Reading Group #8 ('Young Goodman Brown')

Alright, here we are. I'll try to get this read before Thursday!

excited! I probably won't get to this until Friday or Saturday, but I'm looking forward to everyone's comments.

No rush, everyone! Plenty of time.

Just a tangential thought:

I won't go into details, but I'm struck by how cinematic some of the images in this are. I'm thinking back in the black and whites, here - possibly even some of the well-know silents, but some of the images immediately rang bells. I wonder if anyone's ever written a book about the old film-makers' reading habits?

Again, I won't got into details, but I've just completed my 'careful' reading of the story and I'm developing an opinion - open to debate, of course - that Hawthorne should have a reputation for cynicism and bitterness rivalling that of Bierce (assuming he hasn't got one - I could easily have overlooked it).

I've just spent twenty minutes or more carefully composing a post without spoilers; pressed 'backspace' to remove an extra space; and not only removed the space but the whole thread and blasted myself right back to the LibraryThing home page. Now I'm putting the effort into composing a post without yards of bad language.

This is an absolutely engrossing story (I really wanted to say 'fascinating' but I'm trying to cut down on my 'fascinating's). It almost seems that every line throws up questions to think about and, if you're not careful, you can end up thinking yourself round in a circle and then tying yourself in a knot. I write from experience.

I felt with 'The Minister's Black Veil' that it would have paid dividends to have read a good biography of Hawthorne for a grip on his personal beliefs and concerns; I think that even more so with this. I know some say we shouldn't strive to tie works too closely to their authors' lives and concerns, but I'm sure that Hawthorne dealed in a lot that was personally important to him. He doesn't strike me as the 'detached' sort of writer. I'm half detecting a whacking great paradox at back of this, of which - if it exists - Hawthorne must have been aware; but I'm rather fumbling around in the dark, at the moment.

And it's got me rethinking my ideas on 'The Minister's Black Veil' - I need to revisit that.

'Young Goodman Brown' is, of all his stories (in my opinion), his most personal and his most intense. It deals not only with the themes he explores time and again in nearly everything he writes, but also grapples most powerfully with his private guilt and frustration with his ancestry, his religion, and even the concerns of his country, moralistically, as a whole. I certainly don't think it's reaching, then, to tie this one up with Hawthorne's life and concerns.

I need to give it a reread, but the theatre is sucking my soul out (how fitting!). I'll get it done tonight after I'm through, and come back tomorrow with a more organized comment...

(And oh, rankamateur, oh oh ohhhhhh how many times I have lost posts for the very same reasons as you...)

I would agree rank that the story deals w/ some very real things from Hawthorne's family history. I know some of the character names are drawn from a witch trial, in which his grandfather was a judge. But I'm sure there is more going on here below the surface, historiclly, than I'm able to pick out.

I like your comment about how every line throws up questions about the narrative. Couldn't agree more. Though the prose/wordage isn't necessarily Hawthorne's most sophisticated, the construction of sentences and paragraphs, along with the psychological ambiguity, makes it an endlessly fascinating read for me.

The first question that came to my mind when reading it this week was this: Why is Goodman Brown going on this "night-journey" at all? We don't really have a background to fill us in. I have many more questions and thoughts, but I'll have to save them for later when I have more time to think/write.

#8, #9 - I'm still not very clear on Hawthorne's religion. Was he a convinced believer or a tortured doubter or what?

The narrative voice, here, seems to take the stance of the orthodox (in this context) believer to contrast with Brown who is, from the start, a 'back slider' (as Sal says, why does he go in the first place - something he 'should not' be doing?). It seems to be his religious doubts and his lack of faith in the people around him which make him vulnerable to whatever befalls him. I see him as being presented as the 'bad guy' here in that he doubts his faith/Faith. Yet the whole story seems to have a very cynical and critical view of the kind of people who should be, in the context, the 'good guys' - which could be seen as the 'bad guy' being a reflection of Hawthorne himself (or you could read it all as the deceits of the Devil - said you could think round in circles!).

If I'm right about all that - debatable, of course - that last bit (before the parentheses) is the paradox I mentioned in #7.

Or Hawthorne could have been quite confident in his faith but cynical of the integrity of most outwardly religious people. But I got the strong impression that he was presenting Brown as the typical 'crooked man' who sees the rest of the world as crooked. I'm sure he would not have been unaware of the potential irony of that, so - paradox - I'm going in a circle again.

As I said, absolutely fascinating engrossing intriguing.

ETA - Done a bit of editing to this - probably wrote it too fast.

'Or Hawthorne could have been quite confident in his faith but cynical of the integrity of most outwardly religious people.'

I think this is true. And, to an extent, I know how he feels, which is why I find his fiction (usually) so engrossing. He takes the right approach and condemns the over-religious without condemning, necessarily, their religion. It's a very fair way of writing...especially when you're writing eerier fiction, as the nuance grows exponentially without the didacticism. Though you can feel his pain, frustration, and guilt in his stuff, you never feel a real hatred for faith (of any kind): and that is a very American approach to fiction, and one of the notes we can most appreciate in Hawthorne's influence on further work...

So, if anyone is ready to move on, I think I am. As usual, please (especially you, Sal) continue to comment if you have anything to say.

The next story will be free of most of the depth present here, but it's a really fun read nonetheless. It's 'Canon Alberic's Scrapbook' by M. R. James. A new thread is up.

>12 frahealee:

Your first paragraph has me baffled, frahealee. What 'this book' are you talking about? What did Hawthorne and Melville write in response to Uncle Tom's Cabin? Perhaps put in a link to that lecture?

I love this group: one post had me pondering, again, on Polidori's The Vampyre, and his relationship to Byron, then, minutes later, another post in another thread has me (accidentally, really) reading a piece where Harriet Beecher Stowe is rather acidly laying in to Byron and his mistress ...

>15 frahealee:

Ah! Thanks for the link. I found on YT three lectures on American Gothic by Patell and just came back here to ask if it was one of them - you got here before me! I shall 'Watch later' the lot - a treasure trove.

>20 frahealee: - Later, she realized that it was okay to not understand.

BOOM!!! There's the key and the problem for me. My intellect can believe that, but my heart can't. Not only does the story leave me perplexed (Black Veil even more so), but then I have to deal with the idea that Hawthorne wanted me perplexed. Or, to put it another way, it takes me out of my comfort zone, but Hawthorne intended to take me out of my comfort zone, plus, surely, the Gothic genre is all about taking one of their comfort zone, but isn't that not what I meant by comfort zone? ... and Hawthorne's got me scurrying round in circles ... again ...

Apologies for the awkward double negative above, but I can't figure out how to say it any better way at the moment--not enough sleep last night, probably ...