The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne

 1001 Novels: A Library of America

The Scarlet Letter (1850) 

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Boston, Massachussets

Massachussets: 22/30

  The Scarlet Letter is another 1001 Books to Read Before You Die, 1001 Novels: A Library of America- not surprising considering it is a stone cold classic of 19th century American Literature. Hawthorne dominated the 19th century American Literature portion of the 1001 Books list- five or six titles I think, compared to just one in the 1001 Novels project, which seems to limit authors to one book- or at least one book per region.  I haven't come across any repeaters in this New England portion of the project. 

  I didn't write a review of The Scarlet Letter for the 1001 Books project until 2018- it just seems like a book literally everyone has read in high school.

 

  In 1001 Novels terms it represents central Boston- it's the most central Boston book- the map for this project has it just south of Bunker Hill.  Only Union Dues by John Sayles, is more centrally located inside Boston.

2018 Review:

Demi Moore played Hester Pyrnne in the famously terrible 1995 movie version of The Scarlet Letter.

1001 Books to Read Before You Die

The Scarlet Letter (1850)
by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  The Scarlet Letter is another fun read from high school English class.   Published in 1850, it is, I think, the first published American novel still widely read. The Last of the Mohicans was published two decades earlier, but I don't think people really read that book anymore. The Last of the Mohicans is also too long to be read in the context of a modern high school schedule, and The Scarlet Letter has almost the perfect length to be read in full by a high school student.

   Listening to the audiobook this time around, I was struck by at just how very dark The Scarlet Letter is.  It's one thing to know that the language is "darkly romantic," another to actually hear the language spoken aloud.  Were it not for the Puritan wilderness location, you could call The Scarlet Letter gothic. And even if The Scarlet Letter isn't technically gothic, you could forgiven for describing it that way.

   Honestly, it's hard to find much of the dialogue comical when heard aloud.  Again, I was struck that listening to The Scarlet Letter instead of reading it raised the possibility of a satirical element that I totally missed reading it in school.  Googling satire in The Scarlet Letter brings up a wide range of sources, so that's one point against high school me.  Like I said, hearing it, the humorous/satirical intent is apparent. 

Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville

 1001 Novels: A Library of America

Moby Dick (1851)

by Herman Melville

Nantucket, Massachusetts

Massachusetts: 21/30

Herman Melville

    Moby Dick is another 1001 Novels/1001 Books cross-over title- I read it for the 1001 Books project back in 2012.   It's  actually a pretty good review- with links to Ngrams I created showing the relative popularity of Melville to Dickens and Jane Austen in the context of literary revivals... but for the purposes of the 1001 Novels Moby Dick is representing Nantucket.  Considering how much of Moby Dick takes place on a whaling vessel it seems like a bit of a stretch, but it's good to see a solid 19th century classic on the list. 

2012 1001 Books Review:

      Herman Melville is the second major Author on the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die list to obtain his canonical status from a Revival.   The first example of the Revival phenomenon is the well-documented revival of Jane Austen in late 19th century.  Although published in 1851, Herman Melville was ignored for decades after his death except by a small circle of writers and critics in New York City who "kept the flame alive."

 The conventional explanation for the revival of Herman Melville is that he was "before his time" in using Modernist literary techniques.   Fair enough.  It is true that successors didn't start truly arguing for the enduring value of Moby Dick until 1917.

Moby Dick the White Whale

  Much of the "blame" for the failure upon initial publications came from the harsh response that London based critics gave to Moby Dick.  The story goes that the less-sophisticated American critics followed their lead.   That is a weak explanation for why Moby Dick failed.

 The best way to illustrate this is by looking at the reception by American critics of books Charles Dickens published in the 1840s. The American critics expressed negative opinions of works like The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby that were "America specific" and independent of those expressed by English critics.

 I would argue that the key to understanding the initial commercial failure of Moby Dick by Herman Melville is held by looking at Herman Melville's popularity BEFORE Moby Dick was published.

 Specifically, he had popularity, and an Audience, based on Audience familiarity with his travel narratives. I think what went wrong when Moby Dick was published was specifically that he confused his Audience.  That Audience included both the folks who actually bought and read his earlier books, and liked them, as well as critics who were only interested in Moby Dick because it was by someone who had sold books in the past and had an existing Audience.

 That existing Audience- wasn't dissuaded from critics from not liking Moby Dick- they themselves did not like Moby Dick because it was so out there.  If the people who bought and read 500+ Novels in the mid 19th century- and that would have been everyone who read Novels, period- had liked Moby Dick, the critics would have come around.  If Moby Dick had been serialized, and the Audience for printed matters had glommed on to Moby Dick for whatever reason, the critics would have come around.

 A "blame the critics" approach to describing the failed initial reception of Moby Dick is wrong, one might as well blame the Audience for existing.

  It is also worth comparing the eventual popularity of Herman Melville and Moby Dick to Charles Dickens and his crowning achievement,  David Copperfield.  They were published almost within a year of one another in London, so it's a good comparison.  If you look at a Google Ngram comparing the frequency of mention of the two Authors names between 1840 and 2000,  Charles Dickens "takes off" in the mid 1860s and Herman Melville is flat well into the 20th century.  Since the 1960s both Authors have been flat, with Charles Dickens reasonably more popular then Herman Melville, but with both in the same league.

 If you add Jane Austen to the mix (another "revived" Author) you can see that she has blown both men out of the water in the late 20th century.   In the Dickens/Melville/Austen graph you can also see the impact of the earlier Austen revival during a time when Melville was essentially dormant.

 You can also add the names of the works: David Copperfield & Moby Dick, to the Ngram that contains the names of the Authors, Herman Melville and Charles Dickens.  This Ngram shows that Moby Dick the work is almost more popular or as popular as the Author, whereas David Copperfield is only a fraction of the popularity of Charles Dickens.

  I think the irony of the initial failure/eventual success of Moby Dick by Herman Melville is that it has literally inspired a hundred years of writers to write books people don't want to read.  Think about it, think about the later impact of literary modernism on the Novel and the shape that the Novel takes as an Art form during the 20th century.  Moby Dick has inspired a century of terrible writers to actually be terrible on the theory that after they are dead some egg head will finally "get" their brilliance.  Personally, I'd rather throw in with Charles Dickens then Herman Melville.

Illumination Night (1987) by Alice Hoffman

1001 Novels: A Library of America

Illumination Night (1987)

by Alice Hoffman

Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts

Massachusetts:  20/30

    Really in my "tedious slog" era of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America project.  This seemingly never ending Audiobook (only 224 pages in print) took me literally months to get through because I could normally listen only in 15 minute segments.   The most incredible part about Illumination Night vis a vis its place in the 1001 Novels project is that this book also features a giant who lives on the Cape!  The two books are only separated by a few hours drive (well boat ride since this book is on the Vineyard and the McKracken book is on the mainland).  

   Of course, The Giant's House  is ALL about the giant and here the giant is a relatively minor player.  The main character is Vonny, a 20 year mother of one married to Andre- a brooding motorcycle mechanic/restorer and mother of Simon, who is a tiny little boy.  They move to the Vineyard year round at the beginning book and meet their next door neighbor Elizabeth Renny, an elderly widow and her granddaughter Jody, a bored, horny 17 year old who is sent as a seasonal assistant to granny but then connives her way into year round residency.

    I was almost personally offended by the characters in this book and their problems.  Particularly Vonny, who inexplicably becomes agoraphobic half-way through the book after she gets into a fight with her Dad.   I am not exaggerating- she goes into New York, has an argument with her Dad- from whom she is ALREADY estranged, goes back to the Cape and can't leave her house.  Andre nails the jail bait next door but slides off the hook when Jody becomes intimidate with the Giant who lives down the road.

   Basically once Vonny manifests her agoraphobia I couldn't stop thinking about how only the privilege can suffer from a disease where you have to stay inside your nice, safe, bourgeois house.  What happens to agoraphobics who live in a hut in the third world?  In true literary fiction fashion, Vonny does have a livelihood that she can do from her house- she's a potter.   Anyway I found the whole thing ridiculous and stupid.   And I'm so tired of these books about sad housewives and their troubled lives raiding children as privileged white people in America.  Boo hoo.  Susan Straight has picked a lot of those books so far- roughly a hundred books in I think.

Blackouts (2023) by Justin Torres

 Book Review

Blackouts (2023)

by Justin Torres

    Congratulations to Blackouts and author Justin Torres, who won the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction last week.  I just happened to finish the Audiobook right after it won the NBA Fiction.   Torres blends fact and fiction, history and the present in a way that very much reminded me of W.G. Sebald.   The plot is straight forward and elusive at the same time: An unnamed narrator comes to visit Juan Gay, an elderly Puerto Rican member of the LGBTQ community who is dying in a flop house in an unnamed city.   Gay has used his copy of Sex Variants- a 1941 book that purported to be an objective "study" of homosexuality to create black-out poetry- where the creator takes an existing book and blacks out large amounts of text to create a poem with what remains. 

   As Juan and Nene (the narrator) sit/lie waiting for Juan to die, he recounts the history of the 1941 book, specifically the roll played by Jan Gay- a real-life trailblazer in the LGBTQ community who contributed her own descriptions to the 1941 book, only to see them used in uncredited fashion.   No need to proclaim how good Blackouts is- it just won the National Book Award!

The Glutton (2023) by AK Blakemore

 Book Review

The Glutton (2023)

by AK Blakemore

   I'm quite sure I never would have heard of The Glutton, by English author-poet AK Blakemore, were it not for the New York Times book review published on October 29th of this year.  It is Blakemore's second novel after publishing some poetry- original and in translation (Chinese!) Her first novel was published by Granta Books but this book is published by Scribner- a hallowed name in American publishing, so someone at that conglomerate has faith in her!  I checked out the Audiobook without even reading the NYT review- all I had to see was that it was a work of 18th century French historical fiction with a body horror/freakshow twist- sold. 

   It makes for a fun Audiobook- the story is recounted by the Glutton himself on his deathbed.  It's a story that is based on a true event- a French Revolution era peasant who could and did eat everything in sight.  This book makes him seem like a 1/1 but any reader knows that American sideshows frequently featured a "geek" who would bite the head off of live chickens and eat all sort of disgusting filth.  Here, of course, Blakemore is free to weave her poetic spell.   While the grotesque eating does provide some extremely memorable moments, they aren't matched by the adventures which give rise to them.  Tarare is a genuine son-of-a-whore who eeks out a hardscrabble existence with his mom in a small french village until his step-father tries to murder him.  It is the resulting injury which transforms Tarare from a common village half-wit to Tarare the Great.  

   I can see where Blakemore- and Scribner- was going with this idea- The Glutton reminded me of much of the interesting fiction emerging out of Latin America and South Korea- typically written by women though often not about women.  It is the weaving of body horror, historical fiction, science fiction/horror/gothic genre literature and writerly technique.   Interested to see Blakemore's next work of fiction to be sure, though I'd stop short of calling this one of my favorite books of the year.

Father of the Rain (2010) by Lily King

1001 Novels: A Library of America

Father of the Rain (2010)

by Lily King

Massachussets: 19/30

Boston, Massachussets

   I was prepared to trash this book, but then I went and read the favorable New York Times review from 2010 and her current review count on Amazon (her top two books have 14k and 12k reviews, which is an order of magnitude bigger than what even succesful literary fiction titles register on that site).   It looks like she traded in an earlier segment of her career, epitomized by this book, which won her some regional literary awards for a later portion of her career where she just spins out bangers.  

   What I'm trying to do here is not be unreasonably mean, even though I found Father of the Rain hard to bear, with its relatively privileged protagonist, an anthropology student who has landed a tenure track professorship at UC Berkeley.   Daley Armory is headed in the right direction when her past, in the form of her alcoholic, waspy, father has a medical emergency and summons her back to the tony Boston suburb where she grew up.  King doesn't actually tell the book in flashback format, rather we get a straight narration, taking you from Daley's mildly difficult childhood through her sub-optimal choice to chuck a potential tenured professor at UC Berkeley to teach high school and raise a couple kids with her husband- which is where she ends up- sorry for the spoiler but is that really a surprise- I felt like the resolution to this book was luminous from the very first page.   Of course she isn't going back to get that job but also of course it works out for her in a different way in the end.

  Like many parents in the pages of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America, Daley has a Mother who thinks she knows what's best for her daughter (leaving a mildly annoying, alcoholic husband who is none the less a good provider) when her daughter almost certainly disagrees with her.  The formative moment in this book comes when Daley's mom announces to Daley that they are leaving the next day, without so much as a conversation with the Dad.  I'm not hugely sympathetic to alcoholic wasps from Massachussets, but simply as a human being it seemed like Daley's mom was making a poorly reasoned choice. 

  

White Holes (2023) by Carlos Rovelli

 Book Review

White Holes (2023)

by Carlos Rovelli

   I snatched the Audiobook of this short treatise on the theory of "white holes" (physics) from the library because I love a good general interest books about the nature of time and space.  In particular, I find the treatment of time in physics to be very interesting.   I was a terrible math and science student in school, and never seriously pursued any subject tied to either after I left high school, but as I get older I realized that physics, and specifically its description of time, space and "space-time" are very interesting indeed.

   This book is about the theory of White Holes.  White Holes are what lay on the other side of the event horizon of a black hole.   It is, of course, just a theory, since obtaining proof of white holes would seem to lie beyond human capacity (since nothing, not even light, ever escapes from a black hole).   I will confess that I didn't understand much, if any, of the theoretical underpinnings of the white hole theory.  Rovelli does make the claim that time runs backwards after you emerge from a white hole, which is a pretty interesting theory about time- that it can, in fact, run backwards.  One of the points Rovelli makes repeatedly is that physics is time agnostic, i.e. that time can run backwards and forwards in the standard model of physics and much of the book is devoted to explaining the subjective experience of time vs. its actual role in the universe.