Nathaniel Hawthorne's Self Criticism by George Lathrope was Written by Nathaniel Hawthorne While Using a Pseudonym

If I could write even as well as the person who wrote this critique on Nathaniel Hawthorne's writing, I might be considered to be one of the best writers of the new millennium. This writer keeps a brief approach to Nathaniel Hawthorne's works. I liked the editor's writing style in this. George Lathrop's introduction to The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne is an excellent one. Even though this writing hails from the 19^th century, it is a classic work that still sounds fresh today.

The subtle, wry wit of this forgotten editor, describing the subterfuge of Twice-Told Tales, is a most humble one, admitting the duplicity of it all in an unassuming and humble manner. The lack of ornamentation in Mr. Lathrop's writing style frequently resembles that of Nathaniel Hawthorne's own work. This is long after the passing of both Mr. Hawthorne as well as that of Mr. Lathrop, and this bold assertion of my own is a theory much more easily cast aside then suspected.

Not knowing anything about the history of 19^th century literary figures, a few questions remain: Was George Lathrop a pseudonym of Nathaniel Hawthorne's, or an estranged co-worker, or someone who shared the same writing coach as Mr. Hawthorne? I can neither prove nor disprove this personal theory.

However, if you are the least bit familiar with Nathaniel Hawthorne's work, you will easily see what I am describing here by way of merely scanning and skimming the following passage.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Self-Criticism

Please note that each paragraph is interpreted here by myself, as evidently, the lack of understanding of the King's English is pervasive throughout America. Twice-Told Tales is frequently misinterpreted, even by graduate students, even by professors - believe it or not, even by the author.

"His (the author's) writings, to do them justice, are not altogether destitute of fancy and originality; they might have won him greater reputation but for an inveterate love of allegory, which is apt to invest his plots and characters with the aspect of scenery and people, in the clouds, and to steal away the human warmth out of his conceptions. His fictions are sometimes historical, sometimes of the present day, and sometimes, so far as can be discovered, have little or no reference either to time or space. In any case, he generally contents himself with very slight embroidery of outward manners, - the faintest possible counterfeit of real life, - and endeavors to create an interest by some less obvious peculiarity of the subject. Occasionally a breath of Nature, a raindrop of pathos and tenderness, or a gleam of humor, will find its way into the midst of his fantastic imagery, and make us feel as if, after all, we were yet within the limits of our native earth..."

Who else other than Mr. Nathaniel Hawthorne himself would be able to state so definitively that these works are completely real, with only a few literary devices being used in order to make it all become non-fiction? The author of this work not only uses the title Self-Criticism to this work, he defines his work in his own style of writing, while complaining about the objectivity of it all, about its dry tone, its lack of anchor in emotional subjectivity, overall. Would you propose that perhaps Mr. George P. Lathrop, as in Mr. Nathaniel "Preposterous" Hawthorne, is perhaps some extraterrestrial counterpart of Hawthorne, instead? If so, could you do this with the dry with and style of the descriptions given in the diaries of Phileas Fogg, in the book entitled Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne? Of course, what I am inferring to herein is not the main topic of this basic article about Self-Criticism, which is an obvious and a basic one.

"The author of Twice-Told Tales has a claim to one distinction, which, as none of his literary brethren will care about disputing it with him, he need not be afraid to mention. He was, for a good many years, the most obscure man of letters in America."

The initial P, more than likely stemming from "Preposterous", "Presumptuous", or "Penny-Ante", the sorts of labels that a peer-conscious professor or editor would scribble quickly across the work of a student whose work would be less than lauded by his peers. Subsequent to this, Mr. P., as in pseudonym would have good reason to be commendably scarce.

"These stories were published in magazines and annuals, extending, over a period of ten or twelve years, and comprising the whole of the writer's young manhood, without making (so far as he has ever been aware) the slightest impression on the public..."

Public, another use of the letter P. Perhaps Mr. Nathaniel "Presumptuous" Hawthorne was quite prolific. Of course, you, the reader could easily label this as "Nonsense", which is my middle name.

"After a long while the first collected volume of the Twice Told Tales was published. By this time, if the Author had ever been greatly tormented, by literary ambition (which does not remember or believe to have been the case), it must have perished, beyond resuscitation, in the dearth of nutriment. This was fortunate, for the success of the volume was not such as would have gratified a craving desire for notoriety or fame."

How odd it seems that mere bleached chaff sells so much better than well-nourished literature, and how despondent any augury of an author's work must seem to be, given that this is the case.

"As he glances over these long-forgotten pages, and considers his way of life while composing them, the Author can very clearly discern why all this was so. After so many sober years, he would have reason to be ashamed if he could not criticize his own work as fairly as another man's; and, though it is little his business, and perhaps still less his interest, he can hardly resist a temptation to achieve something of the sort. If writers were allowed to do so, and would perform the task with perfect sincerity and unreserved, their opinions of their own productions would often be more valuable and instructive than the works themselves."

Why should the clergyman reveal himself to his parishoners, when doing so would only cause grief, agony, and amateurish strife of mis-matched vituperative studies? A true wit might carefully dissect his own work, to bring it towards its own Apocalypse.

"At all events, there can be no harm in the Author's remarking that he rather wonders how the Twice-Told Tales should have gained what vogue they did than it was so little and so gradual. They, have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade - the coolness of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch. Instead of passion there is sentiment, and, even in what purport to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a shiver. Whether from lack of power, or an unconquerable reserve, the Author's touches have often an effect of tameness; the merriest man can hardly contrive to laugh at his broadest humor; the tenderest woman, one suppose, will hardly shed warm tears at his deepest pathos. The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, charcoal grey, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages."

Basically, a mediocre work sells, and the readers rate it highly, which alarms and despairs the author, whose best works have been called "Preposterous".

"With the foregoing characteristics, proper to the production of a person in retirement (which happened to be the Author's category at the time), the book is devoid of others that we should quite as naturally look for. The sketches are not, it is hardly necessary to say, profound; but it is rather more remarkable that they so seldom, if ever, show any design on the writer's part to make them so. They have none of the abstruseness of idea, or obscurity of expression, which mark the written communications of a solitary mind with itself. They never need translation. It is, in fact, the style of a man of society. Every sentence, so far as it embodies thought or sensibility, may be understood and felt by anybody who will give himself the trouble to read it, and will take up the book in a proper mood."

Apparently, this is a confession of a sorts that the author is unable to connect with others or bring inspiration into works, aside from memories from childhood, or contrived devices of writing technique, due to the need for a shrouded existence. This is also despair due to becoming a part of society itself.

"This statement of apparently opposite peculiarities leads us to a perception of what the sketches truly are. They are not the talk of a secluded man with his own mind and heart (had it been so, they could hardly have failed to be more deeply and permanently valuable), but his attempts and very imperfectly successful ones, to open an intercourse with the world at an urbane level of understanding."

Excuse me for carrying on like an English professor or a department head every now and then, however, Self-Criticism is such an obvious title, that even a moron like myself could recognize it.

As you will note, I am not violating any copyright here, as this document has fallen into the public domain. However, I am merely pointing out, long after the construction of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales, the reason for the anger and bitterness of this Mr. George Lathrop, after all, there is no harsher critic than oneself of one's own work. This is also not an original work, it is merely a light interpretation, with a bit of "Nonsensical" theory.

Source: Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Riverside Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA, 1883 - editor George P. Lathrop