I completed the Reader's Digest Edition of Twice-Told Tales from 1989. What was my favorite story? Maybe The Hollow of the Three Hills, I found that story nearly perfect. I also enjoyed the complete cycle of Legends of the Province House.
Marriage seems to have been a recurring theme. When I read the rest of Hawthorne's original Twice Told Tales I will consider whether this particular collection was chosen to highlight marriage was much on the mind of this bachelor.
Meanwhile, I am moving on to The Blithedale Romance.
Showing posts with label Legends of the Province House. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Legends of the Province House. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Legends of the Province House - Old Esther Dudley
IV. Old Esther Dudley
Ah, he saved the best for last. Thank you, Mr. Hawthorne, for such a satisfying finish to a story for which I managed to extend my pleasure over a week's time. All these days wondering where is this story going and ah, there. Very nicely done, Sir.
and old Esther Dudley was left to keep watch in the lonely Province House, dwelling there with memory; and if Hope ever seemed to flit around her, still was it Memory in disguise.
Actually, that very last bit resonates with me. ...and if Hope ever seemed to flit around her, still was it Memory in disguise. Sounds like it could be a tagline for the final credits of The Time Traveler's Wife.
I was lukewarm about the first sketch in this series, but this examination of the grip memory has on people and places that was dying with the last of the living colonists in 1838 becomes a fully fleshed story in the end.
Poe nails it so well in his famous assessment: every word tells. The author serves up a paragraph in phrase. If a picture paints a thousand words, Hawthorne is a genius whose 329 word paragraph that begins Yet Esther Dudley's most frequent and favored guests... can create a whole series of thousand word pictures in my mind.
Ah, he saved the best for last. Thank you, Mr. Hawthorne, for such a satisfying finish to a story for which I managed to extend my pleasure over a week's time. All these days wondering where is this story going and ah, there. Very nicely done, Sir.
and old Esther Dudley was left to keep watch in the lonely Province House, dwelling there with memory; and if Hope ever seemed to flit around her, still was it Memory in disguise.
Actually, that very last bit resonates with me. ...and if Hope ever seemed to flit around her, still was it Memory in disguise. Sounds like it could be a tagline for the final credits of The Time Traveler's Wife.
I was lukewarm about the first sketch in this series, but this examination of the grip memory has on people and places that was dying with the last of the living colonists in 1838 becomes a fully fleshed story in the end.
Poe nails it so well in his famous assessment: every word tells. The author serves up a paragraph in phrase. If a picture paints a thousand words, Hawthorne is a genius whose 329 word paragraph that begins Yet Esther Dudley's most frequent and favored guests... can create a whole series of thousand word pictures in my mind.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Legends of the Province House - Lady Eleanore's Mantle
III. Lady Eleanore's Mantle
I can picture an impatient uncle waving these stories in Nat's face, "I don't think you're trying to make a living writing stories. I think you're trying to make a living sitting around drinking all day."
Aren't we all?
A little more meat to this story. I am surprised at the amount of venom directed at the aristocracy of colonial times. What would antebellum Americans have made of the cultural anglophiles we're proving to be?
This story, first published in 1838, makes reference to the second Asiatic cholera pandemic which hit the east coast in 1832. Hawthorne reminds the reader who still remembered this threat, There is no other fear so horrible and unhumanizing as that which makes man dread to breathe heaven's vital air lest it be poison, or to grasp the hand of a brother or friend lest the gripe of the pestilence should clutch him.
Words as true in the 1980s as they were in the 1830s.
I can picture an impatient uncle waving these stories in Nat's face, "I don't think you're trying to make a living writing stories. I think you're trying to make a living sitting around drinking all day."
Aren't we all?
A little more meat to this story. I am surprised at the amount of venom directed at the aristocracy of colonial times. What would antebellum Americans have made of the cultural anglophiles we're proving to be?
This story, first published in 1838, makes reference to the second Asiatic cholera pandemic which hit the east coast in 1832. Hawthorne reminds the reader who still remembered this threat, There is no other fear so horrible and unhumanizing as that which makes man dread to breathe heaven's vital air lest it be poison, or to grasp the hand of a brother or friend lest the gripe of the pestilence should clutch him.
Words as true in the 1980s as they were in the 1830s.
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