yet the story in which the idiom was born henry james s 1896 tale the figure in the carpet refuses to open itself up to easy interpretations or analysis.
The figure in the carpet plot summary an un named literary critic feels he has successfully.