Posted by Joffre on 27/9/2009, 12:56:16, in reply to "Re: All the information required on the book cover"
72.147.248.25
The more I read this sentence, the harder I find it to interpret exactly.
"He remembered for instance how he had gone back in the sixties with lemon-coloured volumes in general on the brain as with a dozen - selected for his wife too - in his trunk; and nothing had at that moment shown more confidence than this invocation of the finer taste."
I first understood that he had lemon-coloured volumes for himself and some others, perhaps from the bibliotheque rose, for his wife; but that is not at all clear. It is said that he never took these books out of his trunk and showed them to his wife, so it seems that even in the sixties, Paris exerted an influence that was quickly suppressed by Woolett.
I do think though, that I had in mind more risque novels than were meant. I think you are right. The lascivious content is probably only the adultery and prostitution in Balzac, Stendhal, and Flaubert. French fiction in general must have been published in yellow paperbacks and been considered more risque. There is still the suggestion that Strether is buying books he would not have bought in Woolett.
I wonder how The Scarlet Letter would have been viewed in Woolett. Doesn't it seem odd that TSL was published in the year of Balzac's death? Balzac seems much more recent. Of course, TSL is set in the distant pass, but that's not it. Hawthorne just seems to me as if he somehow belongs a hundred or more years before Balzac. I actually have this impression of American writers in general, at least up to a certain point, maybe mid 20th century. The works of American writers always seem somehow older than the European works from the same time period.
