Twenty Days With Julian & Little Bunny by Papa [Anglais] [Relié]

This charming extract from Nathaniel Hawthorne's American Notebooks is, as described by Paul Auster in his introduction, "something that no writer had ever attempted before Hawthorne: a meticulous, blow-by-blow account of a man taking care of a young child by himself." When his wife and daughters went away on a three-week visit, Hawthorne stayed home with five-year-old Julian. The writer's musings on this adventure are, in Auster's words, "at once comic, self-deprecatory, and vaguely befuddled," as he discovers how insistent a child's needs are, and how boundless his energy. They take walks to the lake and play with their pet rabbit; Hawthorne tends to a wasp sting, tries to tame unruly hair and discovers the pleasure of finally putting the "old gentleman" to bed after a long day during which it was "impossible to write, read, think, or even to sleep...so constant are his appeals to me." Unusual evidence, if any were needed, that a writer does indeed need a room of his (or her) own. B&w illus.
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In late July 1851, Sophia Hawthorne and her daughters, seven-year-old Una and two-month-old Rose, went to visit her parents near Boston, leaving her son Julian with his father at home in a small Berkshire hills farmhouse. The novelist kept a journal of the 20 days that he and his five-year-old scion bached it (a housekeeper cooked and cleaned for them, however), which lay buried within the 800-page American Notebooks (1932) until now. As Paul Auster says in a superb introduction more than half as long as the journal, it shows us a different side of Hawthorne. Gone is the density and brooding of his fictional prose, replaced by straightforward recording and clearly registered observation expressed in everyday vocabulary. An undemanding parent, he quite adores his son, though Julian's volubility astounds and occasionally wearies him. He likes to call the little boy "the old gentleman," but otherwise there is nothing precious or sentimental in his writing about him. The journal is a tiny classic of parental writing about children. Ray Olson
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"Touching and humorous...shines a delightful light on family life"

"A funny and genuine account of child rearing"

In July of 1851, Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife and daughters took a trip to visit relatives. How Hawthorne and his five-year-old son Julian managed in their absence is the subject of this tender and funny excerpt from Hawthorne's notebooks. Each day is spent swimming, skipping stones, picking berries, and subduing armies of thistles. There are lots of questions ("He has baited me with more questions, references, and observations, than mortal father ought to be expected to endure"), crises concerning a pet bunny, and only one moment of grown-up companionship - when Mr. Herman Melville stops by to discuss eternity over cigars. This true-life story by a great American writer emerges from obscurity to shine a delightful light upon family life - then and now. An introduction by noted novelist Paul Auster adds to this intimate portrait.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1825, he returned to Salem, where he wrote historical sketches and allegorical tales, as well as a novel, Fanshawe, which was published anonymously in 1828. Hawthorne’s first book of stories, Twice-Told Tales, appeared in 1837. His marriage to Sophia Peabody, in 1842, led to a move to Concord, after which he wrote the stories gathered in Mosses from an Old Manse and The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales, and the novels The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and The Blithedale Romance. During these same years Hawthorne also spent time in the Berkshires (the scene of Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny), where he struck up a friendship with his young admirer Herman Melville. Hawthorne’s last novel, The Marble Faun, was published in 1860.