Citizens of Somewhere Else: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James

Reminding us of the pleasures literary criticism can provide, McCall's splendid new book on Hawthorne and James demonstrates a passion for literature, not politics. In conversational but elegant prose, McCall explores how his subjects navigated ""the relationship between the lived life and the achieved art."" Especially fresh and incisive on The Scarlet Letter and The Bostonians, McCall sees Hawthorne as ""a man answering himself"" in his writing; James's ""elaborate metaphors and similes become the narrative itself: figures of speech become plot."" Perhaps most fascinating, however, is his account of James's 5000 or more revisions for the 1908 New York edition of Portrait of a Lady. The protagonist, Isabel Archer, and Hawthorne's Hester Prynne, says McCall, together represent ""two of the most resplendent... figures in our literature."" That the two writers shared an ""extraordinary kinship,"" especially in their ""vexed obsessions with America,"" is demonstrated beyond question. Although both 19th-century giants were, McCall suggests, ""fatally, utterly, inescapably American,"" they were nonetheless, in Hawthorne's words, ""citizens of somewhere else."" A professor at Cornell, McCall admires early 20th-century critics F.W. Dupee and F.O. Matthiessen, but he also gives a nod to more contemporary critics, including ""queer,"" postmodern and post-Freudian theorists, acknowledging their successes, failures and limitations, providing, in the end, a salutary balance between traditional and innovative approaches to literature. (June)