(no subject)

Bloom's always considered part of his job identifying the best works of whatever author he's discussing, but for some reason, and despite thinking they're one of the centers of American literature, he's never given a list of Hawthorne's best stories. Google Books includes his introductions in the publicly available portions of his new series for students, "How to Write About [Some Author]", and in the Hawthorne volume he finally spills it: Molineux, Brown, Wakefield, Rappaccini, Brand, Feathertop. Which sounds dead on to me, though I love "Earth's Holocaust" as much as any of those. I'll admit it's written a bit more with his left hand - though that means it's as finished as it would be with anyone else's right. And obviously Hawthorne wrote a number of other great stories, but in an awful lot of those he wrings out the premise pretty quickly and what's left is over-obvious, like in "The Birthmark" or "Egoism," which would probably be twice as good at half the length. "Artist of the Beautiful" I might also add, I remember being struck by that one.

Bloom also lists Self-Reliance, Experience, Fate, Power and Illusions as essays to read to see how close Hawthorne was to Emerson (not quite clear in context if this is also his latest version of his best-Emerson-essays list). I guess the latter three could have influenced The Marble Faun and the books left unfinished at Hawthorne's death - though I don't see them as especially important to Faun - but they were written long after the stories listed above or his other novels. I think Molineux and Brown were pre-Nature, even. But maybe Bloom means those essays best distill the side of Emerson that Hawthorne would have been in dialogue with, both as friend and writer.

Calvino didn't like "Rappaccini's Daughter" - maybe because of how it represents Italy - but it seems to me to haunt a lot of his early stories. I don't know much about Pavese or the other Italian writers Calvino served his apprenticeship to, but before he absorbed Borges - and married an Argentinean - in the '50s, his stories read like Hawthorne crossed with Hemingway, in different proportions depending on the topic. It works very well: maybe each of those guys needed some of the other, or both needed some Calvino.

(no subject)

29. Love's Labor's Lost
30. The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald is a magician. And here's another invisible house, albeit of the visible variety, and another instance of land flowing like water. And the glaring precursor of Citizen Kane, Catcher in the Rye, and some things in Crowley.

My high school theory that Gatsby arranged for Nick to come out, had set up his job and home for him, does fit the facts but seems superfluous. Ockham lops another.