Book #2

I just finished reading Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, consumed almost entirely during the course of this rain-laden weekend. That’s my second book read during 2008!

I have to admit, the weather was a perfect backdrop for Hawthorne’s gloomy narrative of inner life versus social life, the meaning of sin, the letter versus the spirit, and matriarchal versus patriarchal society. Getting into the book proved more difficult than I’d anticipated, due mostly to the long “Customs House” introductory essay which I insisted on reading, and the hyper-formal, deliberately non-realistic style of writing. But after pressing on for several chapters, I found myself fully inhabiting Chester’s world and was quite moved, specially by anything to do with little Pearl, and by the novel’s closing chapters.

A lovely metaphor, on p. 103: “She could no longer borrow from the future, to help her through the present grief.”

A few more random quotable bits selected from my reading notes:

“To the untrue man, the whole universe is false,--it is impalpable,--it shrinks to nothing within his grasp.” (p. 166)

“Death was too definite an object to be wished for, or avoided.” (p. 206)

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” (p. 231).


Not much else during the weekend. Donated another thirty odd books to the local library. One, in particular, an Arab travel tale in a colorful miniature hardbound edition, got a customer quite excited; she grabbed it out of the box I brought, before the library volunteer even had a chance to place it on the shelf for general sale. But, alas, when she asked her husband about it, he just shook his head and said “No”; and promptly it went back into the box. Just goes to show how useless husbands can be.