What's it all about?

What are my goals with this blog?

First and foremost, I intend to hold myself accountable to continue reading my way through all of Hawthorne's work instead of reading the same bits over and over again. When I have read all his published work I will read it again and again, as well as seeking out his journals and correspondence.

Why do all that reading? Because I want to know Hawthorne more completely. I want to hear his voice in my head. I want to write about him and I want to encourage others to write about him.

Second, I want to raise Hawthorne's visibility because I think he does not receive the recognition he should. Oh yes, most Americans meet him briefly in the classroom, but there is this perfect love story between Nat and Sophia Peabody, it has all the ingredients the right screenwriter could mold into a blockbuster romance, and yet almost no one knows the story. I would like to tell that story in a great big blockbuster movie culminating with the wedding July 9, 1842.

And then I imagine Hawthorne's entire life story would lend itself well to a three part mini series. So perhaps a synchronous producer would make that mini series.

And then I think the whole thing would snowball and there could be a series about the lives of authors in the early 19th century who were helping America forge a literature of her own. Hawthorne, yes, but also Irving, Poe, Melville. Maybe Cooper.

And I imagine another biographical series about other famous people of the time spiraling out from Hawthorne, to Elizabeth Peabody, Emerson, Thoreau, Horace Mann, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller.

And of course, there is the whole body of Hawthorne fiction that could be brought to the screen. I want to see a flowering of media about Hawthorne and his friends and his stories and his novels.

I know, these are wild and crazy, grandiose thoughts. But I think there's enough material there. I think certain historical periods are in fashion from time to time, and now it's time to consider the early antebellum, the birth of transcendentalism, the Manifest Destiny generation. I consider how America fawned over Jane Austen in 2008, we watched all her movies on PBS, and paid to see The Jane Austen Book Club and Becoming Jane in the theaters. Is it farfetched to believe we might become thus enamored of Nathaniel Hawthorne someday?

So I am sending a little ripple out to see if I can infect the world with a Hawthorne meme.

Happy New Year.

Help with The Threefold Destiny

Someone asked.

Summary - local boy circles the globe in search of the grand flourishes he has imagined will reveal his even grander destinies for romance, treasure, and public influence. Upon his return, a man of thought and care, weary with world-wandering, and heavy with disappointed hopes, Ralph Cranfield encounters all three signs right there in his hometown. In fact, two of the signs he placed himself. So he went all the way around the world looking for what he had left behind.

This "Faery Legend" was first published in 1838, when Hawthorne was wooing Sophia Peabody. It could be Hawthorne was congratulating himself on finding his mate so close to home. Or perhaps he was exploring his response to pressure to go out and find his fortune. I find so many of these early stories wrestle with questions of marriage, destiny, and making one's way in the world.

But about the story...Why did Ralph leave? When struggling with Hawthorne, I always go back to the words. He begins describing the signs and destinies as, The first of these fatalities... Fatalities, of course, these things are fated to happen. But Connotations 101 reminds us to hear the finality of death in that phrase. Ostensibly Cranfield went in search of his destiny when in fact he was dodging it. Later we will learn he knew Faith was his beloved even before her faith was proven.

I do not like Ralph Cranfield, I wonder if I am not meant to. He arrogantly ignores his beloved when he meets her in the street, though I am sure every mother reading the story agrees he was right to present himself to his mother before anyone else. I would wish he lost something in the leaving, were my wishes of anyone's concern here.

I wonder about the whole "Hail the Conquering Hero" bit. What did Cranfield do to merit the local authorities' trust? How fortunate to have been away so long and then succeed in being in the right place at the right time, which is why it is a fairy tale I suppose. But still, Hawthorne worked in a bit of reality to soothe the skeptics on the other two aspects: Cranfield carved EFFODE in the tree and fashioned the brooch on Faith's bosom, planting his own seeds for the mystical deja vu later on. But this bit where he comes home and then next morning the town fathers knock on his door and hand him a job of some importance without any effort on his part, I do not understand how that fits.

Unless, the job is not a blessing. Is the charge of the local schoolchildren a role the selectmen were at a loss to fill, and was this unemployed prodigal son an answer to their prayers? Did they fulfill his dream or did he fulfill theirs?

I stray too far from the story I fear. In the end, I consider what I know of going away and coming home and believe we are to understand this story must be a fairy tale because you will never return to find things just as you left them, only better.

What is Hawthorne Reader?

I love Hawthorne's writing. I chose The Scarlet Letter off the bookshelf decades ago. I was in eighth grade and I needed a book for a book report. I thought I would show off and choose a classic from my father's small collection. I told people I wanted to read the book for fun before eleventh grade reading assignments crushed all the life out of the story.

I don't know how I endured The Custom-House (TCH) introduction the first time. I plodded through, as one did during school years, forcing my eye across each line trying to keep myself from succumbing to the tedium. I was commited by then. I had told everyone I was reading The Scarlet Letter (TSL). My teacher was skeptical, he had just assigned this book to his junior class and they were all struggling with the material. I knew I could read it. But I hoped the story would improve.

At some point, I suspect I gave up on TCH, always intending to go back and read it some other time. I skipped to the first page of real story and from that very moment I fell in love. I loved the story. I loved the strength of the heroine. I loved the way Hawthorne spoke to the reader, most of the time (occasionally it was weird). I loved the way he could give you two sentences that summed up a character entirely.

My parents were censoring my books back then. I was thirteen and had already been punished for reading Jaws and The Flame and the Flower. It was nearly impossible in the promicuous seventies for an advanced reader like myself to find books that challenged my reading skills which my parents would allow me to read. I loved that TSL dealt with an adult situation with an adult vocabulary and sentence structure that never offended this reader's parents with scenes of sexual passion.

Okay, so a long time ago I fell in love with Nathaniel Hawthorne's writing. And for many years I have thought he hasn't received the acclaim he deserves. There ought to be movies about him. There ought to be movies about Emerson, Thoreau, Elizabeth Peabody, all of them, but especially Nathaniel and Sophia because theirs is a beautiful love story.

Somebody is going to have to write the screenplay. If it will be me, then I need to immerse myself in his words until I find the voice for the story.

I hope this blog helps me to be accountable to myself, I plan to keep reading through all the extant Hawthorne writings and other resources I find from time to time. I will read and then I will post a thought here, no matter how inane, to prove I did my reading.

I'm hoping that maybe there are other Hawthorne readers out there who may stop by from time to time to share their thoughts. It's a lonely world loving Nathaniel Hawthorne all by myself. I am hoping I will change his fame in my lifetime, but for now any like minded souls are welcomed.