James’s first novels used conventional narrative techniques: explicit characterization, action that related events in distinctly Line phased sequences, settings firmly outlined and specifically described. But this method gradually gave way to a subtler, more deliberate, more diffuse style of accumulation of minutely discriminated details whose total significance the reader can grasp only by constant attention and sensitive inference. His later novels play down scenes of abrupt and prominent action and do not so much offer a succession of sharp shocks as slow piecemeal additions of perception. The curtain is not suddenly drawn back from shrouded things, but is slowly moved away. Such a technique is suited to James’s essential subject, which is not human action itself but the states of mind that produce and are produced by human actions and interactions.

James was less interested in what characters do, than in the moral and psychological antecedents, realizations, and consequences which attend their doings. This is why he more often speaks of “cases” than of actions. His stories, therefore, grow more and more lengthy while the actions they relate grow simpler and less visible; not because they are crammed with adventitious and secondary events, digressive relief, or supernumerary characters, as overstuffed novels of action are; but because he presents in such exhaustive detail every nuance of his situation. Commonly the interest of a novel is in the variety and excitement of visible actions building up to a climactic event which will settle the outward destinies of characters with the storybook promise of permanence. A James novel, however, possesses its characteristic interest in carrying the reader through a rich analysis of the mental adjustments of characters to the realities of their personal situations as they are slowly revealed to them through exploration and chance discovery.

The passage supplies information for answering which of the following questions?

A. Did James originate the so-called psychological novel?
B. Is conventional narrative technique strictly chronological in recounting action? ​
C. Can novels lacking overtly dramatic incident sustain the reader’s interest? ​
D. Were James’s later novels more acceptable to the general public than his earlier ones?
E. ​Is James unique in his predilection for exploring psychological nuances of character?



In which sentence of the passage does the author use figurative language to clarify James’s technique in his later novels?

A. The first sentence (“James’s first novels ... described.”) ​
B. The second sentence (“But this method ... inference.”)
C. The fourth sentence (“The curtain ... moved away.”) ​
D. The fifth sentence (“Such a technique ... interactions.”) ​
E. The sixth sentence (“James was ... doings.”)



In the context in which it appears, “attend” most nearly means

A. ​take care of
B. ​watch over ​
C. pay attention to ​
D. accompany ​
E. celebrate