Customer Reviews

Selected Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne

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In this serviceable & unpretentious compilation we find the obsidian diamond soul of Hawthorne's scrupulously painstaking and painful artistry represented: "Young Goodman Brown" and "Ethan Brand"...Two works in which literary chiaroscuro effects are created with unprecedented skill among American authors. It is simply not possible to gauge American literature in the 19th century at its highest pitch without the inclusion of these two tales; read carefully & carefully reread. Although with characteristic modesty Hawthorne referred to the Idea of "Ethan Brand" as emanating from leftover agonies much as a poorly extracted tooth might leave, it is one of the glories of our literary heritage, and a work of both conceptual brilliance and formal elegance. Few works in our tongue are as well-wrought, and fewer still as troubling. One may say as much of "Young Goodman Brown" also, although it brings out an even deeper shade of blackness, which amounts to a kind of literary mezzotint...In which mere darkness becomes a background against which far more profound & richer blacknesses are made visible...Easily two of the greatest meditations upon the human heart in all of its Fallen fallibility, and absolutely unsurpassed for spiritual grace and formal perfection among American authors. The conclusion to "Ethan Brand" is (for this reader) at the extreme height--standing atop a towering peak--of the artform, and is without question among the very finest short stories EVER written in any language. Noble Hawthorne, friend and inspiration to Melville--'our' Shakespeare!--that we will NEVER see your like again in this land is all the more reason to celebrate and extol your greatness. May Heaven grant you all the "crystal plaudities" you and your immortal works deserve, now and in the ages to come!