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- Title
When Nathaniel Met Herman.
- Abstract
This article discusses the relationship between authors Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Maybe that is why the recent publication of "Twenty Days with Julian and Little Bunny by Papa," by Hawthorne--perhaps America's greatest, and most depressive, genius--has generated such enormous critical praise and popular enthusiasm. Introduced by novelist Paul Auster, this 72-page "lost" memoir, which was essentially an unnoticed sketch in Hawthorne's 800-page "American Notebooks, delightfully chronicles the 46-year-old author's twenty days caring for his five-year-old son Julian at home in Lenox, Massachusetts, from July 28 to August 16, 1851, while his wife was visiting her family near Boston. But lurking within this family romance of nature walks and berry picking is a darker story--possible material for another version of "The Scarlet Letter"--that critics seem to want to avoid: the complex, sexually fraught relationship that summer between Hawthorne and Herman Melville. The 31-year-old author of the soon-to-be-published "Moby-Dick" (it would be released, and critically dismissed, in November of that year) visited Hawthorne and Julian several times over the course of their summer idyll.
- Subjects
HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel, 1804-1864; MELVILLE, Herman, 1819-1891; AUTHORS; 20 Days With Julian &; Little Bunny by Papa (Book); AUTOBIOGRAPHY; SCARLET Letter, The (Book : Hawthorne); MOBY-Dick; or, The Whale (Book); HOMOSEXUALITY
- Publication
Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, 2004, Vol 11, Issue 2, p23
- ISSN
1532-1118
- Publication type
Article