The best of Twice Told Tales

books:

	• Twice-Told Tales (World's Best Reading) Nathaniel Hawthorne Reader's Digest Association, 1989 - 335 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews
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highly recommended

Good Collection

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

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Stretching Yarns

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 produce that many books, but what he did write he filled to the brim. "Twice-Told Tales" is an early rill from the pump worth a visit; if you tough out some occasionally stale notes you may find yourself staying awhile.

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Smokefree

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.

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The best of Twice Told Tales

This Modern Library edition of Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales is one of the better I've seen in a long while. (A reveiewer below has mistakenly reviewed a Reader's Digest edition of the stories in this space. There are no illustrations in this book, and contrary to that reveiwer's estimation, the selection of stories here is very wise indeed.) Any good collection of Hawhtorne's stories should include the classics such as "Wakefield, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, "The Maypole of Merrymount," and "The Haunted Mind," as well as a few of the lesser known stories, of which there are many. This collection holds an excellent mix of both, with an amusing and insightful introduction by Rosemary Mahoney, and very informative notes by Gretchen Short. Hawthorne was, and remains, the American master of the dark, psychologically driven tale. I would challenge anyone to read, "Wakefield," "The Gentle Boy," or "The Hollow of the Three Hills" without feeling at least a little frightened and thrilled. These are among Hawthorne's best stories in a handsome new collection. I highly recommend the book.

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Twice-Told Tales

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".

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reviews: page 1, 2

Allegorical, supernatural and symbolic themes permeate these strange tales. Included are: "Legends of the Province House", "The Grey Champion", "Prophetic Pictures", "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", "The Ambitious Guest", "Wakefield", "The Great Carbuncle", "David Swan", "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" and "The Threefold Destiny". (Four 90's).

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