“apocalypse” and “postrealist economy.”nWhat touched him off, I suppose, wasnHawthorne’s phrase “Outcase of thenUniverse.” This immediately set contemporarynexistentialist chords vibrating.nBut what a limited response to annauthor who devoted a career to exploringnthe large issues of good and evil.nAlfred Kazin’s review for the NewnYork Times Book Review provides anothernexample. Kazin praises Hawthornenfor having “a literary imaginationndelicately sure, subtle, unexpected” (emphasisnadded). He has no praise for hisnmoral imagination; in fact, he assertsnunfairly that “Hawthorne alone of thenclassic American writers in Concord wasnindifferent to the horrors of slavery.”nAccording to Kazin, “What is specialnin his thought is the belief that thoughnno moral order may really exist, responsibilitynfor order has fallen on the sinnernhimself. So his relation to the moralnorder in modern, faithless times is problematical,nendlessly difficult. It is hisnown darkness of suffering and preoccupationnthat he must live with. There isnnothing to guide us but ‘soul’—a wordncentral in Hawthorne, but a word standingnalone, as every Hawthorne characterndoes.” This is a modern view being imposednupon Hawthorne, and it is a distortion.nHawthorne never doubted anmoral order to which the individual isnresponsible. His characters feel guiltnnot on their own account but becausenthey have broken God’s laws; and theynsee themselves and their relations withnpeople and institutions about them innthe light of that assumption. Kazin isncorrect in noting the solitude (the voguenword would be “alienation”) in Hawthorne’snfiction, but he is mistaken innattributing it to a lack of moral orientationnin the world. The truth is quitenthe contrary. The characters are alonenwhen they separate themselves from thenmoral order and from what Hawthornenrefers to in “Ethan Brand” as “the magneticnchain of humanity,” which derivesnits cohesive force from a God-centerednmoral order.n8nChronicles of CulturenApproaches that fail to recognize thencentrality of Hawthorne’s persistentnconservative moral slant are purblind.nHawthorne, as Arlin Turner has pointednout, “was never reluctant to say that henhad a moral question under considerationnor to state baldly the conclusion henhad reached—or to define the possibilitiesnif he chose to leave the answer ambiguous.”nThe suggestions for storiesnthat he jotted down for himself werenmoral in their initial form, and unlessnthey lent themselves to some moral application,nwere likely to remain unused.nHis fiction reflects his personal values,nwhich his daughter Rose characterizednin this way: “He hated failure, dependence,nand disorder, broken rules andnThe Juicy Fullness of BeingnE. L. Doctorow: Loon Lake; RandomnHouse; New York.nby Joshua GildernAs Loon Like opens, Joe Korzeniowski,nlower-class immigrant’s son, carnivalnroustabout and all-round toughnguy, reflects on his childhood in Paterson,nNew Jersey: “They [his parents]nwere hateful presences to me … it wasnmy life they resented, the juicy fullnessnof being they couldn’t abide . . . Theynwere all dried up. They were slightlynsmoking sticks. They were crumblingninto ash. What, after all, was the tragedynin their lives implicit in the profoundlynreproachful looks they sent mynway.’^nDoes this seem improbable languagenfor Joe of Paterson.’ For the unsqueamishnreader, however, enlightenment followsn258 pages later—on the very lastnpage, to be exact. There he will discovern—and I’m about to give away the punchnline to this joke of a book, so close yourneyes if you don’t want to know—Korze-nMr. Gilder is an associate editor ofnSaturday Review.nnnweariness of discipline, as he hated cowardice.”nHe sided with the orthodox,ntraditional Christian view of man andnthe world. His stories treat man’s strugglenfor redemption and dramatize thennecessary role of suffering and disciplinenin the purification of self. He doesnnot apotheosize the self but warnsnagainst its perversions, obsessions, andninsidious deceptions.nThere may be hope in the fact that henis still considered great, even thoughnliberal critics may mistake the naturenof that greatness. The hope would arisenif the public retains its respect for hisnworks in spite of much morally myopicnliterary criticism rather than becausenof it. nnniowski becomes Bennet and is appointedndeputy assistant director of thenCentral Intelligence Agency. So maybenwhat we have here are his memoirs afterna lifetime of bureaucratic service; nondoubt Doctorow is pointing out the balefulneffects of covert activities on prosenstyle.nEven so, this “juicy fullness of being”nis a bit hard to swallow. Now, Doctorownhas been universally proclaimedna great stylist, a literary innovator, sonno doubt we’re supposed to take hisnjuicy fullness seriously, but it seems tonme there is only one type from whosenmouth or pen such an unfortunatenimage could issue naturally and in character:na college professor of creativenwriting whose mind has been turned tonmush teaching too many sincere undergraduates;nspecifically, Doctorow.nSuch lapses in taste are far from rare.nIt’s hard to know to what purpose thenauthor fills whole pages of text with thenmost egregious poetry, the blankest ofnblank verse, or why he inflicts on hisnreader such unimaginative, moronicnword play as the following:nCome with men