Word: mellower
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...EARLY chapter of his biography of Hawthorne, James R. Mellow remarks somewhat apologetically that few family anecdotes survive from the author's childhood. In the next few sentences, Mellow goes on to relate five such anecdotes, not one of which provides any useful information about Hawthorne's disposition or character. One of Mellow's vignettes concerns Hawthorne's reaction to a bothersome neighboring woman: "Take her away!" the young Nathaniel apparently cried, "She is ugly and fat, and has a loud voice...
According to Mellow, this story credits Hawthorne with "a rather severe case of fastidiousness at an early age." With similar insight, Mellow describes how, on unexpected occasions, the child would declaim a line from Richard III: "Stand back, my Lord, and let the coffin pass!" This, Mellow maintains, proves that the young Hawthorne "had a dramatic instinct for the lugubrious." These stories are cute, and like most family anecdotes the first few serve their purpose when no real information survives. Nevertheless, they reveal little of substance about the character of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Like much of Mellow's book, they...
...Mellow has a passion for anecdote, and an extraordinary talent for the exposition of superficial detail. Even for a book of over 600 pages, the amount of unnecessary information he includes is often astounding. In addition to narrating events in Hawthorne's life, for example, Mellow frequently describes exactly what Hawthorne wore. During cold winter mornings in Lenox, Mellow reveals, the author sat in his study wearing an old purple dressing gown made by his wife Sophia. Hawthorne's wardrobe also had its formal side, we discover, although at one time he refused to wear "the white muslin cravat then...
This kind of information can be interesting, and would be justified if Mellow had accompanied it with a more perceptive analysis of Hawthorne. Unfortunately, his genuine insights into Hawthorne's character and writings are few. Despite what seems to be painstaking research and a breadth of historical reference, Mellow remains unwilling or unable to take the risks of interpretation necessary to successful biography. He describes people and events in considerable detail, only to suggest nothing about their possible effect on Hawthorne...
...mentions, somewhat fastidiously, that the author felt an initial sense of disappointment upon viewing the falls; but he makes no attempt to assess Hawthorne's deeper reaction to Niagara, which represented, for many mid-nineteenth-century Americans, the symbol of the American sublime. Towards the end of the book, Mellow describes Hawthorne's increasingly reclusive nature on the basis of remarks from his letters, but he offers no explanation for the change in Hawthorne's behavior. Nor, aside from several asides about the nature of their sex life, does he provide any useful illumination of Hawthorne's relationship with Sophia...