Why an 1852 Novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne is More Relevant Than Ever & Should Be Your Next Beach Read.

I’ve got a piece
about The Blithedale Romance over at Barron’s.
I’m making the case that the novel is a not only a great and
neglected meditation on the very essence of America as an
“intentional community,” it’s actually pretty damn funny
too.And Zenobia, one of the book’s flawed protagonists, is
simply one of the great female characters in all of our national
literature (so is the narrator, a writer-blocked poet named Miles
Coverdale).

If you’re looking for a summer beach read, this is one
worth checking out; it’s funny, sexy, and sad. And if you’re a
progressive or neo-con reformer, put down down your slide rule or
whatever instrument you’re using to create the parameters of your
nouveau Great Society and pick this up immediately.

Here’s the lede:

One of the first and best American meditations on why
experimental societies break down is also one of the least
appreciated. English majors may fondly recall novelist Nathaniel
Hawthorne for enthralling works like The Scarlet
Letter and The House of the Seven Gables.
But few seem to have read Hawthorne’s brilliant 1852
satire The Blithedale Romance, which draws on his
frustrating experiences with the short-lived utopian community
called Brook Farm.

Despite the novel’s mid-19th-century publication
date, The Blithedale Romance holds obvious
relevance to an America that continues to fail epically both at
creating new societies abroad (think Iraq and Afghanistan) and at
home (think Detroit). The novel is also a commentary on the
messianic and utopian urges that periodically plague everyone from
left-wing radicals to neoconservatives. Besides all
that, The Blithedale Romance remains an
entertaining read.

Hawthorne lasted only about six months at Brook Farm, which was
organized along socialist lines in a rural area just outside Boston
in 1841… No socialist himself, Hawthorne foolishly
joined in hopes of earning a return on his membership stake and
gaining a quiet place to write. He confessed to his fiancée that he
“never suspected farming was so hard” and that he needed to get out
“before my soul is utterly buried in a dung heap.” He also
complained that communal living made it impossible for him to work
on his fiction.

And there’s this:

The Blithedale Romance is by turns laugh-out-loud
funny and darkly tragic, and its ending packs a wallop. In a world
where so-called intentional businesses, foundations, and
communities built around shared moral purposes are all the rage,
the novel should be required reading. It reminds us that even the
best intentions are rarely strong enough to overrule either the
longings of the human heart or the basic laws of economics.

Read the whole thing here (shouldn’t require log-in or
subscription).

Bonus: The great Joe Queenan’s take on Anthony
Trollope’s The Way We Live Now.

Blithedale, for free, as an e-book.