ABSTRACT
In an often-quoted letter to his publisher Henry Holt, written just as he was about to send off The Principles of Psychology, William James described the book as "a loathsome, distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass." Don't believe it; falser words were never spoken. What that outburst tells us is that anyone, even a genius upon completion of a masterpiece, is capable of the most grotesque forms of authorial disgust and self-hatred—just like the rest of us.
