A Hazard of New Fortunes — Volume 4

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Remember that, and be good to every one here on earth, for your longing to retrieve any harshness or unkindness to the dead will be the very ecstasy of anguish to you. I wonder," he mused, "if one of the reasons why we're shut up to our ignorance of what is to be hereafter isn't because if we were sure of another world we might be still more brutal to one another here, in the hope of making reparation somewhere else.

Perhaps, if we ever come to obey the law of love on earth, the mystery of death will be taken away. I'll read it again.

It gets four stars anyway. View all 3 comments. Mar 16, Illiterate rated it it was ok. A rather labored study of the challenges urbanism and commercialism pose to ethics and taste. Jul 01, Dusty rated it it was amazing Shelves: The book begins with Basil March, a middle-aged insurance man in Boston who quits the company to pursue his old dream of a career in letters. March and his wife and children let a cluttered Manhattan apartment, and as they make their way in the bustling, alien metropolis, the author's scope opens and makes way for a legion of turn-of-the-century city types, amongst them Loosely, A Hazard of New Fortunes is about the founding of a new literary periodical in late nineteenth-century New York City.

March and his wife and children let a cluttered Manhattan apartment, and as they make their way in the bustling, alien metropolis, the author's scope opens and makes way for a legion of turn-of-the-century city types, amongst them the publicity man Fulkerson, the brooding, dandyish artist Beaton, the family of the lucky Indianan gas miner Dryfoos, the one-armed German immigrant Lindau, and so on.

The periodical, which is financed by Dryfoos, managed by Fulkerson, and edited by March, is on a smaller scale very much the same kind of multicultural laboratory that New York City is, itself, and Howells writes a detailed and gripping slice of city life. A few bits I've read about William Dean Howells have conceded that he's not often read these days and rebutted this sad fact by acknowledging that he is, nevertheless, the father of American realism.

A Hazard of New Fortunes — Volume 4 by William Dean Howells - Free Ebook

This book was one of the most dense I have ever read. The complexities of the characters coupled with a story line rife with social commentary made it difficult, at times, to read. But, despite this, I found it to be enjoyable and at times very compelling. It is important to note that this book was Howells's answer to the Haymarket Riots of Chicago in While Howells agreed with the striking workers, he did not agree with how they handled the affair. And how the workers were subsequently tre This book was one of the most dense I have ever read.

And how the workers were subsequently treated was even worse in his eyes. He wrote The Hazard of New Fortunes as an answer to it all. So, in his Realistic style, he portrayed each side, from Capitalist to Socialist; from anti-abolitionist to humanitarian, drawing upon the recent happenings to guide him.

When the historical significance is understood, it is far easier to see why his book was so complex and dense, and why I feel it is one of his best works. This is more or less a decent Americanization of a Trollope novel though I'd hazard--har har--to say Howells is more heavy-handed in his social critique and not as subtle or, well, good a writer as Trollope. Inspires nostalgia, sometimes laughter, and a great deal of investment in the characters, who come to feel more like friends than fiction.

Also his idea of th This is more or less a decent Americanization of a Trollope novel though I'd hazard--har har--to say Howells is more heavy-handed in his social critique and not as subtle or, well, good a writer as Trollope. Also his idea of the "country bumpkin" accent read like someone doing a hammy impersonation of Scarlett O'Hara. But all in all, this was a really cozy, enjoyable read.

Not sure if I'd read more Howells, but who knows? The end is rather abrupt and doesn't quite work; there are aspects that were probably socially appropriate in that make us cringe today Still a rather engrossing urban novel, inhabited by often-archetypal but interesting characters. It is absolutely a study of the middle class, perhaps a bit too sunny and sentimental, though the echoes of the Haymarket Affair toward the end temper that a bit. Probably an author that The end is rather abrupt and doesn't quite work; there are aspects that were probably socially appropriate in that make us cringe today Probably an author that deserves to be read more than he is.

Hazard of New Fortunes

Nov 10, Jolien rated it it was ok Shelves: May 22, Kevin Bradshaw rated it it was amazing Shelves: It is not Howells's work that has aged poorly. No,the reading habits and tastes of educated Americans have died a slow and painful death. Imagine if the lovers of classical music lost their hearing, so that highbrow opinion became middlebrow opinion, only for middlebrow opinion to mingle with and become indistinguishable from the lowbrow.

That is what you get here on goodreads, where merit is treated as a democratic question. Merit, however, is not a human right.

Not all can recognize it. Most c It is not Howells's work that has aged poorly. If you do not like this book, or at least cannot recognize its superiority, you simply do not have any taste in serious fiction. I do not even pretend to care for classical music or jazz. But, then again, I would not assign a star rating to symphonies or jazz records. My music is lowbrow, but at least I know it. Unlike children's books, like Harry Potter, or trashy works that suit those who would rather watch a movie than read, such as Stephen King's books, this book is subtle and complex. Because the serious novel has been relegated to college classroom force-feedings to students who have no idea how to approach a novel that lacks gore and sex, Howells has joined Lewis, Galsworthy, Sinclair, and Dos Passos in the the bin of novelists whose journalism and sociology make them easily understood by lazy readers and literature professors alike.

Hence, Howells's most commonly available and most well known work is the Rise of Silas Lapham, a weaker work than A Hazard of New Fortunes; the former is short and straight forward. If there's one thing our fellow readers can tolerate less than subtlety it's length. Unless of course the long book is full of self-indulgent nonsense and literally meaningless phrases- for examples see, Rushdie, Salman.

There is, as some readers who apparently failed to get past page 70 have noted, there is a somewhat tedious account where the protagonist and his wife search for an apartment in New York. This takes up about 30 pages, and seems to mar the books otherwise symmetrical structure. Howells is almost always dismissed today as prude and a prig because his stories refer to sexual desire and sexual impropriety in the most oblique fashion imaginable.

He is more circumspect than then even the stodgiest Victorian writers. However, is he is neither a overly modest school marm nor a member of Granny's Bible study class. He is a critic as sophisticated as any of the great European writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although one will find a literary analysis by a professor of literature that will likely tell you that Hazard simply recalls the political tensions that that boiled over into violence, and Lit Prof, whose name will be Leonard Tancock or Dick Morris real intro writing lit profs, mind you , will tell you that Marsh and his wife are Bostonians thrown into and force to confront a harsher and more sophisticated reality.

Or perhaps a sociologist named Kazin or whatever will tell you about identity, politics, class, and economic disparities. And then, if this is an intro and not an afterward, you will decide that what you are about to read is nothing but a dry exposition on such subjects. Well, the literature classroom is all too often the place where the joy of reading of reading goes to die; great fiction was not meant to be the subject of formal study; we owe that late innovation to the literature professors who we ought to call fictionologists. Instead of the Fictionologists dull world, a careful reader will find a humanizing work that brings to life members of opposing political worlds in a way that no modern author is capable of.

It is quite the difficult thing to do. In fact, the fictionologist labors to deconstruct literature, which, according to their untested assumptions, conveys the ideological trappings of false social consciousness. And the fictionologists wonder why they labor in obscurity. Moreover, like the his European counterparts, who Howells was responsible for familiarizing the American public with, Howells humanizes his subject.

There are no easily decided moral questions in his universe, contrary to the liberal paradigm of the fictionologist, which is intellectually shallow. Instead, the primary characters are forced to compromise and make terms with the external world. Neither fictionologists nor movie-watching-Harry-Potter-reading dullards can appreciate. This is the third novel by Howells that I have read, and I have enjoyed it the most.

It grabbed my attention immediately, and overall was quite interesting. It is the longest one that I have read, but it was much better than The Rise of Silas Lapham, which is significantly shorter. The final chapters are a bit weak, but not to any great detriment to the overall tale. Dec 26, Lucy rated it really liked it. I do enjoy a good long novel with lots of interacting characters.

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This didn't quite reach 5 stars for two reasons: I gave up after pages. Aug 01, Loes M. The book basically sets two completely different people against one another: We experience the story mostly through the viewpoint of a third, and neutral man called Basil March. We first meet Basil and his family in Boston. A friend of the family, the idealistic Fulkerson, has made himself quite wealthy and has the idea to start a new literary magazine in New York. He wants Basil to come to New York and be the editor for The book basically sets two completely different people against one another: He wants Basil to come to New York and be the editor for this magazine that he will be leading.

The Basils do not jump at the opportunity.

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Mr and Mrs Basil go to New York where they spent the first few chapters looking for the perfect apartment. Once they've settled for something, Mrs Basil goes back to Boston to prepare the family for the move while Basil stays behind, having decided to take the job as editor of the magazine. Fulkerson, being the idea-man, doesn't really concern himself much with the magazine, named Every Other Week. He is happy to leave it in the capable hands of Basil who used to work in insurance but always had literary ambitions. The publisher of the magazine is Conrad, son of the rich self-made man Dryfoos who is funding this magazine as a way to keep his son out of politics.

Dryfoos found gas on his farm and used it to get rich - further ensuring his wealth on Wall Street afterwards. They have also hired an artist to be the artistic director and Lindau, an old friend of Fulkerson and American Civil War veteran, who will be translating German war stories for the literary magazine. The way that they will be funding the magazine is quite ground-breaking: March's editorial prowes and the art director's work make the magazine a success and in the beginning everyone is happy. But then March starts clashing with Dryfoos who, together with his friends, is trying to have a bigger say in what should and should not be published.

They interfere in such a way that the original editorial ideas behind the magazine are threatened and things escalate. On top of that, Fulkerson and March start spending more and more on editorial costs in order to attract writers that will make them stand out - which makes the writers earn less and less. Combined with Dryfoos' meddling, the magazine is in trouble.

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More in-depth reviews on my blog: I give this novel 3 starts because I did, indeed, like it, but it was nothing more than that. I can easily say that I respect this novel for being so untypical in two main points that stood out to me: The central character is a city rather than a person and 2.

Howells gives the people in the novel such distinct and refreshingly realistic views about the world and doesn't give our favorite characters romantic ideals that they claim to live by to please his readers. Having New York be the central I give this novel 3 starts because I did, indeed, like it, but it was nothing more than that. Having New York be the central character was a bit weary to me; I couldn't relate to the feeling of a city being the force that moves people's motives and ideas, and it was a bit dense.

Sure, people behave based on their surroundings, but the novel seemed to imply that it was New York, and not any other city, that could do this. But I must admit that this was an interesting way to note the realities of the American experience during that time period. On the other hand, I loved how complex the characters were. Not a single character had only one trait to define them; nobody was just "good" or just "bad" and nobody was only "nice" or only "mean.

People's principles, of course, was an interesting topic to explore in this novel--to compare what people thought they believed in versus what they acted upon. All in all, I'm not sure I would have read this if it hadn't been a class assignment, but I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the complexities of the characters and Howells' originality in examining the central themes of the novel. Apr 19, Kim rated it liked it Shelves: I had to read this book for my Realism class at university and safe to say that this is one of my least favourite writing "trends" sorry, can't think of a better words These books just ooze boredomness with its long descriptions and unexciting themes.

About A Hazard of New Fortunes Centering on a conflict between a self-made millionaire and an idealistic reformer in turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York, A Hazard of New Fortunes insightfully renders the complexities of the American experience at a time of great social and economic upheaval and transformation. Also by William Dean Howells. See all books by William Dean Howells. Inspired by Your Browsing History. Looking for More Great Reads? Download our Spring Fiction Sampler Now. LitFlash The eBooks you want at the lowest prices.

Read it Forward Read it first. March that they stirred under my hand with fresh impulse, and set about the work assigned them as people in something more than their second youth. The scene into which I had invited them to figure filled the largest canvas I had yet allowed myself; and, though 'A Hazard of New Fortunes was not the first story I had written with the printer at my heels, it was the first which took its own time to prescribe its own dimensions.

I had the general design well in mind when I began to write it, but as it advanced it compelled into its course incidents, interests, individualities, which I had not known lay near, and it specialized and amplified at points which I had not always meant to touch, though I should not like to intimate anything mystical in the fact.

It became, to my thinking, the most vital of my fictions, through my quickened interest in the life about me, at a moment of great psychological import. We had passed through a period of strong emotioning in the direction of the humaner economics, if I may phrase it so; the rich seemed not so much to despise the poor, the poor did not so hopelessly repine. The solution of the riddle of the painful earth through the dreams of Henry George, through the dreams of Edward Bellamy, through the dreams of all the generous visionaries of the past, seemed not impossibly far off.

That shedding of blood which is for the remission of sins had been symbolized by the bombs and scaffolds of Chicago, and the hearts of those who felt the wrongs bound up with our rights, the slavery implicated in our liberty, were thrilling with griefs and hopes hitherto strange to the average American breast. Opportunely for me there was a great street-car strike in New York, and the story began to find its way to issues nobler and larger than those of the love-affairs common to fiction.

I was in my fifty-second year when I took it up, and in the prime, such as it was, of my powers. The scene which I had chosen appealed prodigiously to me, and the action passed as nearly without my conscious agency as I ever allow myself to think such things happen. The opening chapters were written in a fine, old fashioned apartment house which had once been a family house, and in an uppermost room of which I could look from my work across the trees of the little park in Stuyvesant Square to the towers of St. Then later in the spring of the unfinished novel was carried to a country house on the Belmont border of Cambridge.

There I must have written very rapidly to have pressed it to conclusion before the summer ended. It came, indeed, so easily from the pen that I had the misgiving which I always have of things which do not cost me great trouble. There is nothing in the book with which I amused myself more than the house-hunting of the Marches when they were placing themselves in New York; and if the contemporary reader should turn for instruction to the pages in which their experience is detailed I assure him that he may trust their fidelity and accuracy in the article of New York housing as it was early in the last decade of the last century:

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