Twice-Told Tales

Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Published by MobileReference (mobi). In your face, obvious, and heavy-handedly allegorical, still Hawthorne manages to pique my interest and hammer home his point. Switching from historically based stories to spiritual allegories, Hawthorne continually chips away at the danger of isolation. Although he clearly believed in the fallibility and evil of the human heart - particularly pointing out the religious hypocrites - he also believed that one must continue to risk and be a part of the community.

Twice-Told Tales / 0-89577-332-5 I like Hawthorne well enough as a writer, and I love Hawthorne compared to his contemporaries, and this collection is a good example of his evolution as a writer. There are a lot of classics here, including "The Minister's Black Veil" and "Lady Eleanor's Mantle". This collection includes: The Minister's Black Veil Wakefield The Maypole of Merry Mount The Gentle Boy Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe The Great Carbuncle The Prophetic Pictures David Swan The Hollow of the Three Hills Fancy's Show Box Dr. Heidegger's Experiment Howe's Masquerade Edward Randolph's Portrait Lady Eleanor's Mantle Old Esther DUdley The Village Uncle The Wedding Knell The Ambitious Guest The Sister Years The White Old Maid The Seven Vagabonds Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure Chippings with a Chisel The Shaker Bridal Endicott and the Red Cross Edward Fane's Rosebud The Threefold Destiny

Hawthorne wrote this collection of short stories anonymously in the 1830's, first published in local papers. At the urging of a friend he signed his name and raised the money to publish it as a book in two collected volumes, a copy of which was sent to former classmate and famous writer Henry Longfellow at Harvard. Longfellow gave it a favorable review and thus launched Hawthorne out of obscurity and on the path to well known works such as The House of Seven Gables and his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter. Overall the collection is a mixed bag, some are clearly dated while others have timeless appeal. There are a lot of stories and only a handful will I remember and/or want to re-read in the future so it was a bit of a chore to read through them all. Hawthorne was honing his style so some of the pieces are dead ends, while others echo some of his later better works. My favorite stories include "The Minister's Black Veil" about a 17th century New England puritan minister who vows never to look at the world except with a black veil over his eyes - the reason why is the mystery of the story and revealed to us at the end. "Wakefield" has a similar theme of mysterious behavior, a man decides to walk away from home without saying he was leaving and then return 10 years later - it is based on a true story and in fact there are modern accounts of similar things happening. "The Gentle Boy" beautifully captures 17th century religious fanaticism, intolerance and historical forces concerning the conflict between Puritans and Quakers in New England. This story is probably his most mature and serious of the book. "Mr. Higginbothem's Catastrophe", about a rumor of a man's murder, is a riddle wrapped in a story, I was perplexed and enthralled to the end. "David Swann", about a young man who falls asleep by the side of the road, is a philosophical story about the nature of fortune and fate. "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", about a liquid that makes the old young again, presages Robert Louis Stevenson and more recent movies like "Cocoon".

A minister dons a black veil over his face he takes to his grave. A man abandons his wife and family for a home across the street, from which he watches her fill in the hole he left in her life. A scientist develops an elixir of youth he tries out on three worn oldsters who immediately resume the vanities of their youth. Nathaniel Hawthorne was master of the allegory, and in "Twice-Told Tales," 39 pieces written during the 1830s and collected originally in two volumes, you get the glory of his earliest, simplest fiction. Not the best, necessarily; the later "Mosses From An Old Manse" has perhaps his best short stories, and later came classic novels like "The Scarlet Letter" and "The Blithedale Romance." But from his mock-humble preface to his transcendental yearnings to his obsession with New England's Puritan past, "Twice-Told Tales" offers a concentrated primer as to what made Natty tick. The allegory is a limited model for fiction; where a central object is understood to represent a single idea. Sometimes here you get a very obvious point hammered home with all the subtlety of a very special episode of "Facts Of Life." "The Great Carbuncle" introduces us to a group of people who seek a valuable stone, and naturally all fall short of their desire except a couple who realize no stone can outshine their love. "The Gentle Boy" alerts us to the peril of intolerance, while "The Threefold Destiny" tells us there's no place like home. Sometimes Hawthorne concludes a story by repeating the title in capital letters, like Jonathan Edwards delivering a sermon. Yet Hawthorne was evolving all the while. For all his dated stylings and roundabout locution, you find yourself catching in these stories, as well as the many sketches and contemplative essays also in this book, a number of brilliant passages, moments of entertainment and of wisdom that reach across the sea of time, as when Hawthorne gazes at the Atlantic in "Foot-prints On The Sea-Shore" and notes "the infinite idea of eternity pervading his soul." The best stories here show Hawthorne's deep mind at full boil, like the famous "The Minister's Black Veil," where the Parson Hooper appears before his congregation wearing a black veil on his face he never takes off. The irony is that Hooper is the same gentle soul beneath the veil, yet the veil still serves to cut him off, in a small but marked way, from those around him. Is he at fault? Are they? Hawthorne moves beyond allegory here by not giving a definite answer. The same is true to a lesser extent with the two other tales referenced at the outset of this review, "Wakefield" and "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment." But Hawthorne's greatness here is more in the broadness of his focus, as he draws inspiration in everything from a town pump to shopping with a child and makes each a diverting ramble. He even shows an ability to channel mystery and suspense a la Ed McBain in his amusing and slightly bawdy "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe." Hawthorne didn't

Read this book slowly, because there aren't that many of it's type. Yes, the stories are uneven. The first two are so rocky that you'd perhaps think you've made a mistake--that these are the first inchoate rumblings of an unpolished master. But by the time you read story #3, Ministers Veil, you won't regret the wonderful prose, the delightful use of symbolism and allegory, the economy of construction-- in short, all that which puts Hawthorne on a very short list of American master writers. The only thing you might consider over buying this book, is one which includes ALL of Hawthorne's short stories. Young Goodman Brown for example, or Rapuccini's Daughter--maybe two of the greatest short stories in Western Literature, are not going to be found in this particular compendium of his early work.