American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, And Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work Download Free (EPUB, PDF)

                
              
American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, And Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work Download Free (EPUB, PDF)
The 1850s were heady times in Concord, Massachusetts: in a town where a woman's petticoat drying on an outdoor line was enough to elicit scandal, some of the greatest minds of our nation's history were gathering in three of its wooden houses to establish a major American literary movement. The Transcendentalists, as these thinkers came to be called, challenged the norms of American society with essays, novels, and treatises whose beautifully rendered prose and groundbreaking assertions still resonate with readers today. Though noted contemporary author Susan Cheever stands in awe of the monumental achievements of such writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Louisa May Alcott, her personal, evocative narrative removes these figures from their dusty pedestals and provides a lively account of their longings, jealousies, and indiscretions. Thus, Cheever reminds us that the passion of Concord's ambitious and temperamental resident geniuses was by no means confined to the page....
Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (September 18, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0743264622
ISBN-13: 978-0743264624
Product Dimensions:  6.1 x 0.7 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:  3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #812,477 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)   #139 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Regional U.S. > New England   #2701 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Regional & Cultural > United States   #4736 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Authors
What a peculiar book! American Bloomsbury is easy to dislike for allthe reasons given in a number of the editorial and customer reviews:the factual errors riddling the book beginning right on page 1 (littleWaldo Emerson was 5 when he died, not 9; Emily Dickinson and other"neighbors" were not neighbors to the Concordians; the Emersons werenot married in 1838; and on and on and on), the jarring colloquialisms(Emerson as sugar daddy, Thoreau as moocher, Hawthorne as rat), thesweeping and totally unfounded assertions, and the sporadicreal-clunker sentences.Such factors as these contribute to making a bad book, but what makesthis book peculiar is that the author shows herself capable, on anumber of pages, of producing compelling, factual, graceful prose, butjust as you are lulled into the story and willing to forgive andforget the clunkers and errors just passed, she pulls you up shortwith some sensationalistic or speculative doozy that utterly breaksthe spell. In the worst cases, these sojourns into fantasy make oneangry because they are so clearly untrue -- and purposeless except asmeans to stoke the potboiler theme of the book: unconsummated lust,cerebral adultery (and maybe more!), jealousy, seethingresentment.The best example of this is her depiction of Hawthorne,whose complex moral and intellectual flaws receive no attention at allbecause Cheever chooses instead to focus one glaring spotlight on himas "a rat with women.
The premise seems interesting enough: use a light-hearted approach to detail the lives of the major Concord authors (Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau) and their sometimes steamy interpersonal relationships. To that end, Ms. Cheever does a decent job here. The nearly endless combinations indeed weave a transcendental web: Louisa-Henry, Louisa-Waldo, Henry-Lidian, Waldo-Margaret, Nathaniel-Margaret. And that's not even mentioning Ellen, Sophia or Count Ossoli. Thus does "American Bloomsbury" provide an overview of the lives of the originators of truly American literature.And yet, nonfiction readers deserve accuracy. And the Concord writers deserve to be remembered honestly. This book is fraught with factual errors. And we're not talking about infinitesimal, esoteric, or subjective ones. We're not even talking about interpretations. These are mistakes that could have, nay, SHOULD have been corrected by consulting the very books listed in the bibliography on pages 211-214.To Ms. Cheever's credit: she at least knew that the North Bridge wasn't standing in the mid-1800s. That's the most common mistake that writers make about this time period. But what about something as basic as the natural environment? Thoreau wouldn't have pointed out deer tracks or beaver dams to his students because both animals were rare in New England back then. He didn't see cardinals either, for they were "Dixie invaders" that didn't come north until decades later. OK, you might say. Those don't sound like big deals. We could overlook those assumptions. Fine.Concord devotees will find here more than a dozen inaccuracies regarding Thoreau alone.
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