Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

For reasons that I won’t go into now, I’ve recently taken up with the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864). It’s curious to think in these hyper-political days during the run-up to next year’s presidential election that are ninety parts promotion and 10 parts substance (I’m not looking at you, Bernie Sanders!) of an American great who, according to Malcom Cowley’s introduction of the 1948 Penguin edition of “The Portable Hawthorne,”  “was reserved to the point of being secretive about his private life, and yet he spoke more about himself, with greater honesty, than any other American of his generation.”

More important to me – and I would imagine to all writers and would-be writers – is this quality, as described by Cowley:

“If Hawthorne in his later years had a better, more flexible style than any other American author of his time, the fact was easy to explain: he had learned to write, first by reading, then by talking to himself, and most of all by writing a great deal.”

Here is a national treasure who talked about himself with greater honesty at the service of art as he sought a deep understanding of the American condition. Hawthorne strived to write his books so that ever sentence “may be understood and felt,” so he said.

“There is nothing too trifling to write down,” he said in a letter to his friend Horatio Bridge.

So put down your smartphone and read a little Hawthorne. From a book. And then go ahead, talk to yourself. Could be, before long, you’ll be writing a great deal.

Next: Running for Your Life: Roman Mood