One of my teachers once said "everything happened somewhere."

This was actually one of the few books I was forced to read in school that I enjoyed. I always thought of it as poetry that reads like prose.

I live in Salem, this house is nearby. It stands on Mall Street just north of Salem Common. The house is condos now, a few years back one of them was for sale. I went in and had a look around. There are still lots of old details, but some modernization too. I wasn't sure if I was in the same room Hawthorne wrote in or not.

Here is someone's flickr image of the house recently:

I would have been happy to have read The Scarlet Letter in high school instead of The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which was required reading in my junior year English class. What a stinker.

The Scarlet Letter was required reading in my junior year in high school in 1967. The only problem was at the time I was fascinated by Ian Fleming and 007, and was on a quest to read every James Bond novel available. Having to suspend my reading of racy spy novels in exchange for an ancient story about some lady who was forced to wear a large "A" on her sweater did not sit well with me, and I've held a grudge against old Nate ever since.