The Galleon, Volume 18, Number 1, December 1942 Page: 31
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BOOK REVIEW
No author, with the possible exception of H. G. Wells and Hendrik
William Van Loon, can give us a picture of the universe, a rumbling,
roaring world made up of John Doe, his friends his so-called enemies, and
his emotions and actions. Even such well-established historians as the
aforementioned are sure to fail in spots-those spots which they have had
no chance to study. The 'emphasis in the world today is on specialization,
and this has affected literature to a peculiar extent. The readers of books
demand that their authors should know a great amount concerning their
subjects. A study of recent books, books that have been "successful" in
that they have been able to attract a wide reading public, shows that the
author knew intimately the picture which he portrayed. Examples of this
include The Seventh Cross, by Anna Seghers, a book by a German woman,
giving a picture of a man-hunt in Nazi Germany, and made available to us
through an English translation; They Wene Expendable, a story of the
current war, told to W. L. White by four participants; and, The Just and
the Unjust, a story of typical small-town, everyday American life, by a
rapidly-rising novelist, James Gould Cozzens. Even among the older authors
we like those works which indicate to us that the author knew something
about his subject. This explains-why the works of authors such as Tolstoy,
Hawthorne, Hardy, and 0. Henry, have stood the test of time.
THE SPIRIT AND ART OF
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
By Melvin MathisTo the average reader Nathaniel
Hawthorne appears as a gloomy old
man, possessed with visions of a tor-
tured soul, and enveloped with a
gloom perhaps as thick as that which
enveloped the life of Edgar Allan
Poe, a sincere admirer of "The Ghost
of New England," and the author of
a critical review of Hawthorne's
Twice-Told Tales, which stands to-day as one of the landmarks of
American literary criticism. Several
factors predisposed "The Rebellious
Puritan" to write stories, sketches,
and novels, of a gloomy nature, pry-
ing into the mysteries of the soul,
and enabling him to produce a novel
such as The Scarlet Letter, acclaimed
by William Lyon Phelps as "the
greatest book ever written in theTHE GALLEON
Page 31
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McMurry College. The Galleon, Volume 18, Number 1, December 1942, periodical, December 1942; Abilene, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth137807/m1/33/?rotate=270: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting McMurry University Library.