3 comments about Women Travelers: A Century of Trailblazing Adventures 1850-1950.

1. I bought this book for my wife as a Christmas present and after she had thoroughly enjoyed reading it , I stared to peruse it .
   A must read for everyone and more particular every woman.
   
   Excellent.



2. I read a review of this book in an Australian newspaper and felt that I just had to have it. Due to it's popularity it was out of stock, so of course I looked on Amazon and there it was - and even with postage it's cheaper to buy overseas ! My package arrived safely and with excitement I ripped into it to reveal the most gorgeous book filled with amazing women and their stories. These women survived hardship, often with extreme weather and lengthy travel by any means in order to satify their wanderlust in a time when women were meant to stay at home and tend to husbands and children. I love that they remained true to themselves, however they saw themselves, some dressing as men to allow a greater range of travelling experience and others ensuring they travelled with the best goods such as porcelain teasets and linen sheets. If you adore armchair travel then this is the book for you - it takes you back to the time when a journey was dangerous, romantic and exotic and when the fun was in the getting there.



3. 
   "In 1898, Fanny Bullock Workman launched her assault on the Himalayas. Hanging from the handlebars of her bicycle was a tin teakettle. Her pith helmet harbored the badge of the Touring Club of France. A final accessory, one that never left her side and was scarcely less indispensable than her teakettle, was her husband." And as they journeyed, they added such "items as a whip (to drive away the dogs who chased Mrs. Workman's skirts), a pistol (for any men similarly inclined), and a Kodak camera."
   
   This fascinating book celebrates the courageous journeys of thirty-one women from fourteen countries. In addition to Workman, they include Fanny Vandegrift, wife of Robert Louis Stevenson, Nellie Bly, a journalist who went around the world in 72 days, Ida Pfeiffer, Alexine Tinne and Florence Baker and others.
   
   Many of the journeys had long-lasting effects on the role and status of women in society. Some made important contributions to disciplines as varied as medicine, archaeology and anthropology.
   
   Christel Mouchard is an award winning novelist. She used archival photographs and extracts from diaries, letters and other writings to bring these people alive. This book will appeal to travelers of all types and genders.
   
   Robert C. Ross 2008

5 comments about Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind.

1. Dear Paula,
   
   Thank you for writing Finding Iris Chang. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to tell her story. For what it is worth, your pain did help me. When I read The Rape of Nanking I actually wondered how Iris could have coped with doing the research. When I read about her death I thought that her research into the Bataan Death March may have made matters worse.
   
   While we know that the insight into the dark side of humanity would take its toll on anyone, it is your account of Iris Chang's last days which helped me the most. I don't know if Iris could have been saved from her inner demons, but her work will survive. This book has contributed much to Iris Chang's legacy. I pray that in death, Iris finds the peace that eluded her in life.



2. I just finished "Finding Iris Chang" and am filled with respect and feeling
   for Paula Kamen! I am so moved both by Iris' tragic life and by Paula's revealing so
   much of what she went through in investigating Iris' suicide. I am
   particularly impressed by the no-easy-answers conclusion of the book; so
   much coincided to cause this perhaps unpreventable death. I am recommending
   the book to many friends.



3. I hope this is not the last word on Iris Chang.
   
   In a precursive phone call Iris told her "friend", Paula Kamen (who found her exhausting), to tell everyone what she was like "before this happened." I didn't count, but there were probably more pages about "this" and its aftermath, than what she was like before it. Kamen's book does not fulfill her friend's request.
   
   Kamen had, and probably still has, a wonderful opportunity to provide insight. Unfortunately she gives us more about how she reacted to Iris, than about how Iris might have reacted to her. Why did Iris reach out to her? Did her interest in being a sorority member or homecoming queen inform her later career or was it a reaction? How did she become interested in Nanking? The questions surrounding her work on Nanking are huge and very little text is devoted to them.
   
   Whether or not Iris's son was acutally autistic is resolved near the end of the book, which makes it more of a literary device than an factor. Paula is honest but, for me, too causal about her own flaws in her relationship with Iris.
   
   I doubt that this is the telling that Iris had in mind.
   
   Kamen is not the journalist her friend was. Being a lay person, I'm glad to see someone in this profession take "no" for an answer, as Kamen did with Iris's mother, (and Iris at the Tribune where stakes were higher) but the flip side of this is her relaxed approach to the reponses of those who bow (and bowed) to pressure. While I am not a lawyer or reparations expert, I expect that the Holocaust survivors also met resistance of officials citing treaties and precedents. Kamen gives the nay sayers a pass.
   
   I think the world's hunger to know and understand this heroine has led to the warm reception this book has received by readers. I view it as a starting point for a more substantive treatment that I someone is working on right now.



4. Iris Chang had a gift for reaching scholars and public with groundbreaking writing. Paula Kamen has a worthy goal in trying to understand Chang, but her book could be much better. She approaches the subject in a breathless, watch-me-unravel-the-mystery style. Thus it fits in the confessional/personal memoir genre, but focusing on her own longterm relations with Chang is unfortunate. This leaves her unable to plumb the depths of Chang's work or her death. Kamen seems mostly uninterested in Chang's concerns, including the Rape of Nanjing but also Chinese immigrants in America. Fierce commitment to redressing wrongs against Chinese, eventually shading into obsession, marked Chang's work, so any study cries out for real scholarship on the issues she pursued. Without this "FIC" can only offer raw material for more substantive work. Despite Kamen's speculations the "mystery" is plain enough: sustained study of war crimes and human rights violations is inherently depressing, and Chang presumably succumbed to the weight of history she shouldered. Her unfinished project on the Bataan Death March (also very grim) tends to support this view. Iris Chang's research inspired readers, but it was sometimes flawed, notably in overstating Japanese refusal to confront their 1931-45 history. Engaging these issues is crucial to comprehending East Asia then and now. K. Honda ed, "Nanjing Massacre" critiques Chang fairly along with other writers; S. Ienaga, "Pacific War" grapples heroically with the horror of Japanese aggression. NB, it was rated 3 stars until reading comments on the "I agree with PW" review. The info there, from within the Chinese American community, seems unimpeachable. We will truly honor Iris Chang by holding biographers to a higher standard.



5. Author Paula Kamen really walked a fine literary line between her own personal friendship, the mourning process, and the telling of a great, but tragic story. Her book, "Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind" is itself a brilliant effort and one that grabs the reader's heart and mind. This biography is intimate and reflective of not just Chang's life but also suggests a look inside the author as well.
   
   The public knows all about the works of Iris Chang and her voice that told the world about the Chinese Holocaust by the Japanese at Nanking. She was a very successful writer and author. She was known world wide but few knew the real person she was.
   
   Suicide is something, that in some way, touches every human life on earth. When someone we know personally, or learn about from the media, takes their own lives, it always leaves huge unanswered questions. On personal level, I have had several close friends kill themselves. I never have found any "good reason" for doing that. It is the author's own search, I believe, for those reasons and answers that drove her to write this accounting of a beautiful life.
   
   The book is a page turner and holds you emotionally hostage long after you stopped reading it. You are haunted by Iris's last phone call to the author when she leaves her a cryptic clue of what was going to happen. It is always easy to see these as obvious suicide messages retrospectively - but at the time, that thought rarely occurs to friends and family.
   
   The book is a story that needed telling; and being told by a friend is much warmer and compassionate then from a stranger. I am glad that the author took this story on. It may even be of some help for those on the edge themselves.
   
   To say I enjoyed the book would be wrong - as it was painful to know where the story was going to end and how. But like a witness to an bad accident, one just cannot pull away and leave the author's words unread. For some reason, it would feel like a violation. Kamen's words can easily be read but the understanding of why Chang took her life may never be satisfactorily known.
   
   A powerful and serious book that it is truly a gift from a friend to a friend.

3 comments about 9 1/2 Years Behind the Green Door: A Mitchell Brothers Stripper Remembers her Lover Artie Mitchell, Hunter S. Thompson, and the Killing that Rocked San Francisco.

1. For a realistic, hearfelt look at what it was like to dance at an infamous strip club, have a long love affair with porn king Artie Mitchell, and hang out with Hunter Thompson, this is the book to read! Full of uncanny detail, Corday's story is affectionate, funny, sexy, and a real page-turner. With a searing account of Artie's slaying by his brother Jim and the motives behind it, the murder trial which cost him $1.3 million, and the political connections that helped him get off with serving just 3 years at San Quentin.



2. An absolutely unmissable read for anyone interested in this bizarre story of two brothers who had the world on a string and then stuck a pin in it.



3. Simone Corday not only provides intimate details about working at the O'Farrell Theater, she kept track of conversations between she and her long-time lover Artie Mitchell, and her compadre Hunter S. Thompson in journals.
   
   In her memoir, you are like a fly on the wall, drinking in so many delicious details about her life with these over-the-top counterculture icons.
   
   It's a sensual, emotional page turner. You won't want to put it down, and then you will be crying out for more, lingering on that final page, and searching for old Mitchell Brothers' films to get more glimpses on her extraordinary life.

5 comments about The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women & the Artists They Inspired.

1. This book aimed to sell on its claim to fame which hinged upon the juicy account of the lives of 9 femme fatale who purportedly launched the careers many great men in history. This book sucked precisely because these "juicy" accounts teetered toward tacky sensationalism; the writing no more refined than tabloid-style prose; and the manner in which the author attempted to connect the unconnected lives in a bid to justify the publication of the title was incoherent and done in poor taste. The book is an eye sore and an abomination...avoid it at all cost.



2. I didn't know much about any of these women except Lou Salome and Yoko Ono before I read "Lives of the Muses," but I enjoyed learning about all of them. I found Lee Miller's ability to be both artist and muse especially inspiring.



3. Unlike many other reviewers, who thought the author expected too much knowledge of their readers in terms of who the artists depicted in this book are, I actually enjoyed not knowing too much about them. I would think that if I had known much about them, I would have had some pre-conceived notions and may have looked more towards the life of the artists rather than the ones that are really taking the focal point in Francine Prose's unusual book - the muses.
   
   What is a muse? What does the word mean and what do we as readers in a modern society think of a muse? What is the muse's actual influence on the artist who they serve and do these special relations always include romantic notions? These are the types of questions the author tries to examine in the book. In order to do so, the reader is introduced to nine women who lived at different times, range in their age, economical and social status and have very different influence on the artists they serve. While the artist generally plays a minor role in these short examinations, the muse is examined through excellent research of historical data, letters and personal notes as well as the artwork they influenced. We get to know each muse extremely well and learn how she became involved with the artist, what her exact role was and how the artist used her in his quest for creation. Some women stumbled into becoming muses, some pursued being a muse. Some took a very active role in their "muse-hood", some were more passive. Some of these women used the power they had over their artist, while others were unaware of the their influence. Some became artists themselves and some pursued an ordinary life. These differences are what kept me interested in the book and its thesis.
   
   Francine Prose does a fine job at drawing lively portraits of the characters that fill the pages of her book, the social and economical situation they find themselves in, who they are as individuals and ultimately, what became of them. I found the book wonderfully organized with each chapter standing as a self-contained story. While together they draw a very encompassing picture of "muse-hood". I may not want to become a muse myself, but I certainly learned much about some of them and found their life stories worth spending time on.



4. Francine Prose is a fierce, frequently eloquent and extremely intelligent writer. Her refreshingly snarky style makes this one of the most dare-I-say fun biographies I've read. Gala Dali, Charis Weston and Yoko Ono inspire the best of her sharp wit. There are even some lol moments: "...Charis Weston's marriage to the photographer Edward Weston...illustrate(s) what her sister muses were resisting: the unpleasantness that can result when a muse's duties change from posing nude in the sand dunes to cataloging negatives and shopping for organic crackers." That's so bitchy, I love it. Or: "In the early 1970's, Gala [Dali], approaching eighty, developed a consuming passion for an ethereal Midwesterner named Jeff Feinholt, who was playing the title part in the Broadway production of 'Jesus Christ Superstar',and who displayed a tendency to conflate himself with his stage role." And this, on John and Yoko's "Two Virgins" (gag): "The recording features whistling, caterwauling, groaning, wailing, moaning, shrieking, samplings of old records, the sound of guitars being tuned and strummed, background noise, scraps of conversation. The result is so dull that only incipient passion and the promise of sex (that is, some appropriate reenactment of the circumstances under which it was made) could persuade someone to listen until the end... One would have to be in the grip of a very high sexual fever to be charmed by this, or to imagine that it was art, or that it should have been distributed and sold. It's no wonder that Beatles fans... felt gloomy about the prospects of further Ono-Lennon collaboration." Ouch! Ballerina Suzanne Farrell gets the best treatment, as Prose believes (with cause) that it was Ballanchine who was Farrell's muse, not the other way around. Lee Miller, Man Ray's model/assistant, gets the praise she well deserves for her own art, but Prose never mentions the appalling misogyny of Man Ray's life and work, which might have been relevant to Lee Miller's troubles later in life. Similarly, in deference to his contribution to literature, she shies a bit around the very smarmy reality of Charles Dodgson's "hobby." Prose saves most of her ire for photographer Edward Weston, who comes across as a total jerk. I only wish she'd included the picture of Charis naked in the gas mask: "Clearly, Weston's view of his muse had come a long way - straight down - from his vision of the gorgeous, radiantly sensuous angel sprawled on the sand dunes at Oceano." In fact, my only complaint about this book is - I wanted more pictures. It's frustrating to read descriptions of art without a plate to refer to. And, though it's obvious why she limited herself to 9 women, there are others who might have been more interesting, perhaps, than Elizabeth Siddal or Lou Andreas-Salome. I'd have loved to read Prose's take on Scott and Zelda. And - for something more contemporary -- what about Eminem and Kim? Now that would be funny... This book is definitely not for everyone, but if you're interested in Women and Art, and you don't mind a twist of feminist lemon in your writing, you might enjoy it very much.



5. Prose's writing here is, as always, enjoyable, but despite all the awards this book has garnered, for the most part it just seems to go round and round, pretty much telling the same story 9 times: the tale of a woman who serves as inspiration to a self-centered male artistic genius of one sort or another until such time, of course, as the man no longer perceives any muselike benefits to be accruing to him from the relationship.
   
   The need/desire/failure of the muse to be recognized in her own right is a major issue in most of the cases discussed, but the fact remains that most people will recognize only a few of the muses for their own celebrity, much less for any enduring accomplishment. I'll therefore accept the risk of being struck by a lightning bolt here by listing the book's contents by reference to the men rather than the muses, and you can decide for yourself: Dr. Samuel Johnson (Hester Thrale); Charles Dodgson, i.e., Lewis Carroll (Alice Liddell, i.e., Alice in Wonderland); Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Elizabeth Siddal); Nietszche, Rilke & Freud (Lou Andreas-Salome); Salvador Dali (Gala Dali); Man Ray (Lee Miller); Edward Weston (Charis Weston); Balanchine (Suzanne Farrell); and John Lennon (Yoko Ono). If any of these folks are of particular interest to you, I'd encourage a reading of at least the chapter devoted to them, but the whole "muse" theme itself is not one that needs this much repetitive elaboration, even given the fact that the duos discussed span a time period where things supposedly have changed for women generally.

1 comments about Child Brides.

1. You instinctively know that happenings discribed in this book only happen in foreign lands...but it is happening here in America everyday and under God's name. Once you read this book you will have a new outlook on reality and man's use of his religion.

5 comments about Lover of Unreason: Assia Wevill, Sylvia Plath's Rival and Ted Hughes' Doomed Love.

1. this was a great read and lets you see inside of Wevill's head...makes you love her or hate her



2. I think of myself as someone very well read on the subjects of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. I must admit I've always held a bit of contempt for Assia--but I thought I should give her a fair chance and read this biography. It was terrible. Extremely subjective, certainly not an objective account with well researched and accurate information, as a biography should be.
   
   Ted Hughes was not given an accurate representation in the least. The authors repeat over and over that Assia had a very dramatic personality and often exaggerated and embellished stories, but then they use her journal entries--written in the midst of serious depression--as an accurate source, from which they described Hughes' "horrible" mistreatment and even abuse of Assia. They also cite a poetry book in which the feminist Robin Morgan writes that Hughes murdered both Plath and Wevill, and that Assia took Shura with her "'rather than letting Hughes raise the child.'" I see absolutely no reason for this to be included in the book, other than making Hughes look like the bad guy.
   
   Not to mention, the chapter titles sound like cheesy love songs from the 80s ("Torn Between Two Lovers," "Fatal Attraction".) And check out this opening sentence from Chapter Nine, entitled "A Fateful Meeting": "London in the swinging sixties: the pill, the Beatles, acid trips, the sense that the times were changing and 'anything goes'--but none of it was blowing Assia's mind." REALLY?
   
   I dragged myself along, and finally reached the point in the story describing Assia's suicide--when I thought the story would finally end, and I would reach the nice thick bibliography that should appear at the end--and block off a nice chunk of the book that I didn't have to read. But no, they go on and on about suicide, filicide, throwing out all kinds of irrelevant statistics ("A study in the American Journal of Epidemiology revealed that people were less prone to suicide if they had known someone who had killed himself." HUH?) and various other kinds of crap.
   
   One part I was interested in, though, were the pictures. I hadn't seen many pictures of Assia and the inserts certainly had plenty. Although... at then end, there is a picture of one of the authors with Ted Hughes. Right before the paragraph where they inaccurately describe how he wanted to completely rid his life of any reminders of Assia--and then they quote the feminist. Isn't that kind of wierd?
   
   This book was obviously written for a bourgeois audience who love to read about romance, sex, and suicide--I guess I can see why the authors were interested in writing a biography about a person like Assia. I honestly felt sick at the end. Don't read this book--really, for the sake of your health, and for the sake of Ted Hughes, and extremely skilled poet and genuine, but private, man who deserves the be portrayed accurately.



3. If you have read the poetry, letters, diaries and biographies of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, you may have longed to know more about the mysterious Assia Wevill who flung open the door into their lives three years before Sylvia committed suicide. This wonderful biography of Assia fills the gap, telling the story of this striking, exotic, gifted but ultimately deeply selfish woman. Born in Berlin, Assia and her family escape the Nazis to live in wartime Tel Aviv. Her story moves to Canada, colonial Burma, and ultimately to London. Along the way she marries and divorces three long suffering husbands and eventually bears a daughter to her lover Ted Hughes, who wrote of her "Assia was my true wife and the best friend I ever had" . His actions belied his words however and Assia's despair and disillusion with their failing relationship lead to the death of both Assia and her daughter Shura in an uncanny echo of Sylvia's own suicide.



4. I devoured Lover of Unreason in two days while on vacation. Wow! This is such a powerful biography of an unconventional woman whose reputation is that of the "other woman" in the Ted Hughes/Sylvia Plath debacle. But to write her off as merely that denies the rest of her fascinating life. Assia was far ahead of her time in terms of sexual freedom and could be considered a sort of proto-feminist. A fair amount of time is spent on Assia's childhood; enough to get to know where she came from but not too much that the reader becomes bored. She married several times for various reasons before falling into a relationship with Ted Hughes that would destroy her. In 1969 she committed suicide, taking her dear daughter with her. Terrible, yes, but reserve judgment until you've read the book.
   
   Several reviewers have complained that Assia was cruel and heartless to have taken her daughter with her when she left this earth. But I would argue that Ted Hughes is the real monster. Having neglected Assia and almost completely ignoring their daughter, Shura; Assia was the only person in the world Shura had. In a way, by killing her daughter, Assia did her a great favor. Suicide is greatly misunderstood but I think the authors do a beautiful job of taking the reader along for the tragic journey.
   
   Other reviewers have complained that they couldn't assign Assia a role. Was she a selfish, cruel, husband-stealer, or was she a brilliant, unappreciated soul? As with any character in a book, or person in life, complexity, contradictions, and depth are what make people interesting and likable or despicable. Assia had qualities of each. Instead of trying to define her into a neat square, try to let yourself be swept along on this journey of madness, genius, love, and of course, tragedy.



5. This is the first, full length treatment of the "other" woman in the Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes triangle. The authors present Assia Gutmann Wevill by availing themselves of documents, letters, journals and interviews, to present a complex portrait of this most unique woman.
   
   In relevant ways, her story is part of the story of the Jewish experience of the 20th century. Assia was not able to fit into Jewish Palestine, and found it equally difficult to find a home in Canada and England. Even though she spent most of her life in England, she was never fully English. Zionism failed her, and with nothing to replace its failed promise, a crisis of identity appears to have set her life on a course of failed marriages and still born ventures.
   
   But what amazes most in reading this biography is that Gutmann-Wevill never became an artist of any merit. One of the more enlightening elements of this book are her insightful and penetrating diary entries, quoted throughout. She had keen and relevant observations about her contemporaries, including two literary giants, Hughes and Plath. In her writing one can sense a voice of great clarity and vision expressing life with precision and accuracy. She never translated this into sustained, artistic endeavors. It seems her failure was self-realized. She wrote: "I was endowed with too many minor qualities, but neither the will or the huge intelligence to bring them a life of their own." She is being unkind to herself here. As this memoir makes very clear, it is apparent that her will was more impaired than her creativity or intelligence.

5 comments about Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau.

1. Martha Ward deserves great kudos for this incredible work of love and devotion, Finally bringing the enigma of "Marie Laveau", BOTH of the Marie Laveau's to us in this day and age where she is so very much needed again to Bless her 21st Century Children now as a bona fide "Lwa"! Excellent!!! May the Good Mother Bless Martha Ward, And ALL of Us! So Be It!



2. Many people have fallen in love with the women who is known as Marie Laveau. Not much is truely known about her, but Martha Ward does an excellent job in giving it's readers an inside look at the "Spirited Life of Marie Laveau". This book is a must for anyone interested in the subject of New Orleans folklore.



3. Great book , loved it, thought it was wonderful



4. Another reviewer here has stated that the author should perhaps have written a historical fiction influenced by Leveau, like what Atwood did with Grace Marks in "Alias Grace".
   
   To be honset, I wouldn't have read the book then either. That's because I can't read this book without feeling... well... search inside and read a brief excerpt. The writing reads like a freshman comp paper. I can't take it seriously because the author's put so much fluff into it.
   
   Check it out for yourself, but read the excert before you go out and actually blow some scratch on this book. Who exactly is she qouting in that first chapter?
   
   Bah... if you're interested in Marie Leveau, a topic worthy of interest; then I recomend Long's investigation into the who Marie Leveau was. It too, has it's short-comings, but I assure you that it is more worth your time than this.



5. This book is was not written in an enjoyable format. Martha Ward jumped from person to person and date to date and back and forth and all around. She also injected her views on people and places without presenting proof of validity. They were simply her views, but the way she wrote them in, they could appear to be factual.

5 comments about At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst.

1. This book was excellent and thought-provoking. The topics raised are pertinent to every woman who values her spiritual and feminist sides. Dr. Flinders examines disparate issues which are troubling to many women. She does this in a way that is meant not so much to solve the issues but simply to raise them as subjects to be examined and brought to the light of day. I have recommended this book to many people and will continue to do so. This is a wonderful book!



2. This book was profoundly useful in helping me reclaim my spirituality after having left the church in anger years ago. Ms. Flinders identifies elements essential in helping women find their wholeness. The book is written clearly and beautifully. I recommend it whole-heartedly.



3. This book is critical for women and feminist men alike. All will walk away re-examining their own views and values. A particular idea that is staying with me (on this reading) is the idea of "retreat > magnification > transformation." The book itself provides such an experience by allowing the reader to go within his or her own thoughts on the two themes, putting a magnifying glass to literature, sociology, history, and the writer's own history to illuminate the topics, thus creating the opportunity to transform or critically change one's one view of the Journey. As suggested on the back cover, I am recommending it to all I know and encouraging a local discussion group.



4. The author is certainly writing for a target audience.......as one other reviewer said, white, upper-middle-class, female would-be mystics. I found the stories of life on the commune mind-numbing (then again, I was born in Berkeley in 1970, so that hippie commune kumbayah stuff reminds me of eating carob when I was a kid) and the rest of what I did manage to read alienating.......zzzzzzzzzzzz.......I am not saying this is a bad book at all, just that it's focus was so narrow that it completely lost my interest. The language was so fuzzy and woo-woo that it just irritated my Gen X (for lack of a better word) postpunk sensibility. It's a shame, too, as I was really looking forward to this book and hoping it would assist me in reconciling my own struggle between feminism and spirituality. C'est la vie.



5. This book called out to me from the shelf of my local bookstore and it was as if I knew Flinders and she knew me.
   
   Perhaps we are both "Upper Middle Class Female Would Be Mystics" as another reviewer seemed to spitefully proclaim - more importantly, Flinders was able to see into the heart of women who before may not have been opened for viewing, so to speak.
   
   I was especially taken with the segments on St. Clare of Assissi, someone new to me - a female compatriot of St. Francis of Assissi. How wondrous is this!
   
   The book launched me on a full scale investigation of St. Clare, who I prefer to refer to as "Chiara" - her name in Italian.
   
   The book is lushly written, poetic yet friendly in tone. Highly recommended and will return repeatedly.

No comments about The Jane Addams Reader.

5 comments about Hawthorne: A Life.

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Hawhthorne the scion of Salem Mass.Puritans was a man who lived his life within his tortured guilt-ridden soul. The great nineteenth century author of such gems as "The Scarlet Letter", "The House of the Seven Gables", "The Blithedale Romance","The Marble Faun" and classic short stories comes vividly alive in this superbly crafted, researched and well written account. Wineapple is that "rare apple": an academic English professor who writes clear prose understandable by the popular reading public.
   Hawthorne was a complex man who kept his thoughts interior until he spilled out his concerns on the page. He was a supporter of the Democratic party meaning he was opposed to abolitionism, felt whites were the superior race and had an almost unnatural love for our 14th President Franklin Pierce (one of our worst chief executives!).
   Hawthorne's tale includes many interesting folks from his beautiful artistic wife Sophie and her fascinating sister Elizabeth Peabody (who may have been in love with Nathaniel)!
   The third Peabody sister wed famed educational reformer Horace Mann.
   Hawthorne's children were fascinating from the etheral oldest daughter Una to the troubled Julian to the youngest child Rose who opened the first hospice for indigent cancer patients.
   Famed literary stars such as Emerson, Thoreau and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are players in this story with colorful anecdotes from the pen of Wineapple. The early feminist Margaret Fuller is also discussed with acuity. Herman Melville who was Hawthorne a secretive man is chronciled as his hero worship of the Salem author led him to dedicate Moby Dick to the older man.



2. I'm not a big biography reader, so I can't throw out other tomes to compare to this one. All I can say is that it was, amazingly, a page-turner. Wineapple really made me want to know more, and helped me to understand a very, very complicated man, at least as much as it is possible to do so. Obviously meticulously researched, brimming with witty remarks (both Wineapple's and first-person quotes), one of few criticisms I can think of is that the author tried a little too hard to emulate Hawthorne's style, not always transparently. But then, when I read Hawthorne, my sentences tend to grow, too, so maybe that isn't a criticism.

   Wineapple's only failing, in my opinion, is her tendency to skip over things she seems to assume we already know, like Sophia's fall on the ice precipitating her miscarriage. She neither disproves it nor states it, just ignores it. It made me wonder what else she left out that I didn't know enough to notice.

   My only other comment is a warning - for those (like me) who have been fascinated by Nathaniel Hawthorne since their first exposure to him, beware - to know the man this well, with this much detail, is to demystify him before adoring eyes. He was a man, it turns out, just a man, with failings and foibles. Some, like his racism and sexism, might be excused by the times he lived in, but others, like self-pity and hubris, are timeless. After this book, I pity him more, and worship him less. But his work, as Wineapple points out in the Notes, remains as popular as ever.




3. How he'd have loathed this biography by Wineapple. Invasive and outrageously distorted when it comes to interpreting what Hawthorne means in his own biographical entries [especially the letters], this volume commits the primitive biographical sin of reach a verdict, first; find the evidence, second. Some of Wineapple's assertions as to what Hawthorne "really" thinks [often in contradiction to his actual words] are simply preposterous. Thank God for the copious quotings from the great man, himself. The rest? Read quickly; take painkillers.



4. This thoughtful and graceful biography of Nathanial Hawthorne cogently captures his human complexity, which in turn reflects the polarities of the American character and experience that he vividly described in his self-styled romances: head and heart, reason and emotion, reality and imagination, materialism and transcendentalism, Puritanism and Quakerism, republicanism and federalism, states' rights and national union, slavery and abolition, heritage and freedom, tradition and independence. Brenda Wineapple's book skillfully chronicles Hawthorne's early and recurrent poverty, peripateticism, Hamlet-like indecisiveness, ambivalence about writing, and tendency to observe rather than to participate in life; and, like a Dickens novel, her work presents the author's family and distinguished circle of friends as fully developed and plausibly motivated characters: Franklin Pierce, Emerson, Melville, and, at a greater remove, Stowe, Whitman, and Poe. This volume's evident scholarship - it contains more than one hundred pages of notes - is expressed in a highly palatable style that is also educative in its unobtrusive use of words sufficiently uncommon (e.g., atavistic, coruscate, metonymic, sodality, solipsistic, treacle) to cause some readers to consult their dictionaries frequently. In sum, this work is the triumphant achievement of an ambitious undertaking.



5. Brenda Wineapple's palatable life of Hawthorne breaks little new ground, but its focus is a bit of a departure from the many previous biographies. Throughout, Wineapple concentrates on the author's family, neighbors, associates, career, finances, and politics. Such contemporary celebrities as Emerson, Longfellow, Melville, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, Horatio Bridge, James T. Field (Hawthorne's publisher), Horace Mann, and, above all, Franklin Pierce receive as much attention as Hawthorne's fiction.
   
   The portrait that emerges is of a career man struggling to keep his family financially solvent, resisting the emasculating temptation to be a full-time author, and clinging defiantly to the anti-abolitionist Democratic principles shared by Franklin Pierce, the hapless 14th President and Hawthorne's closest friend. While Hawthorne's acquaintances were convinced of his talents, they were dismayed by his (and his wife's) bull-headed political views. His ill-fated alliances and loyalties often cost him salaried jobs, even while they appeared to have little affect on his literary celebrity. (His publisher, for instance, was convinced that a preface honoring Pierce would sink Hawthorne's final book, but "to Field's amazement, the dedication didn't hurt advance sales of 'Our Old Home.'") Nevertheless, among members of Hawthorne's class, a career as an author--especially one who suffered extended bouts of writer's block---was not enough to pay the bills, and his inability to keep a job haunted his family with the threat of poverty until the day he died.
   
   Wineapple is superb at fleshing out Hawthorne's circle of family, neighbors, and friends, but--oddly enough--his literature is pushed to the background. There are certainly ample servings from Hawthorne's letters and journals, and Wineapple is somewhat more attentive to his five novels, especially how they are influenced by his political and metaphysical beliefs (on the one hand) and how their publication impacted his celebrity and finances (on the other). But she seems to have assumed that readers are intimately familiar with his tales and sketches, which, for the most part, are mentioned obliquely and glancingly. For example, a toss-away remark describing a contingent of visitors to a Union military base as "a group of do-gooders, spectators, and enthusiasts straight out of the pages of 'The Celestial Railroad'"--the only significant reference to the story--does little to elucidate or contextualize one of Hawthorne's most searing satires.
   
   As a social biography, then, "Hawthorne: A Life" is largely a success, and Wineapple's colloquial, almost gossip-tinged, narrative makes for easy and pleasurable reading. Readers looking for a more literary biography, however, should hunt down a copy of Edwin Haviland Miller's "Salem Is My Dwelling Place" (published in 1981), which more thoroughly treats the biographical and thematic implications of Hawthorne's fiction.