As you know, I am skimming a different book flap every day for a year to prove what a great guy I am and get enough material for a book called something like THE YEAR I DID SOMETHING FOR A YEAR. Today's flap comes from HAWTHORNE'S LOST NOTEBOOK 1835-1841. The flap asks you not to confuse this book with the "bowdlerized excerpts" published by his widow Sophia in the late 1860s. Restored are passages "revealing Hawthorne's unshocked observations of the shapes of girls' legs and of such improprieties as public drunkenness," brags the flap.
