FREE: THE UNPARDONABLE SIN-LTHE LFE OF NATHANIEL HAWTBORNE

The listing, THE UNPARDONABLE SIN-LTHE LFE OF NATHANIEL HAWTBORNE has ended.

Hardcover biography of a brilliant writer.
Laudably, Mr. Wood rebuts the legend of Hawthorne as a desolate recluse, but his accuracy, far from projecting an authentic presence, leaves the author, in Hawthorne's own skeptical view of such efforts, ""cold and naked""; indeed, the negative summation of the man as lacking ""force,"" of his writing as not being ""full-bodied,"" applies equally to this portrait of him. He is less than his masterful Hawthorne forebears but bears the curse of their rampant Puritanism (one was a witch-hanging judge); he is not sufficiently a pragmatic Manning; and so he becomes the sum of his inherited and inherent deficiencies, ultimately, in Mr. Wood's crushing assessment, ""a lay psychologist who specialized in morbid psychology."" Far better the artist as enigma. Too, there is much lecturing on his character in lieu of revelation and many querulous (""He became a true government employee. . . he played hookey from his job"") to supercilious asides. Nonetheless, if one need know about Hawthorne this is brisker than Hildegarde Hawthorne's Romantic Rebel and more businesslike too than Seon Manley's 1968 biography and while both are more insightful in passing, this has an overall firmness consequent on the failure to identify with the subject. Not a Hawthorne to take to heart, then, or a book to excite interest in his writings (which are as drily dissected, except for The Scarlet Letter, as he is) but a possible purgative for the researcher.


CONDITION- used ex-library book in very good condition.