Library in a Canoe

Jonah, The Scarlet Letter, notebook, and coffee inside the tent one morning

What we read on the EPE (Epic Canoe Event): Jacob reread Dante’s Inferno, Jonah read The Scarlet Letter, dg brought along Witold Gombrowicz’s Diary, Volume One. Jonah finished The Scarlet Letter early which was a problem (dg had, perhaps too hastily, ordered him to leave behind the Richard Dawkins hardcover he had wanted to bring). But then one lovely night dg got to listen to Jacob reading three cantos of The Inferno out loud by flashlight to his brother (with glosses and explanations). Throughout the trip there was much animated campfire discussion of The Scarlet Letter as Jonah waded through: the frequency of the word “bosom,” Hester’s personality, the demonic epithets applied to little Pearl, the peculiar role of Chillingworth (the “black” man, healer, and a man who consorted with Indians), and the nature of Dimmesdale’s wound.

dg