Classic Reads: The Scarlet Letter Explores Sin in 1800s New England

The is the first in a (hopefully) long series of posts about classic books that I, as an English literature undergrad major, really need to read or re-read to make my life complete.

One of the things about Nathaniel Hawthorne, like with other authors such as William Faulkner and James Joyce and David Foster Wallace, is that it never feels like there's enough time in life. Ernest Hemingway is short and to the point. So is F. Scott Fitzgerald.

But Hawthorne fills his writing with diversions into the deep thoughts of his characters and interruptions in story flow for his own speculations on motives and the narrator's interactions with the reader, like an 1800s version of TV's The Office.

But beneath all of Hawthorne's quirks, The Scarlet Letter is one heck of a story, especially considering he wrote it in Salem, Massachusetts (amazingly over the course of a few short months). Home to the Salem Witch Trials a century-and-a-half earlier, this feels like the reflection of a past that still haunts the town and the Boston region at the time of publication in 1850.

Hester Prynne is condemned to wear a bright red "A" on her breast at all times for being convicted of adultery for having a daughter in her husband's long absence. Minister Arthur Dimmesdale, one of the Puritan leaders prosecuting her, is the secret father of her illegitimate child.

Also in the public square watching Hester admit her sins that day is Roger Chillingsworth, the old man married to Hester who has been away exploring the western wilderness for years. Exacerbating the townfolk's impressions of her as a witch, her daughter Pearl is a wild and undisciplined child who appears to be an evil spirit unfit for Christian society.

Chillingsworth follows the proceedings from afar until he intentionally becomes Dimmesdale's roommate, suspecting the priest of being his wife's lover. Dimmesdale, meanwhile, becomes weaker and weaker with guilt over the situation, oddly appearing stronger and stronger in his fervent sermons to his congregation.

Seven years after her public condemnation, Hester and Pearl are walking through the woods when they come upon Dimmesdale. The priest says, "Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter on your bosom! Mine burns in secret!" Hester informs him that Chillingsworth, his roommate, is her estranged husband, and is cruelly making Dimmesdale's living hell far worse. She convinces him to make one more sermon and then escape to Europe to live with her and Pearl.

Dimmesdale admits his adultery to his congregation, exposes Chillingsworth's sinister nature, then collapses to his death. Chillingsworth dies a hunched and shriveled man within the year, leaving a fortune to Pearl, who takes her mother to Europe. Hester lives the rest of her life in better stead, but never does remove the "A" from her chest and is buried back in Salem with a gravestone labeled only with a red "A."

Sarah Silverman Finally Finds a Way to be As Unfunny as Possible

Sarah Silverman. Rainn Wilson. Lewis Black. Cast members of Parks and Recreation, Dexter, and The Karate Kid.

That's can't miss, right? Wrong. Peep World is the worst movie I've seen all year. It's about a young writer who becomes the voice of his generation based on his tell-all about his family. The movie reaches its wretched climax when the who family gets together for a dinner. Their unlikable father dies, which brings his unlikable, hateful, and disturbingly unfunny children together in a way that they never did when he was alive.

Ugh. Just forget you ever saw this review, and consider yourself lucky if you never waste an hour-and-a-half of your life on Peep Show.

* out of ***** stars

Cedar Falls, Iowa Lures Ed Helms for an Insurance Conference

If one things can be said about Ed Helms, he plays his type well. Basically the same square-dweeb turned party animal that he played in The Hangover and The Hangover II, Helms is Tim Lippe (pronounced Lip-y) in Cedar Falls, the name of this movie and also the location of the annual insurance conference that serves as the center of the action.

This is actually a brilliant concept for a movie. An insurance conference? The comedic possibilities seem endless. And while there could have been more fall-out-of-your-seat-laughing moments, the characters are so lovable that it's impossible to not get caught up cheering for them.

Lippe has never been on an airplane before, so the run-of-the-mill chain hotel seems like a wonderland to him. This is clear from the moment he arrives and hesitates to give the desk person his credit card for incidentals to the Chevy Chase-like moment when he and the gang break into the indoor pool in the center of all the rooms in the middle of the night.

He rooms with a seemingly slimy, but actually much deeper, John C. Reilly and straight man Isiah Whitlock Jr. And he gets in all kinds of situations with a winning trifecta of ladies, Anne Heche, Sigourney Weaver, and Alia Shawkat (from Arrested Development).

An interesting tidbit: Iowa, where the real Cedar Rapids is located, failed to secure the film a tax credit, so the whole movie was actually done in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Although Helms' never seems funny to me in late-night talk show interviews, his winning streak with The Daily Show, The Office, The Hangovers, and this movie is a thing of beauty.

***1/2 out of ***** stars

Win Win is Early Best-Picture Candidate

Tom McCarthy, who directed The Station Agent and The Visitor, is back with a phenomenal little film about a small-time New Jersey lawyer who gets himself into a lot of trouble with his decisions to play God to an old man and his dysfunctional family. Win Win is about how complicated life really is even though it seems so simple.

But all his moves make us completely sympathetic to him. And it helps that the lawyer is played by Paul Giamatti of Sideways fame. He still plays the same lovable schlump here, but instead of wine tasting, he is fixated on keeping his family afloat amid hard economic times. The characters around him are also lovable, if somewhat buffoonish: his Bon Jovi-loving wife (played excellently by Amy Ryan, who was Michael Scott's voice-impression-doing love interest in The Office) and Bobby Cannavale as an assistant wrestling coach who just needs a distraction and seems to want to relive his high-school days.

Alex Shaffer is Kyle, the talented wrestler who serves as the center of Win Win's galaxy. He does a great job, and this should be an early front-runner for best picture.

****1/2 out of ***** stars