Column Chronicles: The Brutal Critic; The Scarlet Letter

The Brutal Critic: The Scarlet Letter

Frank Cotolo
October 6, 2022

Let me introduce myself whether you like it or not. My name is Bruce Danko, better known as the Brutal Critic. They call me that because I get right down to the grit of books, movies, plays and I find all the flaws.

Nathaniel Hawthorne had some nerve; not because he went on a moral binge with this story, but because he judged others of hypocrisy in a time when it was all the rage and the last thing that was going to stop it was a novel. Duh.

Hawthorne thought so little of his readers in 1850 that he had to concoct the idea that any woman guilty of having a child out of wedlock was forced to wear uppercase letters on her clothing to reveal in public that she committed adultery. Yes, he made it up.

It could have been worse, since Hawthorne's first choice was not the letter A, it was three letters: I G F (I Got F---ed), and his original title was "Three Letters That Mean A Bad Thing".

His publisher is said to have tossed a large paperweight at Hawthorne when he read the title and told him to change it or else not be published. Nat (as his friends called him) groaned because it meant he had to do rewrites and some biographers have mentioned, Nat was a lazy bum, a whiner and a bad speller. Nat finally agreed because his agent already booked many book signing appearances and the title became the one we all know now.

The book did nothing for the atmosphere of hypocrisy, legalism, sin or guilt in the story. Most hypocrites knew other hypocrites in the 1600s of the British-ruled new world and overlooked much of the sin that was rampant. These people laughed at Nat's book.

But, a historian wrote, Nat himself was a sin-binger. He collected the desires of many book groupies who loved taking their clothing off for Nat so he could write large letters directly on to their naked bodies, which the offered for sex. Literature buffs refute that story but all in all the whole scarlet-letter thing was boring then and it is more boring in the new millennium.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.