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Tag Archives: Nathaniel Hawthorne
“He who has never felt, momentarily, what madness is has but a mouthful of brains.” — Herman Melville
“Old nineteenth-century New England must have been fearful–in what other country would Thoreau, Melville, Whitman and Dickinson have been so overlooked?” — Robert Lowell, letter to Elizabeth Bishop, December 12, 1958 Herman Melville was born on this day in 1819. … Continue reading
Today In History: November 14, 1851
Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, was first published in New York as one volume. It had already appeared in London, the month before, in a highly censored version, and had already generated some comment by the time it hit the United … Continue reading
Happy Birthday, Herman Melville
Herman Melville was born on this day in 1819. Moby-Dick is one of my all-time favorite books (my essays and excerpts are linked at the bottom of this post) – so I figured I wouldn’t just re-hash that old territory … Continue reading
Posted in On This Day, writers
Tagged E.M. Forster, Hart Crane, Herman Melville, John Huston, Michael Schmidt, Moby Dick, Nathaniel Hawthorne
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The Books: “Moby Dick” (Herman Melville)
Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction: Moby Dick by Herman Melville I’m going to have to do a couple excerpts on this one. The book is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne: “In token of my admiration for his genius this book is … Continue reading
The Books: “The Scarlet Letter” (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction: The Scarlet Letter – by Nathaniel Hawthorne This was another one of those “had to read” books in high school that I yowled my way thru in protest. The hi-falutin’ language … the bleakness, the … Continue reading
“Shall I send you a fin of the Whale by way of a specimen mouthful?”
I love the friendship of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville – intense kindred spirits and artistic allies. Hawthorne “got” Melville’s greatness long before Melville’s reputation was rehabilitated posthumously. Moby Dick is, of course, dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Anyway, here’s a … Continue reading
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Jessa Crispin has an interesting interview with Peter Boxall, editor of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I loved what Boxall said at the end: Having benefited from an extraordinary number of emails and letters as well as … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce
Tagged 1984, A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Tale of Two Cities, A.S. Byatt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alice in Wonderland, Amongst Women, Animal Farm, Annie Proulx, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, At Swim-Two-Birds, Atonement, Cat's Eye, Catch-22, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, D.H. Lawrence, Don DeLillo, E.M. Forster, Edgar Allan Poe, Edna O'Brien, Emily Bronte, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Finnegans Wake, Flann O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Frankenstein, Franny and Zooey, George Eliot, George Orwell, Great Expectations, Gulliver's Travels, Handmaid's Tale, Herman Melville, House of Leaves, Hunter S. Thompson, Ian McEwan, In Cold Blood, J.D. Salinger, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Ellroy, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Jeanette Winterson, John Irving, John McGahern, John Steinbeck, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Heller, Kazuo Ishiguro, Leo Tolstoy, Lewis Carroll, Lord of the Rings, Margaret Atwood, Mark Danielewski, Mary Shelley, Master and Margarita, Middlemarch, Mikhail Bulgakov, Moby Dick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Notes From the Underground, Possession, Pride and Prejudice, Primo Levi, Sexing the Cherry, Stephen King, The Catcher In the Rye, The Country Girls, The Great Gatsby, The Hobbit, The Passion, The Shipping News, The Things They Carried, Thomas Mann, Tim O'Brien, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Ulysses, Underworld, Vladimir Nabokov, Wuthering Heights
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Happiness
“Happiness comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it. — … Continue reading
“Call me Ishmael.”
A wonderful book review of a new biography of Herman Melville. I like this: Readers will note that I have said nothing very much about Moby-Dick . But what can anyone say? Its quietly portentous first sentence is as famous … Continue reading