The House Of The Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851 ★★★½

Gingerbread Gothic

A memorable title and immersive setting are the main takeaways people get from this American classic, which seems fair to me. When a novelist accomplishes one thing so brilliantly, why carp about the characters or story?

A fiction set around a real building, still extant in Salem, Massachusetts, The House Of The Seven Gables concerns the Pyncheons, once a proud Puritan family now brought low by poverty and greed. How low we discover early in the book, when scowling spinster Hepzibah Pyncheon takes the radical step of turning part of the mansion into a cent shop.

She needs money to support herself and her mentally-impaired brother, Clifford. At the moment, the only money in her family belongs to her cousin Jaffrey, a judge and politician who embodies the Pyncheons’ cruel legacy. Hepzibah knows too well not to trust his offers of help.

The Battle For Gaul – Julius Caesar, 58-50 B. C. [1980 Translation by Anne & Peter Wiseman] ★★★½

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

How often do you think of the Roman Empire? It’s not just a question; these days it’s a meme, mocking dreamers in no hurry to grow up. Imagining a world brought into clearer order is tempting. Reading about it as it happens can satisfy the hopelessly boyish at heart.

Julius Caesar had no such agenda when writing these episodic narratives of his conquests across France and parts beyond. His objective was political. Romans had long suffered from barbarian attacks. Now Caesar was doing something about it, at a time when his main rival Pompey enjoyed a 20-year head start conquering the rest of the known world.

Caesar sought glory and dictatorship. What he achieved instead was a work of history that would endure in Western culture long after the empire he helped to build had collapsed into ruins and darkness.