The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
I’ve never been a fan of Hawthorne, but I did read all of this novel. I had made attempts before, but failed. The trick, I found, was to skip the forty page introductory “sketch of official life” (Hawthorne’s words) entitled “The Custom-House.” Why was it included? Possibly because, standing alone, the novel is well under 200 pages and thus occupies that awkward territory between a short story and a novel. I went directly to the opening scene, in which Hester Prynne is released from prison with her infant and is displayed to the crowd wearing a dress with a scarlet letter – an A, for adulteress – that she had sewn over her breast. No need to go into the plot, but some background facts seem relevant. The novel was written in 1850, and the action takes place 200 years previously in the Puritan town of Salem, notorious for its witchcraft trails of 1692 (in which Hawthorne’s great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, played a prominent role). The change of the spelling of the last name suggests an attempt at separation from that harsh (and unrepentant) family patriarch; the victims of his interrogation were mainly women, and in this novel Hawthorne shows sympathy for Hester (and for women in general). But it’s a work that doesn’t bridge the barrier of time. The moral issues which the characters agonize over belong to a religion-bound sensibility. The prose, though carefully crafted, is wordy, circuitous and effusive. As for the characters, Hester came across as wooden, Dimmesdale as a weak hysteric; Chillingworth’s role as a force of evil was contrived; Hester’s daughter, the “little Pearl,” was overdone in her elfin capriciousness. I was only rarely pulled into their emotional lives, so I viewed them mostly with detachment. But I could recognize that these people and their problems mattered deeply to Hawthorne; this novel seems driven by necessity, and for that it’s worthy of respect.

A Fine and Private Place – Morley Callaghan
When I began this project one of the ground rules was that I would review any book that I made it halfway through. I made it halfway through this one, but I have no desire to examine the faults which caused me to terminate our relationship. Anyway, who any interest in an author like Callaghan? Or any interest in my opinion about his novel? My stats show a paltry few visits (five or six is paltry), and who among those five or six reads a word? I get no comments, so the answer is probably nobody. People tell me that I need to reach my audience – that nobody knows my blog exists. Probably true; but I can’t help noting that these advisers (all literary types) do know about the existence of my blog and don’t visit it. As the word count for “Jack London” approaches the 200,000 mark, my purpose (though not my effort in producing something I deem worthwhile) has begun to sag. Playing a role in this decline is that the fodder for the reviews – the books themselves – have dwindled in quality. When I began my reading life, sixty-six years ago, the fictional vista seemed endlessly rich. Now it’s difficult to find a novel that I enjoy (as for something that inspires excitement, it’s been a while). I’ll bring home ten books from my university library, and I may complete two. The novel that I started before this one was by Thomas Berger. I’ve gotten great pleasure from him, but in The Houseguest, written when he was in his sixties, he tries to recapture the nutty exuberance of The Feud, yet all he can summon up is sex. It was tired and cynical and depressingly empty, and I lasted only to page thirty. Maybe I’ve also grown tired and cynical and empty. The grave is a fine and private place, and maybe this project should be buried.

Dancing Fish and Ammonites - Penelope Lively
More and more I turn to authors who, in previous books, have shown that they’re capable of excellence. I also, more and more, have been reading the letters, journals and memoirs of these authors. Though this book has “A Memoir” after the title, in the first sentence of the Preface Lively writes, “This is not quite a memoir. Rather, it is a view from old age.” The book is divided into six sections, and “Old Age” is the title of the first. At age eighty Lively contemplates her situation and that of others in the same leaking boat. Despite some serious health issues, she’s handling old age quite well. She has her bad days, but she isn’t plagued by loneliness or depression (she constantly refers to her family and friends and is generally upbeat). She has attained respect in her chosen profession and seems to have had a fulfilling private life to look back on (though she remains reserved about personal matters– she reveals no secrets nor settles any scores). Her mind is obviously still in fine working order. In this opening section she could be talking to the reader, and she emerges as a person I liked and found to be engaging company. Unfortunately, the intimate tone gradually diminishes in what follows. In the second section, “Life and Times,” she takes a look at world events and describes how they affected her, but she does it in an a pedantic “explaining” way. The distancing from intimacy culminates in the final section, “Six Things,” in which she takes objects she owns and tells of their history. Because of the dry way it’s done the only person who would find this interesting is Lively herself. A novelist would have recognized this. But Lively wasn’t writing a novel; she was putting in words a goodbye to the world she knew in a way that pleased her. Still, a writer must always satisfy a reader. Though my friendly feelings for her never seriously faltered, I did get a bit antsy when she was discoursing on ammonites and the Jerusalem Bible. As she notes somewhere in the first section, old people can be boring, and they must watch themselves.