It's great to finally get back to the classics. It's been far too long since I read a book with careful intensity, noting throwaway lines that are likely to show up on a multiple choice or short answer test that misses the main themes of a book entirely while managing to ask lots of questions like, "In the fourth chapter, what kind of shoes was [character you don't even remember] wearing?"I was thinking maybe it would be nice to read a book like this without worrying about that stuff, just absorbing it for what it was and then moving on through my life drunk.Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.It's hard to know where to start with this thing.The prose itself is almost unreadable. Let me give you an example of what a sentence in this book is like:A man- who was born in a small town, which bore no resemblance to the town his parents imagined for him when they settled in the area over 40 years ago with every intention of starting a small business selling gift baskets online that sort of petered out after bigger companies like FTD caught onto the whole thing and ran the little guys out with predatory pricing- decided to go for a walk one day.I shit you not. Whenever I saw a dash I'd skip down to find the second dash, and usually managed to cruise through half a page to find the relevant piece where the prose picked up again.Word on the street is that Hawthorne, who published the book in 1850, actually wrote it to seem EVEN MORE old-timey than it was, which is pretty goddamn old-timey at this point. As far as I can tell, writing old-timey means:1. Describing furniture and clothing in such exhaustive detail that royal wedding coverage appears shabby and underdeveloped.2. Using commas wherever the fuck you feel like it.3. Structuring the plot in such a way that you already know everything that's going to happen way before it does.Let's talk plot while we're on the topic.The plot is like Dynasty with all the juicy parts pulled out. I'm serious. All events could be summed up by video of a guy sitting in front of a sign that says, "Banging people isn't so bad" and winking from time to time. One of the characters is damned, and as she walks through the forest the bits of light that dot the trail through the canopy of trees literally vanish before she can walk into them. Now this would be fine in a book where the damned character was in the woods, say, leading an army of orcs. But in a book where the sexual and social mores of Puritan society are called into question, it kind of overdoes everything and kills the mood.So it all begs the question: What the fuck is going on with these classics?The Scarlet Letter, according to a recent study, is the sixth-most taught book in American high schools. It's very popular, and you can hardly enter a Barnes and Noble without seeing a new version with such awesome cover art that it almost tricks you into buying it.I have a frequent argument with my brother regarding what makes things (movies, books, whatever) great. To him, for example, a movie might be great because it's the first movie to usher in a new era in filmmaking, really redefining an era while paying a loving homage to the past. Context is important to him, and reading the stuff on the IMDB page is part of the movie experience in his world.For me, I don't really give a shit about context. Knowing that Hawthorne had certain feelings about Puritanism based on his ancestry doesn't really matter much to me. Finding out that the main character was based loosely on the author's wife doesn't really do a whole lot for me. In other words, I demand to be entertained on at least some level, and if the level of entertainment doesn't spur me on to dig deeper, I think that's a failure of the art and not an example of my own laziness contributing to my dislike of the art in question.Furthermore, when the prose is TOO challenging I am constantly thinking, "This is a book I am reading and here is the next line of this book." I am not at all swept up in the narrative and therefore don't enjoy it nearly as much.I like to think of books as being like magicians. Take a David Copperfield...the magician, not the book. His schtick is to do amazing tricks that appear effortless on his part, which is why they are, well, magical. David Blaine, on the other hand, performs feats that do not appear effortless whatsoever, and therefore far less magical. It takes a great writer to write a great book. It takes an even better writer to write a great book that appears nearly effortless.One might accuse me of rarely reading challenging books, and maybe it's true. I find myself drawn to books that compel me to finish them as opposed to those that I feel I have to slog through while other books are sitting in growing piles around my apartment, calling out to me with their promises of genuine laughs, heartbreak that is relevant to me, and prose that doesn't challenge me to the point that it's more of a barrier to the story than anything.Perhaps most telling, at the book club meeting we were discussing this last night, and an older lady asked a pretty decent question: "Why is this considered a classic?"There are two answers, one that is what the Everyman Library will tell you and one that I would tell you.Everyman would say that the book is a classic because it is an excellent snapshot of a historical period. It has a narrative set within a framework that allows us to better understand our roots as Americans. The issues of people's perceptions of women and rights of women are still very alive today. Overall, it gives us a chance to examine our own society through the lens of fiction, therefore re-framing the conversation to make it less personal and easier to examine without bias. Blah, blah, blah.I would say it's a classic because it was one of the more palatable books that came out during the period when "classics" were made. I would also point out that the canonized classics are never revised. We never go back and say which books maybe have less to say about our lives than they used to, or which might still be relevant but have been usurped by something that is closer to the lives we live today. I would also say that it continues to be taught in schools because the kind of people who end up teaching high school English are most often people who have a deep and abiding respect for these types of books and identified with these types of books at around that time in their lives. I think there are a lot of people out there who never liked these books, and rather than making their voices heard about what they think people should read they just drop out of the world of books altogether.My point is, I think this is a bad book. It's got low readability, even for adults. The plot is melodramatic. The characters are single-dimensional crap, the women being constant victims of the time and the men being weak examples of humanity. Also, a very serious story is halted in places where we are expected to believe that magic letter A's pop up in the sky like you might see in an episode of Sesame Street.It must have been a very exciting book in its time, without a doubt based on its sales. And if this kind of book is your thing, good for you. I don't begrudge you your joy. It's just not a book that I would ever dream of foisting on someone else, nor would I recommend reading it unless you are absolutely required.
If Nathaniel Hawthorne were alive today, I would attend one of his readings and say, "Nathaniel Hawthorne, go fuck thyself."According to the Centre for Learning and Teaching of Literature, The Scarlet Letter is one of the top ten most taught books in American high schools (2008). I won't even make the argument that this list needs to be updated to include more contemporary novels, as I've read plenty of classics that are equally as compelling as modern literature (anything by the Bronte sisters, Tale of Two Cities, etc.). An adolescent's developing love of literature is too precious to be subjected to the cumbersome dreck that is this book. If I were to use The Scarlet Letter as a baseline for evaluating the quality of classics and literature in general, I would never want to read again. I'm glad I escaped my own adolescence unmolested by this text.Join me in reading this sentence, wherein Hawthorne indulges in some masturbatory wordiness that I'm sure made him feel quite satisfied with himself:"The young divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in Oxford, was considered by his more fervent admirers as little less than a heaven-ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labor for the ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds for the now feeble New England Church, as the early Fathers had achieved for the infancy of the Christian faith."F. My. L.To recap the story, Hester Prynne is sent ahead of her husband to New World Massachusetts, where she is to establish their home in preparation of their new life in Salem. Some times goes by, and Hester's ugly old husband never shows up. So she takes it upon herself to get some badly needed ass in the form of Rev. Dimmesdale, one of Salem's most respected Puritan leaders. Unfortunately, the townspeople know she's a married lady waiting for her husband -- but she scandalously gets pregnant with the reverend's child. The book opens with Hester's release from prison after giving birth to her daughter and refusing to name the father. What follows is a recounting of how guilty everyone feels while Hester's husband befriends Dimmesdale so he can slowly kill him with ... herbs? evil telepathy? (Who cares?)I begrudgingly admit that The Scarlet Letter was probably considered an important book in its time, if only due to controversy. The book boldly explores the inner sexual conflict of a woman who chooses to rebel against oppressive social convention, and I can see it looking to skewer prudish Victorian attitudes toward female sexuality. However, I WISH WISH WISH Hawthorne had not been the one to write a book with such an important purpose. His message is obstructed by his pathetic need to prove himself as a refined artist despite having been the descendant of the very Puritans he criticizes. While reading I could picture him behind me, pointing at each sentence and saying, "See what I did there? That's called foreshadowing." *cue pretentious chuckle*I'm asking myself why this book is considered a classic. Is it because it was deemed ahead of its time? Is it because it caused controversy when it was first published? Is it because the writing is ... "intricate"? Who decided it WAS a classic? (As in who let this happen? Because I'd like a word with them.) I think "experts" may have let their haughty expectations get the best of them when including The Scarlet Letter on the roster of important literature. Just because a book INTENDS to do something important doesn't mean it actually DOES something important. Hawthorne's critical intentions are obvious, but he's too busy jerking himself off with big sentences and long digressions to actually accomplish anything. American high schools need to tune this out. I can just imagine how much potential passion for reading has been snuffed out by Hawthorne. Never, ever read this book.
What do You think about The Scarlet Letter (2002)?
Somewhere between 4 & 5 rounded up. I've also posted at my online reading journal; continue reading for the short version. If you look at a random reader review of this novel, one of the first things you're apt to see is that The Scarlet Letter was assigned in someone's literature class in high school. I wasn't that lucky (I took a more classical route -- Shakespeare, the Greeks, etc.) but then again, I may not have appreciated it as much as I do now, having just read it. I can see why a lot of readers might be turned off of this book -- the language is on the archaic side (lots of thees, thys and thous) -- but once you get past that hurdle, there is an excellent story here. It is a dark tale that kept me mesmerized. Since this plot is so well known, I won't rehash it here, but if you haven't yet figured out my reading raison d'etre, I move right into the psychology of the individual, especially the darker side of human nature, and this book is a goldmine.Personally, I think it's a shame that so many people dislike this book, because it is seriously one of the best I've had the pleasure to have read this year. If you read it slowly, you will discover that rather than it being "boring" or "a yawn" (as some readers have described it), it is actually a beautiful, very human story that I will never forget as long as I live. If you read it in high school, you might want to go back and read it again, this time slowly. It is worth every second of time you give to it. Now I'm hoping I'll find something equally as good from around this time period ... this book has set the bar. I had meant to read his The House of the Seven Gables, but as happens so often around here, it got picked up, set down and misplaced. So I picked up this one instead. Oh my god. I couldn't stop reading. I was wrapped up in this book for four days, including one entire, round-the-clock session through an entire night going into the morning. Now that it's over, I'm missing it. That's very, very rare. Beautiful book.
—Nancy Oakes
Awesome. I never read Hawthorne before and find his writing style a bit convoluted, with many ideas in one sentence, which slowed down my reading. However, this also improved my appreciation for the language and depth of this story. Themes: love, hate, revenge, hidden sin, open sin, forgiveness, guilt. Which gives the Sinner the best chances of redemption: open sin, which is publically observed and punished or hidden sin, which one keeps in one’s soul and suffers alone without any chance of forgiveness?Is a child conceived in sin an elf-ish evil child or an ordinary, lively, beautiful girl? This story is heartbreaking and moving in many ways. One feels for Hester and her loneliness, her anguish and thoughts as she contemplates life and sin and consequences. The battles between right and wrong, public and private and the interesting argument of love/hate and the sameness (not opposites) of these two emotions , a belief I’ve held for years and found interesting in print. (view spoiler)[Hester is such a strong person that it’s quite a surprise that she loves the weak Arthur Dimmesdale. He’s everything that imprisoned her. He hasn’t the gumption to admit his sin, to stand by her side, to face the consequences with her. He’s a hypocrite and no carving of a letter into his chest can alter that. (hide spoiler)]
—Petra
Astoria wrote: "That picture, though. It's a good thing you finished the book, or I wouldn't have gotten to see that pic on your review. ._.":D I also do DNF reviews, so you might have seen it anyway. But since it's for school, I had to finish it.
—Inge
