← The History of Literature
The History of Literature
660 "Wakefield" by Nathaniel Hawthorne | My Last Book with Amelia Possanza
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- [00:02]
Jack Wilson
The History of Literature podcast is a member of the Podglomerate Network and LitHub Radio.
- [00:09]
Gabriel
This episode is brought to you by Google Gemini. With the Gemini app, you can talk live and have a real time conversation with an AI assistant. It's great for all kinds of things, like if you want to practice for an upcoming interview, ask for advice on things to do in a new city, or brainstorm creative ideas. And by the way, this script was actually read by Gemini. Download the Gemini app for iOS and Android today. Must be 18 to use Gemini Live.
- [00:35]
Emma
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- [01:01]
Jack Wilson
Hello. A man in London walks out of his house, stealing one last glance at his family as the door closes, then disappears for another life. Where does he live? What does he do? And why? We here at Nathaniel Hawthorne's brilliant short story Wakefield today on the history of literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. December. Oh, December. And it's holiday season. Gabriel will help us out. Thank you, Gabriel. So how are you spending your holidays, people? It's a time when optimism feels a little naive, maybe a little foolish. At least here in the States, everyone is building their network of care. Can this podcast be one of those networks of care? I don't know. I did join Blue sky as Jack Wilson. That's Jack with an E. We're just getting things off the ground there. I'm trying to post once a day with some literary topic and nobody ever comments. Maybe that's because I haven't told you about it. Maybe now things will change. We will see. We also have hol pod for our main show, although I'm not sure if Emma has gotten that one rolling yet. Baby steps, people. Baby social media steps. This story today, Wakefield, is a haunting one. The good news is that Emma, our intrepid producer, has read it for us. So if you haven't read it, just hold tight. You're going to hear the whole thing. And my guess is that you're going to like her voice. She's also an expert in Nathaniel Hawthorne, and so she brings that big professor energy to the project. And the short story itself is pretty wild. When you listen. I'd like you to listen for a couple of things or actually one big thing. This isn't exactly a short story written in scenes and characters and dialogue. It's more like a fiction writer, Hawthorne, telling you what he would put into those scenes and characters and dialogue. He takes the central idea, a man in London who leaves his family and lives a a street or two away for 20 years and then shows up again at the end of that 20 years as if nothing ever happened. Hawthorne takes this idea. Oh, oh, Gabriel, that was a nice little ending for Jingle Bells. Hawthorne takes this idea and then lays out all the details that he would put into the story about this man. It's as if Hawthorne is showing you the power of invention. The way a short story writer thinks. The way a person devoted to fiction, as Hawthorne was in almost monk like fashion, the way that such a person would come to see the world, or the way he invents a world to accompany the inexplicable. And so as you listen for those details, you can think, okay, this is chilling, this is moving, this is unusual. I'm feeling something here as I'm listening to this guy Wakefield and thinking about him and all those things as you would. You'd feel that when you listen to any work of fiction. But you can also think, well, this is what a fiction writer's up to. He adds this, he invents that. He throws a pinch of this into the sauce and adds a dash of that. Do you see the difference? It's one step removed. It's a little more self aware and self conscious. It's not how you'd want Hawthorne to write every short story, but it's fascinating that he chose to do it for this one. Let you peek under the hood and what details they are. So let's do this. Let's hear a little about Hawthorne, who he was when he wrote the story, where he was in his writing life. And then we'll hear the story itself read by Emma. Then we'll return with some thoughts about the story. And finally, we'll have a visit from our friend Amelia Possanza, who wrote her book about lesbians in the archives. Or writers writings by lesbians that, that Amelia found in the archives. I wish I could say we have a my Last book where someone chose one of Nathaniel Hawthorne's books as the last book they will ever read. Maybe you thought that's where this was headed. But no, alas, no one has chosen the Dark Master from Salem. So we have someone Hawthorn adjacent. There's your clue. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem Massachusetts, which was in the 19th century a thriving seaport with ships sailing from Salem to ports all over the world and coming back as well, bringing all over the world back to Salem. Hawthorne's family had been there for a while. His great, great, great grandfather William emigrated from England. A Puritan he was. William was known for being a harsh judge and his son John became even more well known for his work as a judge as he participated in the Salem witch trials. The Hawthornes were known as Hawthornes back then with no W. And I've read that Hawthorne may have added the W in an effort to distance himself from these guys, these Salem witch hunters, still notorious after a hundred years or so they were. Hawthorne wanted some distance. Hawthorne's father was a sea captain who died when Nathaniel was little. Nathanael then went off to. He went to live with some relatives where he was mostly miserable. He went off to school and complained that his mother and sisters weren't around. The family eventually sent him to Bowdoin College, where he met Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who would someday become a famous poet, and Franklin Pierce, who would someday become the President of the United States. This was in. We're up to the 1820s now with Hawthorne at school. He got out of college, published a novel at his own expense that he later hated and tried to erase from the world's memory. And he basically holed himself up in a room and read and wrote. I didn't live, he said of those years. I dreamed about living. He finally started publishing his stories like Young Goodman Brown and the Minister's Black Veil. These were collected into Twice Told Tales, which made his name, at least locally in New England. All the stories in Twice Told Tales had been published in magazines and periodicals before. This is one reason, perhaps why they were called Twice Told. Another reason for the title is a line from Shakespeare's King John. Life is as tedious as a twice told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man. Now think about that for a moment. You're an author. You've worked very hard on your stories. You have them coming out in a book. You want to sell that book, don't you? Isn't that the job of an author, to sell books? And you call your collection Twice Told Tales after a line in Shakespeare that calls Twice Told Tales tedious and vexing and suitable for the dull ear of a drowsy man? Well, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln. It's very hawthorn to call it, to name it after those lines. The dark master from Salem he had met Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson. And he had been invited into that circle. And Hawthorne went to some gatherings, but he was so painfully shy that he didn't say much. He had published all these stories in magazines, but they had mostly been anonymous. And it wasn't until the publication of Twice Told Tales that people could see Hawthorne's growing body of work as a whole, and they were impressed. The first volume was published in 1837, the second in 1842. So Hawthorne was not exactly a young man. He was 33 and 38 when these collections came out. He was around 30 or 31 when our story for today, Wakefield, was first published, back in 1835. But in terms of his career and his success and his life, Wakefield is early. Hawthorne was a bit of a late bloomer in writing and in Life. He was 38 when he got married to Sophia Peabody, which kind of kicked off his coming out of his shell. He was 45 when he published the Scarlet Letter and 46 when he met Herman Melville. So all that greatness and all those important life events were still in his future. Nevertheless, Twice Told Tales was well received. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gave it a rave review. To this little book, we would say, live ever sweet, sweet book. It comes from the hand of a man of genius. Now, you probably recall, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow happened to have been an old friend of Hawthorne's from college. But an even better review, because there's no appearance of bias here, came from Edgar Allan Poe. He and Hawthorne were not even acquaintances, let alone friends, and Poe didn't mind criticizing a work if he thought it was terrible. He did it a lot. Poe was an especially sharp critic, but Hawthorne won him over. His originality is remarkable. Poe said the short stories quote, rivet the attention. And he said the style of Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective, wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes. We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth. Now, one objection Poe had was that Hawthorne relied overly heavily. Is that the right way to say that? Relied heavily, too heavily on allegory. And indeed, Hawthorne at one point planned to title a collection of his stories, Allegories of the Heart. Malcolm Cowley, the critic, helps us unpack that title. Allegories of the Heart. Allegorical. The stories had to be, he wrote. For in those years, Hawthorne had come to feel that events in the external world were largely the reflections or tokens of real events which took place in the heart. End quote. And then Cowley says, but what did he mean by this word heart, which recurred so often in his writings? Cawley explains that the word heart served Hawthorne is a term to describe the unconscious. Cowley calls it the Freudian unconscious, though of course Hawthorne's writing several decades ahead of Freud. But this is anyway a place the unconscious that Hawthorne viewed as both sinful and sacred. And then Cowley gives us Often Hawthorne compared the heart to an abyss, or to a cavern guarded by shadowy monsters, but with treasures in the depths of it. One point he made time and again was that the heart was by nature a solitude where each man dwelt alone with his pride and selfishness. Solitude in itself became sinful in Hawthorne's eyes because it was a denial of human brotherhood. Remember that Hawthorne himself was devoted to solitude before his marriage. He was essentially living a life alone, a life apart. This was his natural state, his default position. Lets go back to Cowley. A heart could be redeemed by humbling itself and learning to share in the common sorrows. Think about this as you listen to the story Wakefield. What does it mean to step aside, to abandon, to live alone when you have a home with a family nearby? Where does that leave this man, Wakefield? And where does it leave his family? And where does it leave us? The short story Wakefield after this.
- [14:42]
Amelia Possanza
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Gabriel
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- [16:57]
Amelia Possanza
Wakefield By Nathaniel Hawthorne in some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story told as truth, of a man, let us call him Wakefield, who absented himself for a long time from his wife. The fact, thus abstractly stated, is not very uncommon, nor without a proper distinction of circumstances, to be condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit this, though far from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record of marital delinquency, and moreover as remarkable a freak as may be found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in London the man, under pretense of going a journey, took lodgings in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or friends, and without the shadow of a reason for such self banishment, dwelt upwards of 20 years. During that period he beheld his home every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield and after so great a gap in his matrimony felicity when his death was reckoned, certainly his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory, and his wife long, long ago resigned to her autumnal widowhood. He entered the door one evening quietly, as from a day's absence, and became a loving spouse till death. This outline is all that I remember. But the incident, though of the purest originality, unexampled and probably never to be repeated, is one, I think, which appeals to the generous sympathies of mankind. We know each for himself that none of us would perpetuate such a folly, yet feel as if some other might. To my own contemplations at least, it has Often recurred, always exciting wonder, but with a sense that the story must be true and a conception of his hero's character. Whenever any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time is well spent in thinking of it. If the reader choose, let him do his own meditation. Or if he prefer to ramble with me through the 20 years of Wakefield's vagary, I bid him welcome, trusting that there will be a pervading spirit and a moral, even should we fail to find them done up neatly and condensed into a final sentence. Thought has always its efficacy and every striking incident its moral. What sort of man was Wakefield? We are free to shape out our own idea and call it by his name. He was now in the meridian of life. His matrimonial affections, never violent, was sobered into a calm habitual sentiment. Of all husbands, he was likely to be the most constant, because a certain sluggishness would keep his heart at rest wherever it might be placed. He was intellectual, but not actively so. His mind occupied itself in long and lazy musings that ended to no purpose, or had not vigour to attain it. His thoughts were seldom so energetic as to seize hold of words. Imagination, in the proper meaning of the term, made no part of Wakefield's gifts. With a cold but not depraved nor wandering heart, and a mind never feverish with riotous thoughts, nor perplexed with originality. Who could have anticipated that our friend would entitle himself to a foremost place among the doers of eccentric deeds? Had his acquaintances been asked who was the man in London the surest to perform nothing to day which should be remembered on the morrow? They would have thought of Wakefield only the wife of his bosom might have hesitated. She, without having analyzed his character, was partly aware of a quiet selfishness that had rusted into his inactive mind. Of a peculiar sort of vanity, the most uneasy attribute about him, of a disposition to craft which had seldom produced more positive effects than the keeping of petty secrets hardly worth revealing. And lastly, of what she called the little strangeness. Sometimes in the good man this latter quality is indefinable and perhaps non existent. Let us now imagine Wakefield bidding adieu to his wife. It is the dusk of an October evening. His equipment is a drab greatcoat, a hat covered with an oilcloth top, boots, an umbrella in one hand and a small portmanteau in the other. He has informed Mrs. Wakefield that he is to take the night coach to the country. She would fain inquire the length of his journey, its object and the probable time of his return, but, indulgent to his harmless love of mystery, interrogates him only by a look. He tells her not to expect him positively by the returned coach, nor to be alarmed should he tarry three or four days, but at all events to look for him at supper on Friday evening. Wakefield himself, be it considered, has no suspicion of what is before him. He holds out his hand, she gives her own, and meets his parting kiss. In the matter of course way of a 10 years matrimony. And fourth goes the middle aged Mr. Wakefield, almost resolved to perplex his good lady by a whole week's absence. After the door has closed behind him, she perceives it thrust partly open, and a vision of her husband's face through the aperture, smiling on her, and gone in a moment. For the time, this little incident is dismissed without a thought. But long afterwards, when she has been more years a widow than wife, that smile recurs and flickers across all her reminiscences of Wakefield's visage. In her many musings, she surrounds the original smile with a multitude of fantasies which make it strange and awful. As, for instance, if she imagines him in a coffin, that parting look is frozen on his pale features, or if she dreams of him in heaven still his blessed spirit wears a quiet and crafty smile. Yet for its sake, when all others have given him up for dead, she sometimes doubts whether she is a widow. But our business is with the husband. We must hurry after him along the street, ere he lose his individuality and melt into the great mass of London life. It would be vain searching for him there. Let us follow close at his heels, therefore, until after several superfluous turns and doublings, we find him comfortably established by the fireside of a small apartment previously bespoken. He is in the next street to his own, and at his journey's end he can scarcely trust his good fortune in having got thither unperceived, recollecting that at one time he was delayed by the throng in the very focus of a lighted lantern, and again there were footsteps that seemed to tread behind his own, distinct from the multitudinous tramp around him. And anon he heard a voice shouting afar, and fancied that it called his name. Doubtless a dozen busybodies had been watching him, and told his wife the whole affair. Poor Wakefield. Little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this great world. No mortal eye but mine has traced thee. Go quietly to thy bed, foolish man, and on the morrow, if thou wilt be wise, get thee home to good Mrs. Wakefield and tell her the truth. Remove not thyself, even for a little week, from thy place in her chaste bosom. Were she for a single moment to deem thee dead or lost, or lastingly divided from her, thou wouldst be woefully conscious of a change in thy true wife forever after. It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections, not that they gaped so long and wide, but so quickly close again. Almost repenting of his frolic, or whatever it may be termed, Wakefield lies down betimes, and, starting from his first nap, spreads forth his arms into the wide and solitary waste of the unaccustomed bed. No, thinks he, gathering the bedclothes about him, I will not sleep alone another night. In the morning he rises earlier than usual and sets himself to consider what he really means to do. Such are his loose and rambling modes of thought that he has taken this very singular step with a consciousness of a purpose indeed, but without being able to define it sufficiently for his own contemplation. The vagueness of the project and the convulsive effort with which he plunges into the execution of it are equally characteristic of a feeble minded man. Wakefield sifts his ideas, however, as minutely as he may, and finds himself curious to know the progress of matters at home, how his exemplary wife will endure her widowhood of a week, and briefly, how the little sphere of creatures and circumstances in which he was a central object will be affected by his removal. A morbid vanity, therefore, lies nearest the bottom of the affair. But how is he to attain his ends? Not certainly by keeping close in this comfortable lodging, where, though he slept and woke in the next street to his home, he is as effectually abroad as if the stage coach had been whirling him away all night. Yet, should he reappear, the whole project is knocked in the head. His poor brains being hopelessly puzzled with this dilemma, he at length ventures out, partly resolving to cross the head of the street and send one hasty glance towards his forsaken domicile habit, for he is a man of habits, takes him by the hand and guides him, wholly unaware, to his own door, where, just at the critical moment, he is aroused by the scraping of his foot upon the step. Wakefield, whither are you going? At that instant, his fate was turning on the pivot. Little dreaming of the doom to which his first backward step devotes him, he hurries away, breathless with agitation, hitherto unfelt and hardly dares turn his head at the distant corner. Can it be that nobody caught sight of him? Will not the whole household, the decent Mrs. Wakefield, the smart maidservant and the dirty little footboy, raise a hue and cry through London streets in pursuit of their fugitive lord and master. Wonderful escape. He gathers courage to pause and look homeward, but is perplexed with a sense of change about the familiar edifice, such as affects us all when, after a separation of months or years, we again see some hill or lake or work of art with which we were friends of old. In ordinary cases, this indescribable impression is caused by the comparison and contrast between our imperfect reminiscences and the reality. In Wakefield, the magic of a single night has wrought a similar transformation, because in that brief period a great moral change has been effected. But this is a secret from himself. Before leaving the spot, he catches a far and momentary glimpse of his wife passing athwart the front window with her face turned towards the head of the street. The crafty nincompoop takes to his heels, scared with the idea that among the thousand such atoms of mortality her eye must have detected him. Right glad is his heart, though his brain be somewhat dizzy when he finds himself by the coal fire of his lodgings. So much for the commencement of this long whim. Wham. After the initial conception and the stirring up of the man's sluggish temperament, to put it in practice, the whole matter evolves itself in a natural train. We may suppose him, as a result of deep deliberation, buying a new wig of reddish hair and selecting sun dry garments in the fashion, unlike his customary suit of brown from a Jew's old clothes bag. It is accomplished. Wakefield is another man, the new system being now established, A retrograde movement to the old would be almost as difficult as a step that placed him in his unparalleled position. Furthermore, he is rendered obstinate by a sulkiness occasionally incident to his temperature, and brought on at present by the inadequate sensation which he conceives to have been produced in the bosom of Mrs. Wakefield. He will not go back until she be frightened half to death. Well, twice or thrice has she passed before his sight, each time with a heavier step, a paler cheek and more anxious brow. And in the third week of his non appearance, he detects a portent of evil entering the house in the guise of an apothecary. Next day the knocker is muffled. Towards nightfall comes a chariot of a physician and deposits its big wigged and solemn burden at Wakefield's door, whence, after a quarter of an hour's visit, he emerges perchance the herald of a funeral. Dear woman, will she die? By this time? Wakefield is excited to something like energy of feeling, but still lingers away from his wife's bedside, pleading with his conscience that she must not be disturbed at such a juncture. If all else restrains him, he does not know it. In the course of a few weeks she gradually recovers. The crisis is over. Her heart is sad, perhaps, but quiet. And let him return, soon or late, it will never be feverish for him again. Such ideas glimmer through the mist of Wakefield's mind and render him indistinctly conscious that an almost impassable gulf divides his hired apartment from his former home. It is but in the next street, he sometimes says fool. It is in another world. Hitherto he has put off his return from one particular day to another. Henceforward he leaves the precise time undetermined. Not tomorrow, probably next week, pretty soon. Poor man. The dead have nearly as much chance of revisiting their earthly homes as a self banished Wakefield. Would that I had a folio to write instead of an article of a dozen pages. Then might I exemplify how an influence beyond our control lays its strong hand on every deed which we do, and weaves its consequences into an iron tissue of necessity. Wakefield is spellbound. We must leave him for 10 years or so, to haunt around his house without once crossing the threshold, and to be faithful to his wife with all the affection of which his heart is capable, while he is slowly fading out of hers. Long since, it must be remarked, he had lost the perception of singularity in his conduct. Now for a scene amid the throng of a London street, we distinguish a man now waxing elderly, with few characteristics to attract careless observers, yet bearing in his whole aspect the handwriting of no common fate, for such as have the skill to read it. He is meager. His low and narrow forehead is deeply wrinkled. His eyes, small and lusterless, sometimes wander apprehensibly about him, but oftener seem to look inward. He bends his head and moves with an indescribable obliquity of gait, as if unwilling to display his full front to the world. Watch him long enough to see what we have described, and you will allow that circumstances which often produce remarkable men from nature's ordinary handiwork, have produced one such here next, leaving him to sidle along the footwalk. Cast your eyes in the opposite direction, where a portly female Considerably in the wane of life, with a prayer book in hand, is proceeding to yonder church. She has the placid mean of settled widowhood. Her regrets have either died away or have become so essential to her heart that they would be poorly exchanged for joy. Just as the lean and well conditioned women are passing, a slight obstruction occurs and brings these two figures directly in contact. Their hands touch. The pressure of the crowd forces her bosom against his shoulder. They stand face to face, staring into each other's eyes after a 10 year separation. Thus Wakefield meets his wife. The throng eddies away and carries them asunder. The sober widow, resuming her former pace, proceeds to church, but pauses in the portal and throws a perplexed glance along the street. She passes in, however, opening her prayer book as she goes, and the man with so wild a face that busy and selfish London stands to gaze after him. He hurries to his lodgings, bolts the door and throws himself upon the bed. The latent feelings of years break out. His feeble mind acquires a brief energy from their strength. All the miserable strangeness of his life is revealed to him at a glance and he cries out passionately, Wakefield. Wakefield, you are mad. Perhaps he was so. The singularity of his situation must have so moulded him to himself, that considered in regard to his fellow creatures and the business of life, he could not be said to possess his right mind. He had contrived, or rather he had happened, to dissever himself from the world, to vanish, to give up his place and privileges with living men without being admitted among the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise parallel to his. He was in the bustle of the city as of old, but the crowd swept by and saw him not. He was, we may figuratively say, always beside his wife and at his heart, yet must never feel the warmth of the one nor the affection of the other. It was Wakefield's unprecedented fate to retain his original share of human sympathies and to be still involved in human interests, while he had lost his reciprocal influence on them. It would be a most curious speculation to trace out the effect of such circumstances on his heart and intellect, separately and in unison. Yet, changed as he was, he would seldom be conscious of it, but deem himself the same man as ever. Glimpses of the truth indeed would come, but only for the moment. And still he would keep saying, I shall soon go back, nor reflect that he had been saying so for 20 years. I conceive also that these 20 years would appear in the retrospect Scarcely longer than the week to which Wakefield had at first limited his absence. He would look on the affair as no more than an interlude in the main business of his life. When after a little while more he would deem it time to re enter his parlor, his wife would clap her hands for joy on beholding the middle aged Mr. Wakefield. Alas, what a mistake would time but await the close of our favorite follies. We should be young men, all of us, until doomsday. One evening in the 20th year since he vanished, Wakefield is taking his customary walk towards the dwelling which he still calls his own. It is a gusty night at bottom, with frequent showers that patter down upon the pavement and are gone before a man can put up his umbrella. Pausing near the house, Wakefield discerns through the parlor windows of the second floor the red glow and the glimmer and fitful flash of a comfortable fire. On the ceiling appears a grotesque shadow of good Mrs. Wakefield. The cap, the nose and chin and the broad waist form an admirable caricature which dances moreover, with the up flickering and down sinking blaze almost too merrily for the shade of an elderly widow. At this instant a shower chances to fall and is driven by the unmannerly gust full into Wakefield's face and bosom. He is quite penetrated with his autumnal chill. Shall he stand wet and shivering here when his own hearth has a good fire to warm him? And his wife will run to fetch the gray coat and small clothes which doubtless she has kept carefully in the closet of their bedchamber? No, Wakeville is no such fool. He ascends the steps heavily for 20 years have stiffened his legs since he came down, but he knows it not. Stay, Wakefield. Would you go to the sole home that has left you, Then step into your grave? The door opens as he passes in, we have a parting glimpse of his visage and recognize a crafty smile which was the precursor of the little joke that he has ever since been playing off at his wife's expense. How unmercifully has he quizzed the poor woman while a good night's rest to Wakefield. This happy event, supposing it to be such, could only have occurred at an unpremeditated moment. We will not follow our friend across the threshold. He has left us much food for thought, a portion of which shall lend its wisdom to a moral and be shaped into a figure amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world. Individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another into a whole, that by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it were, the outcast of the universe.
- [41:07]
Emma
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- [41:38]
Amelia Possanza
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- [41:42]
Emma
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- [42:27]
Jack Wilson
Okay, there we go. With Wakefield, truly a twice told tale. The narrator begins with a paragraph sketching the story he heard in an old newspaper or magazine about this man who absented himself from his wife under pretense of going on a journey. He took lodgings in the next street to his own house and lived more than 20 years. He looked at his home every day, and often his forlorn wife too. And then he returned quietly, as if he'd been gone for only a day and became a loving spouse for the rest of his life. This outline, says the narrator, is all that he remembers. And then we get the adornments of the narrator, the fiction writer who asks, what sort of a man was Wakefield? And sketches for us the psychological underpinnings of such a person. Intellectual, but not actively so. His mind occupied itself in long and lazy musings that ended to no purpose. He had a cold but not depraved heart, and so on. His wife had seen a kind of quiet selfishness in him and a little strangeness. You can imagine all of this becoming a novel. Hawthorne's narrator is sketching it out for us. And then he imagines the moment where Wakefield says goodbye. It's October. At dusk, we see what Wakefield is wearing. And then this is the chilling part. He lets the door close. But before it closes, the wife later remembers. She thinks she sees her husband's face smiling at her. What a chilling detail. What a chilling detail. I had one of these in my own life. I feel like I should warn you about this. Give You a trigger warning. But as usual, I don't know exactly how to warn you without the warning being just as shocking, so I'll just go ahead and say it. A friend of mine committed suicide out of the blue. Only his roommate had seen it coming. The rest of us had been shut out. And this friend, this beautiful friend, this brings tears to my eyes. It's so haunting and horrible. He was not well, and I feel sorry for him. I'm not blaming him for what he did. But here's a haunting detail. He was at home. Young man in his early 20s. He was driving in his car on his way to end his own life. And at the end of his street, he passed his mother, who was in a car coming home. And he smiled and waved. It's the kind of detail that the heart is not capable of containing. It's too difficult and too dark. Hawthorne puts something like this into his story. Wakefield on his way to leaving his wife for 20 years. Maybe he doesn't know at the time exactly what he's gonna do, but that's what he does do. Living one street over, watching her, seeing her misery as she mourned her loss, the loss of him, her husband. He's watching this, knowing that he caused it and she doesn't know. Her living with that confusion, her not knowing all of this he's about to inflict on her for the next 20 years. And before the door closes, he looks at her one last time through the crack in the door and smiles. What goes on in the human mind? Why? Why do we do these things? Why do we inflict pain on others? What drives us to this? Hawthorn doesn't have all the answers, but he sees the world clearly. He forces us to witness the darkest and most inscrutable moments where sin and guilt take over. He could have turned this into a joke, a comment on the absurdity of life. Kafka would have taken us there and still conveyed the darkness. But with a kind of grim humor. Hawthorne puts his. Makes his case more plainly, more sincerely, more objectively. And he doesn't arrive back at the house with Wakefield. We won't watch the reconciliation, the recriminations, the shock, maybe the joy. We'll leave it with those 20 years where Wakefield had made himself the outcast of the universe. Capital O, capital U. Who cast him out of the universe? Well, he did himself. His own heart. Why? Why? Hawthorne seems to say, we all have this inside us. We all would do this. We could all give in. Let's not. It's a chilling feeling. Maybe that's maybe that's a good way to feel on this December day, and maybe that's enough. Let's turn now to a happier, warmer time when Amelia Possanza was here, telling us about her trips through the archive and how the start of Moby Dick, with its compendium of whale related items that Melville had gathered all those tidbits he had about everything to do with whales. She told us how that had inspired her to search in old books and magazines for passages that would give her some insight into lesbians, a history both secret and in plain sight. After we discussed that her book, I asked her this special question. Okay. We're joined now by Emilio Pasanza, book publicist and author of Lesbian Love Story Amelia. This question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.
- [48:56]
Zibby Owens
I think I have to choose a book that I've already read multiple times. So I find it both comforting and joyous because there's always something new to discover about it on each reading, which is Herman Melville's Moby Dick.
- [49:09]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. We talked about this when you were here for the interview about your book. You cite it early in your book as kind of a model for what you plan to do with Lesbian Love Story, dive into the archives as Melville did, and he pulled out everything to do with whales, and you were going to look for everything to do with lesbians.
- [49:28]
Zibby Owens
Yeah. And I think we were also talking about how there's something so infectious about his project, like, he's so excited about whales, that as the reader, even if you feel, like, bogged down by the details and like, you know, I've heard some people say, how can that be your favorite book? Do you just skip all the whale stuff? And I'm like, no, I love it. He's so excited that I can't help but join him on that journey. And I. I love how the plot only really picks up three quarters of the way through. I love how inspired it is by the Bible, by Shakespeare, which he was really reading intensively at the time that he wrote it. And I love how unruly it is. Like, there's a whole chapter that's like a play. You know, all of a sudden he's like, okay, we're in a play now. And they're like stage directions and people speaking, which, you know, doesn't happen before or after. And there's something so wonderful about that. And I Think I mentioned this on the podcast, too, I'm afraid. I'm like, if we edit all books to be a certain way, we're going to lose some of that. Just someone so wildly intelligent and creative taking us on a journey with him.
- [50:34]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. You know, reviews, they didn't always know what to do with Moby Dick. And they would sort of say, Melville might have gone mad, you know, this. Or even back then they would say, you know, where was the editor who, who allowed this to make it all the way in like this? And you just think, what a shame that, like, you're saying that. That would be the impulse. And today you'd have editors who would be crossing things out and saying, you know, we got to get to the point we're going to lose readers here. This is.
- [51:06]
Zibby Owens
Yeah, you know, the attention economy.
- [51:09]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, right. And here we are 100 plus years later, still talking about it as a masterpiece. And when you give yourself over to it and say, I'm just going to accept that this guy loved whales and was fascinated by them, and I'm going to share that fascination for the amount of time it takes me to read this book, it really is a much more illuminating experience and really an inspiring one.
- [51:43]
Amelia Possanza
Yeah.
- [51:43]
Zibby Owens
I recommend sometimes that people listen to the audiobook especially because now they've done like free versions where different celebrities read different chapters, because it's a nice way to let it just wash over you. Like what you were saying. Sort of like surrender to the experience.
- [51:56]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, right. Okay, that's an excellent choice. Amelia Pasanza, thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.
- [52:04]
Zibby Owens
Oh, thanks for having me. And chatting to me about Herman Melville.
- [52:19]
Jack Wilson
Thanks for having me. And chatting about Herman. Mel. Are you kidding? I love to have Amelia Pasanza on the episode to chat about Herman Melville. The pleasure was all mine. Okay, that's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. One new episode yet this year, and it's no, maybe two, I guess. But our next episode is a spectacular one. The Irish writer Com toybean will be here to tell us about his love for the works of James Baldwin. And then we have another one on black women writers in the 20th century. And then speaking of Irish writers, we will revisit by popular demand, the classic short story by James Joyce, the Dead, a great holiday story full of life and magic. That'll be me reading that one. But back in 2017. And I haven't listened to those episodes for almost 10 years now, but I'm guessing I get all gooey in them as I often did in those days. Who am I kidding? I still do. I am the outcast of the podcast. Then as now, I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.
- [53:46]
Gabriel
From Academy Award winning actor Matthew McConaughey's soulful and humorous picture book to New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah's the Women Moms don't have Time to Read Books is an author interview podcast unlike any other. In 30 minutes or less, each episode of this chart topping and Webby Award winning show dives deep beneath the COVID fostering friendship and camaraderie, support and curiosity, connection and compassion. Hosted by me, Zibby Owens, author, bookstore owner, and head of what the LA Times called the Zibbyverse, Moms don't have Time to Read Books has something for everyone, whether you're a mom like me or simply a busy reader. So don't miss out. Follow Moms don't have Time to Read Books on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. New episodes are released every weekday. Bringing books to life.
- [54:46]
Amelia Possanza
I did consider Barney a friend, and.
- [54:48]
Jack Wilson
He'S still a friend to this day. The idea of Barney is something that.
- [54:53]
Zibby Owens
I want to live up to.
- [54:57]
Jack Wilson
You know I love you, you love me. I call it the Purple Mantra. Barney taught me how to be a man.
- [55:04]
Gabriel
Generation Barney, a podcast about the media we loved as kids and how it shapes us.
- [55:09]
Amelia Possanza
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.