On a completely different note, I am also completing Henry James'
The Sacred Fount - and am finding it quite funny! A novella notorious for absolutely nothing happening - it's the country weekend from Hell, filled with emotional vampires, and narrated by a completely clueless [the British term gormless seems apt here] observer. For whatever reason, the usual Jamesian syntax is quite readable in its convolutions, and you keep turning page after page marveling at the asinine conclusions drawn by our faithful narrator, and wishing someone would push him into the fountain!
James disowned this work in his later years [refused to include it in the comprehensive New York Edition of his oeuvre] and critics never could agree as to whether he was serious or satirical. I find it to be a "light-hearted" [if such term could ever be applied to The Master] tale, with tongue firmly planted in authorial cheek.