mid-pacific
James Norman Hall
Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1928
Many of the essays and true stories in this collection can also be found in some of James Norman Hall’s other works, specifically, his autobiography and a posthumous collection entitled, The Forgotten One. No matter. The ones already read are well worth reading again. And the heretofore unknown ones are, some of them, spectacular. In particular, there is Hall’s melancholy work on nostalgia and travelling back home to the Midwest after sojourning in Tahiti for many years. That story is found in “One of a Kind Journey,” in which the layers of sepia tinted remembrances pile upon the reader’s imagination–until a devastating ending that reminds us that everyone takes a different journey in life. Some are epic and some are but the passing of years and the movement within a small dwelling on a forgotten street.