"look of being committed to nothing in particular" - a facial description from Henry James's The American

A description of a face from The American by Henry James.

This is from the revised New York Edition published in 1908

His complexion was brown and the arch of his nose bold and well-marked. His eye was of a clear, cold grey, and save for the abundant droop of his moustache he spoke, as to cheek and chin, of the joy of the matutinal steel. He had the flat jaw and the firm, dry neck which are frequent in the American type; but the betrayal of native conditions is a matter of expression even more than of feature, and it was in this respect that our traveller's countenance was supremely eloquent. The observer we have been supposing might, however, perfectly have measured its expressiveness and yet have been at a loss for names and terms to fit it. It had that paucity of detail which is yet not emptiness, that blankness which is not simplicity, that look of being committed to nothing in particular, of standing in a posture of general hospitality to the chances of life, of being very much at one's own disposal, characteristic of American faces of the clear strain. It was the eye, in this case, that chiefly told the story; an eye in which the unacquainted and the expert were singularly blended. It was full of contradictory suggestions; and though it was by no means the glowing orb of a hero of romance you could find in it almost anything you looked for. Frigid and yet friendly, frank yet cautious, shrewd yet credulous, positive yet sceptical, confident yet shy, extremely intelligent and extremely good-humoured, there was something vaguely defiant in its concessions and something profoundly reassuring in its reserve. The wide yet partly folded wings of this gentleman's moustache, with the two premature wrinkles in the cheek above it, and the fashion of his garments, in which an exposed shirt-front and a blue satin necktie of too light a shade played perhaps an obtrusive part, completed the elements of his identity. 

Same passage from the original version published in 1877

His complexion was brown, and his nose had a bold well-marked arch. His eye was of a clear, cold gray, and save for a rather abundant moustache he was clean-shaved. He had the flat jaw and sinewy neck which are frequent in the American type; but the traces of national origin are a matter of expression even more than of feature, and it was in this respect that our friend’s countenance was supremely eloquent. The discriminating observer we have been supposing might, however, perfectly have measured its expressiveness, and yet have been at a loss to describe it. It had that typical vagueness which is not vacuity, that blankness which is not simplicity, that look of being committed to nothing in particular, of standing in an attitude of general hospitality to the chances of life, of being very much at one’s own disposal so characteristic of many American faces. It was our friend’s eye that chiefly told his story; an eye in which innocence and experience were singularly blended. It was full of contradictory suggestions, and though it was by no means the glowing orb of a hero of romance, you could find in it almost anything you looked for. Frigid and yet friendly, frank yet cautious, shrewd yet credulous, positive yet sceptical, confident yet shy, extremely intelligent and extremely good-humored, there was something vaguely defiant in its concessions, and something profoundly reassuring in its reserve. The cut of this gentleman’s moustache, with the two premature wrinkles in the cheek above it, and the fashion of his garments, in which an exposed shirt-front and a cerulean cravat played perhaps an obtrusive part, completed the conditions of his identity. 

the whim of almighty Work!

An excerpt from Zola's The Masterpiece about the trials and tribulations of being an artist. The character speaking these lines, Sandoz, is a thinly veiled self-portrait of Zola himself.

The thing is, work has simply swamped my whole existence. Slowly but surely it’s robbed me of my mother, my wife, and everything that meant anything to me. It’s like a germ planted in the skull that devours the brain, spreads to the trunk and the limbs, and destroys the entire body in time. No sooner am I out of bed in the morning than work clamps down on me and pins me to my desk before I’ve even had a breath of fresh air. It follows me to lunch and I find myself chewing over sentences as I’m chewing my food. It goes with me when I go out, eats out of my plate at dinner and shares my pillow in bed at night. It’s so completely merciless that once the process of creation is started, it’s impossible for me to stop it, and it goes on growing and working even when I’m asleep. … Outside that, nothing, nobody exists. I go up to see my mother, but I’m so absorbed that ten minutes afterwards I’m asking myself whether I’ve been up to her or not. As for my wife, she has no husband, poor thing; we’re never really together any more, even when we’re hand-in-hand! Sometimes I feel so acutely aware that I’m making them both unhappy that I’m overcome with remorse, for happiness in a home depends so much on kindness and frankness and gaiety. But do what I will, I can’t escape entirely from the monster’s clutches, and I’m soon back in the semiconscious state that goes with creation and just as sullen and indifferent as I always am when I’m working. If the morning’s writing’s gone smoothly, all well and good; if it hasn’t, all’s not so good; and so the whole household laughs or cries to the whim of almighty Work! … That’s the situation. I’ve nothing now I can call my own. In the bad old days I used to dream about foreign travel or restful holidays in the country. Now that I could have both, here I am hemmed in by work, with no hope of so much as a brisk walk in the morning, a free moment to visit an old friend, or a moment’s self-indulgence! I haven’t even a will of my own; it’s become a habit now to lock my door on the world outside and throw my key out of the window. … So there we are, cribbed and confined together, my work and me. And in the end it’ll devour me, and that will be the end of that! 

One of the recurring themes in the novel is the critique of romantic conception of the "Artist" as someone hankering after an impossible ideal, a kind of mystical and harmonious whole. Zola instead wanted writers and artists to be like sober-minded scientists, (or "naturalists" in its original sense) but like all true artists he gives the best lines to characters speaking against his own view.