From the Bookshelf of Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die…
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I thought Hawthorne had been ruined for me by a high school teacher who made sure no one enjoyed a page of The Scarlet Letter. A not uncommon experience. But I kept thinking of how my sister Pat, a better English teacher than the one I had, loved Hawthorne; he was, she said, perhaps her favorite American author. I wish I would have paid more attention to her thoughts on this before she died so I would have had the pleasure of discussing this book with her and then rereading, as I intend to do, T
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Hawthorne is one of the American "canonized" authors whose brilliance eludes me. He seems to me shallow, lacking in genuine love of language and digresses from the narrative as were he a senile or drunk Henry James (whose digressions are formidably amusing). Though The Scarlet Letter does imply some ability of understanding The Humanity and some social pathos, both The Scarlet Letter and this melodrama on the tiresome subject of an aristocracy that refuses to accept that the times they are a-cha
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Nov 15, 2007
Eve
marked it as to-read
May 13, 2010
Jennie
marked it as to-read
