Citrus College English Professor Dale Salwak published his most recent book “The Life of the Author Nathaniel Hawthorne” in November of 2022.
Salwak has published an astounding 28 books, his most recent is a part of a collaborative “Life of Series,” grouped in with prominent figures John Milton, Maya Angelou and Shakespeare.
“I always knew that I’d write this book,” he wrote in his novel. “My interest in Hawthorne goes back to 1957 when, as a youngster, I made my first journey with my family from Amherst (where I was raised) to Salem, Massachusetts.”
There, he found a copy of Hawthorne’s book “The House of the Seven Gables” to which he read the opening line, describing the place he had just visited.
“This passage stuck a deep chord within me. … After many decades, the novel continues to resonate in my memories of musty smells and haunting sounds,” He wrote in his introduction.
From that day forward, Salawk then began reading and teaching about Hawthorne, then using these years of experience to create his book. However, even with all this experience, Salwak needed more to accurately tell the life of Hawthorne.
His hope for the book was to “enable others to gain insights into his innermost thoughts and ideas.” He wrote in his introduction. “Most crucially, I want to convince my audience that Hawthorne still matters.”
Doing so was a long process for Salwak, consisting of traveling to Salem, Concord, Brunswick, Maine, Berkshires, Lennox, West Newton, West Roxbury, Liverpool, London, Paris, Florence and Rome.
He explained the reasoning behind his travels in his book.
“One student remarked, ‘Why bother? That’s why we have the Internet. You can do your research that way and save yourself a lot of time and money…’ My response, as acerbic as it may have sounded, was as follows: ‘I’m going there because life is not found in the bloodless Internet. Life is found in real places.’”
Yet, Salwak knew that these real places had been visited by many, some of which had also written books about Hawthorne.
He acknowledges this, explaining that his book is “free from what Henry James referred to as the shackle theory, aimed at the general reader with little knowledge of Hawthorne.”
Moreover, Salwak’s book is the first major biography about Hawthorne to be published in over 20 years and was written with his nearly five decades of teaching and reading about Hawthorne.
“The sheer joy of reading Hawthorne and now writing about him has impelled me to ponder deeply as to why I still am the way I am, albeit in different ways and from a different perspective- as shall be revealed in the chapters that follow,” He wrote in his novel.
