P.'s Correspondence by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1845): A Review
Title : P.'s Correspondence Author : Nathaniel Hawthorne Publication Year: 1845 Rating : ⭐⭐⭐ Genre : Short story Who could have predicted that what I was craving was a classic Hawthorne-style short story narrated by an unreliable man who may or may not be in a psychiatric institution, describing his apparent encounters with famous figures from across history? Lord Byron, Napoleon, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Brockden Brown, and Joel Barlow all appear while the boundaries between past and present, life and death, reality and delusion quietly pack their bags and leave. What struck me most was how the narrator imaginatively reshapes these figures, rewriting their legacies and literary reputations to suit his own private version of reality. Or at least I think that is what was happening. With an unreliable narrator, interpretation also becomes an unreliable activity. Honestly, this may be the best possible form of delusion: imagining that you p...
