The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne REVIEW

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[firstnamelastname-nfjw]

There comes a point in a reader's life when he realises that he cannot read all the books in the world. This is one book I'm probably never reading.

[korrynp.]

I love how you talk about Hester’s relationship with her daughter, it’s interesting to think how pearls descriptions and actions influenced modern media. I was wondering what you thought of dimmsdale and his relationship with the opposite narratives of his life?

[earthbyapril]

I teach this book in my Literature classes, but omit the introduction. The novel should stand alone. I don't think it is a particularly painful read; the imagery is often breathtaking. Hester Prynne is one of the most intriguing protagonists I know. The internal world she inhabits, like her cottage, not enveloped by the village, yet not completely independent, is a complexity worthy of anyone's reading time. I've read it multiple times and still find depths to investigate. As a young man, you still have yet to discover the amazing worlds that open to you when you bring a lifetime of living and learning back to a powerful book for a re-reading. Enjoy!

[ThatReadingGuy]

I really liked this book! I read it to get back into literature and haven’t stoped since! I loved pearl. I agree with you that the intro can be hard to read, but I thought the actual book was very well written. I did not at all find it a hard read. The only critique I can think of was that he wrote run on sentences like most writers in his day (they loved the semi colon a lot), so then you had to piece together his sentences a lot of the time.

[Kyle-yscv]

The Scarlet Letter has two of my favorite chapters, and some of the best passages, of all time.

I also didn’t like Frankenstein

You should give TSL another shot. It’s about the writing, more than anything.

[muskndusk]

I read this at university and it was one of the books I really enjoyed. My degree was in literature. I tended to prefer American and European literature to British. I hated and still don't like, Jane Austen.

[sirforeveralone]

Would you ever read Paradise Lost, by John Milton?

[thurberdrawing]

I enjoyed your review. I think Hawthorne should have let the novel stand by itself without the "The Custom-House." The novel itself is far superior to "The Custom-House" which was written before THE SCARLET LETTER. It was his publisher's idea to weld them together. I think Roger Chillingworth is a villain suitable for a melodrama and that Hawthorne undercuts the power of his book by focusing so heavily on Chillingworth.

[dashinggirl]

I reckon why student falls in love with English teacher

[nikchemnyk]

Wow, this was hilarious! Your antipathy to the prose is especially striking seeing how you are such a fan of writers with maximalist styles like Chabon and Lovecraft.
After watching Wakefield, film, I decided to read Wakefield, a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, an all but certain inspiration for Wakefield, a short story by E L Doctorow(which I liked best of all three Wakefields), aka an actual basis for the film. And, well, Hawthorne's style is certainly something else. Felt a little like Dostoevsky on painkillers. Though it wasn't really painful, just weird, because the story was very short.

[bumsmanifesto]

Glad to see you doing some 19th century American literature. I'd love to see a Moby-Dick video sometime in the future.

[e.g.]

Could you please review "A Little Life" at some point? I would really like to know what you think of it.

[diegomariacardona]

I’d enjoy seeing a review of the tartar steppe by Dino Buzzati. One of the saddest books I’ve read

[ellinabee]

guys tell me whats the difference btw figurative language n figure of speech n literary devices i've been so depressed cuz of this question i feel like they are the same at the same time i feel they are not 😭😭😭😭😭

[twentyten]

Have you heard of the channel literary hangover?

[rishabhaniket]

Legend has it Melville wrote Moby Dick just to impress Hawthorne…

[onosabdulrafi]

I also read Frankenstein and disliked it. While I could appreciate it on a sentence-by-sentence basis, I could not feel invested in the story. At first I was ambivalent, but by the last quarter, as it went on (and on and on), my ambivalence turned into dislike.

[dylanclymer]

The Scarlet Letter was a painful read. I prefer his short stories over his novels, one of my favorites is " Young Goodman Brown." On another note... have you read any of Octavia E. Butler's novels?

[georgehub]

I like your channel, so I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but it's unclear to me why you would intentionally avoid saying anything poignant or otherwise interesting about a classic novel, in favor of the same cookie-cutter treatment contemporaries receive? A review, as opposed to context and criticism? You obviously realized how silly it would sound to simply condemn it as boring, which is why you hesitated.. So why bother?

A brief understanding of the puritanical restraints within 19th century New England society goes a long way in gaining appreciation for the nuance and subtlety of Hawthorne's style. It's what allowed him to thrive among his contemporaries, where a less refined manner left a writer like Melville largely unrecognized in the same place and time, despite each being opposite sides of a single artistic coin, so to speak; both were greatly oppressed by dogma. Melville had to embark on a massive journey, hunting a whale, elusive and dangerous, to express his artistic vision; Hawthorne figured out how to manifest in shadows, like a wraith, tugging invisible strings that manipulate his vivid, life-like characterizations. I suppose, simply, what's boring to one is genius to another.