Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Romance of the Orient by Luther S. Luedtke (review)

116Rocky Mountain Review recuperates both Isaacson and the experimental novelist, Barnatán, from Senkman's negative judgment, on the grounds that these authors reclaim elements of the Sephardic and Kabbalistic traditions "as part of the cultural legacy of Spanish-speakers" (143). In defense of Gerchunoffs Los gauchos judíos, Lindstrom points out that its idealization ofthe immigrant experience derives not simply from conformity to the dominant Argentine ideology but also from a transposition of the discourses of Jewish transformation, such as Zionism and utopian programs, prevalent in post-1881 Russia. Although her introduction and postface seem to applaud the tendency of contemporary Jewish Argentine writers, particularly since the end of the military repression (1976-1983), "to make Jewish Argentine questions one point of entry" into the critique of social history, Lindstrom herself hesitates to criticize authors for their implicit or explicit accommodations with hegemonic ideology. In her demonstration of empathy, Lindstrom stands slightly apart from the "parricide" literary generation of the fifties, including Viñas and Gladys Onega, and the "parricidal" critics of the eighties, like Senkman and Sosnowski, who deconstruct the myth (celebrated by Gerchunoff and other writers) ofArgentina as the immigrant's Promised Land. Looking back at the history of Jewish Argentine writing, Lindstrom finds "a long-standing and understandable reluctance, especially in troubled periods, to raise, as part of the discussion of Jewish topics, issues politically sensitive and painful to the mainstream society" (168). Indeed one of the principal goals set forth and achieved in this study is the recognition ofthe historical and ethical dilemma of Jewish Argentine writers caught between "an exceptional capacity for criticism" and "a tenacious disinclination to criticize" (2). Jewish Issues is a fine book, written with precision and clarity. Because ofher consistent contextualizing approach, Lindstrom deserves credit for doing what she sees Barnatán accomplishing in El laberinto de Sión: she brings to "an audience whose knowledge of Spanish [or Argentine] culture is probably most deficient in the non-Catholic areas" (143) an appreciation of its heterogeneity. JUDITH MORGANROTH SCHNEIDER University of Maryland, Baltimore County LUTHER S. LUEDTKE. Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Romance ofthe Orient. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. 276 p. I recall the shock of discovering these lines in Emily Dickinson's verse: Pity—the Pard—that left her AsiaMemories —of Palm— Cannot be stifled—with Narcotic— Nor suppressed—with BalmHow remarkable to find this daughter of New England, this "only kangaroo among the beauties," symbolizing female suppression through the Oriental Book Reviews117 leopard. Many such shocks of recognition await the reader of Luther Luedtke's Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Romance ofthe Orient. Can it be that Hawthorne, too, that arch American romancer and scion of the Puritans, turned toward the East for inspiration and technique? Such is Luedtke's provocative claim. As he asserts in his introduction, because of our prior fascination with Puritan and British influences on Hawthorne's texts, "neither critical nor biographical importance has been attributed to Hawthorne's use ofthe East" (xvi). Luedtke's study is an important reorientation of Hawthorne studies. For pre-Civil War Americans, "the East" and "the Orient" encompassed the present-day Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and East Indies. Working as cultural historian, Luedtke demonstrates a passion for things Eastern in antebellum America, a passion shared by Hawthorne. However, his fascination with the Orient had a more personal origin as well: not only was Salem the center of American trade with the East, but the writer's ancestors, including his father, participated in that trade as sailors. According to an early biographer of Hawthorne, " 'he used to declare that, had he not been sent to college, he should have become a mariner, like his predecessors' " (16). Of course Hawthorne was sent to Bowdoin, where his attraction to the East took a decidedly literary turn. Luedtke carefully reconstructs Hawthorne's reading in Orientalia, both during his college years and during his legendary ten-year retreat from the world. Launched on a sea of romance by these texts, Hawthorne began his career as a man of letters during the 1830s. Luedtke's analysis of Hawthorne's early writings breaks new ground, first, by reexamining Hawthorne's "hack work" as editor of...