pector@ihuxw.UUCP (11/04/83)
S. Badian:
Sorry about the Hawthorne remark. The only thing by Hawthorne that I had
read until about 1 month ago was "Young Goodman Brown," which I really
enjoyed. During the past month, I read a new biography of Hawthorne
(which I recommended in this newsgroup), "The Scarlet Letter," "The
House of the Seven Gables," and an assorted group of short stories
(i.e., "The Gentle Boy," "The Minister's Black Veil," "The Maypole of
Merrymount," etc.). In fact, I enjoyed all of these with one exception.
Further, that exception, "The House of the Seven Gables," I just finished
last night. It is a real letdown compared to "The Scarlet Letter."
It admittedly is entertaining, but the quality is rather poor in comparison.
The ending is too rushed and sudden, the continual nitpicking descriptions
of the characters and their actions (which was economized to a useful
and informative degree in "The Scarlet Letter"), the rather unreal characters
(admittedly, this was a romance and Hawthorne aimed this book at the
popular market), the continual soliloquies by the narrator, etc., all these
things left me with the attitude of a sour critic. Maybe the movie was
better, but if it was, it couldn't have been faithful to the book.
Oh well, one bad banana doesn't spoil the bunch. Hawthorne is entertaining
as a writer in both his fiction and nonfiction (see, for example, his
introduction to "The Scarlet Letter" called the "The Custom House") and
was perhaps the best fiction writer of the 1840's-1850's (with the
exception, perhaps, of Melville who, by the way, spent a year rewriting
"Moby Dick" after observing Hawthorne's use of allegories in "The
Scarlet Letter").
Scott Pector
P.S. Thanks for your support of Twain. The vast majority of people tend
to underrate him as a writer, but as William Dean Howells said, "I
knew them all, Holmes, James, Emerson, Longfellow, etc., but Clemens
was the best, the Lincoln of our Literature." The comment was made
in the 1910s.
P.P.S. The Ohio State University Press has been publishing the definitive
edition of Hawthorne's works and letters.