Hawthorne Would Approve

No time for serious posting, but I did want to encourage you to point your browsers toward The Joy of Text, Part I, in which the Hobgoblin has cast Hawthorne in a leading role in a smashing romantic comedy. Looks like the start of a series--next episode may star Melville. Stay tuned!

It's a particularly pleasant counterpoint to this Hawthorne/Melville pairing from Robert Farley that I can't bear not to link to again. Hawthorne would encourage his more paranoid wingnut readers to check out "The Devil in Manuscript" and his second preface to The Scarlet Letter if they really want to get scared about the power of words and texts.

He'd also approve of student blogs, like "the air of ideas is the only air worth breathing", Dave Lester's Finding America, and Katie Rice's post on "The Birth-mark."

And Now, By (an Absolute Lack of) Popular Demand...

...here's some more Mooninite blogging!

Shorter "The Devil in Manuscript": Artist's work blows up Boston. Who'da thunk it?

Shorter "A Virtuoso's Collection": E-Bay enthusiast shows off Lite Brite Mooninite he bought for a mere $2,147.69, among other detritus of American pop culture he's accumulated over his suspiciously long life. Just who is this guy?

Shorter "A Rill from the Town-Pump": Unconsciously self-parodying monologue from a 21st-C reformer who wants to ban guerrilla marketing. Because it's all about the temperance, baby!

Shorter "The Birth-mark": In attempting to remove the Mooninite Lite Brite arrays marring the fair face of Boston, and purge the nation of the trash culture that produced and enabled Aqua Teen Hunger Force, liberal homeland security hawks, the anti-corporate left, and wingnuts-in-training band together to purify American culture, which dies and goes to heaven thanking them for their efforts. "Was it all worth it?" those left behind are compelled to wonder.

Shorter "The May-pole of Merry Mount": In which the narrator appends a prefatory note stating that "the grave pages of our New England annalists the great pages of Blogoramaville have wrought themselves, almost spontaneously, into a sort of allegory," suggests in the tale's opening that "Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire," and proceeds to tell a satirical version of Paradise Lost and Comus that turns into a parody of the Mooninite blogspat and the larger culture wars of which it is a part. Features passages like this:

In due time, a feud arose, stern and bitter on one side, and as serious on the other as any thing could be among such light spirits as had sworn allegiance to the May-pole. The future complexion of New England was involved in this important quarrel. Should the grisly saints establish their jurisdiction over the gay sinners, then would their spirits darken all the clime, and make it a land of clouded visages, of hard toil, of sermon and psalm forever. But should the banner-staff of Merry Mount be fortunate, sunshine would break upon the hills, and flowers would beautify the forest, and late posterity do homage to the May-pole.

A mock on both your houses? Or a subtle questioning of the terms of the framing of the event? You make the call!

Shorter "Main-street": A blogger trying to produce an amusing yet significant history of L'Affaire Mooninite is forced to give up the effort when inundated by commenters questioning his methods and motives so voluminously that his site crashes.

Add the first on this list to your own list of Dan McCall's thought crimes, for his mention of "The Devil in Manuscript" in Citizens of Somewhere Else sparked it, so to speak. The rest are entirely my own responsibility, I'm sorry to say. And I can't guarantee that I'm done with this....

BTW, if you think you're going to get a Close Reading Tuesday post after this unprecedented two-a-day, well, just keep hoping!