Hawthorne: A Life - Brenda Wineapple
Hawthorne: A Life - Brenda Wineapple
Non-Fiction
Pages: 509
It must surely be the sign of a skilled author that I was kept utterly engrossed in this biography of a man I had very little interest in. I've only ever consciously read one of Hawthorne's books, The Scarlet Letter, and he has never been a figure I gave very much attention to. If asked, I would have said he lived during the Revolution, rather than later during the Civil War, simply because that was the period I associated with him, the majority of his works being set in that time.
It seems incomprehensible to me that Hawthorne could have lived during such a tumultuous era and yet made so little impact on it, or perhaps that such an era could have made so little impact on him. I've read many a book on the Civil War, and all the expected New England figures pop up - Alcott, Emerson, Thoreau, Beecher Stowe, Fields and Ticknor, and yet it's a rare Civil War history that mentions Hawthorne. And this seems very much par for the course: in this biography Wineapple paints Hawthorne as a man who seemed to move like mist through his own life, never settling, never putting down roots or creating a home, never committing himself to a place or a party or opinion. He seems very much a man dissatisfied with himself and everything around him, a man consistently disappointed with himself.
This is a very elegiac biography, as befits an author like Hawthorne, who was very much defined by his elegant prose and ambiguity of plot and narrative. For all that Hawthorne seemed to be a man at odds with himself and his world, he is very much a product of the antebellum New England transcendentalist scene. And, like Hawthorne's own works, there is a curious sense of detachment in Wineapple's tone, of observation from afar, that is quite unusual for biography where the aim is more to get 'up close and personal' with the subject. It worked for me, very much so, but I sense it wouldn't suit everyone.
Non-Fiction
Pages: 509
It must surely be the sign of a skilled author that I was kept utterly engrossed in this biography of a man I had very little interest in. I've only ever consciously read one of Hawthorne's books, The Scarlet Letter, and he has never been a figure I gave very much attention to. If asked, I would have said he lived during the Revolution, rather than later during the Civil War, simply because that was the period I associated with him, the majority of his works being set in that time.
It seems incomprehensible to me that Hawthorne could have lived during such a tumultuous era and yet made so little impact on it, or perhaps that such an era could have made so little impact on him. I've read many a book on the Civil War, and all the expected New England figures pop up - Alcott, Emerson, Thoreau, Beecher Stowe, Fields and Ticknor, and yet it's a rare Civil War history that mentions Hawthorne. And this seems very much par for the course: in this biography Wineapple paints Hawthorne as a man who seemed to move like mist through his own life, never settling, never putting down roots or creating a home, never committing himself to a place or a party or opinion. He seems very much a man dissatisfied with himself and everything around him, a man consistently disappointed with himself.
This is a very elegiac biography, as befits an author like Hawthorne, who was very much defined by his elegant prose and ambiguity of plot and narrative. For all that Hawthorne seemed to be a man at odds with himself and his world, he is very much a product of the antebellum New England transcendentalist scene. And, like Hawthorne's own works, there is a curious sense of detachment in Wineapple's tone, of observation from afar, that is quite unusual for biography where the aim is more to get 'up close and personal' with the subject. It worked for me, very much so, but I sense it wouldn't suit everyone.