Robert Nathan (1) (1894–1985)

Beautiful and gentle, this short yet poignant story from the great Robert Nathan very much encapsulates his unique gifts and style of storytelling. We have a lovely young foreign girl and her little brother, set adrift by war. They find refuge in a scow on the beach through the kindness of Mr. Baghot. There, the beautiful yet innocent Luisa meets Mr. Smith, a teacher who has become gently restless with his life.

Everything about this story is gentle, especially the unspoken misunderstanding between Smith and the much younger and lovely Luisa; each believing the other could not possibly be romantically interested, despite their own personal feelings. Also gentle, making them more profound, are observations within the narrative about war and children, and people in general.

Only an ending vaguely suggestive of the future which lies ahead for our friends rather than clearly defined mars this wonderful story. But perhaps that speaks to Nathan’s genius that the reader aches for a longer and clearer glimpse into their future; Nathan as writer, showing us through his lovely prose that the picture is never fully painted until the final brush stroke, and life continues to unfold until we take the final breath.

Nathan was able to say more in his deceptively simple stories than any other writer I’ve ever read. His stories touch your heart and make you wistful, lingering long after the final page is turned. Above all else, Nathan wrote about love. An old-fashioned narrative style to be sure, but a unique reading experience for which you'll be all the richer.… (mere)

Lonely and magical, Portrait of Jennie is often cited as a romantic fantasy masterpiece. Thanks to a classic film starring Joseph Cotten and Jennifer Jones, it is the one book title by this sadly almost forgotten author which is vaguely familiar to modern readers.

Perhaps because there is something pure and lovely in his gentle tales, his oeuvre is incompatible with the crass harshness of modern life, and much of modern literature. That makes them no less wonderful, however, and for some readers, makes them better. Like all of Robert Nathan’s stories, there is something ethereal here in Portrait of Jennie that nearly defies description.

Is it the feeling of loneliness and loss of hope with which Nathan dusts the pages?

Is it Nathan's skill at showing the thin line between desolation and inspiration which so plagues every artist?

Is it Nathan's own tender portrait of the lovely Jennie, using words rather than a brush to paint her as she moves through time and ages, finally becoming the protagonist's great love, and his inspiration?

Or is it Robert Nathan's insightful observations on life, and the living of it?

Perhaps it is all of these things, and much more. Robert Nathan imbued this story with some intangible magic that either touches our heart when it is still open to love and romance, or falls flat and shames us because our heart has been worn down and tainted by our crass modern world, and already moved into a winter too cold to embrace its romantic purity.

While it is somewhat more protracted than many of Nathan’s other wonderful stories, it is still incredibly lovely, with passages and sentiments so touching they are never forgotten by the reader. An all-time favorite book of mine, one which will certainly be enjoyed by anyone with a romantic heart.… (mere)

This tender and beautiful novella from Robert Nathan almost defies description, and that, in essence, was this writer’s genius. Nearly forgotten by all but a few, his gentle stories of love embed themselves in our heart and soul, becoming a part of who we are and how we view love.

Here, as he did in his most famous work, Portrait of Jennie, Nathan takes a situation which would be scoffed at today — the world now so tarnished that it cannot allow such beauty to exist — and he makes it work. A man almost — but not yet — old enough to be a young orphan girl’s father, hires her to help out three days a week, while she stays with a family insensitive to her need for love and affection.

Set around Nathan’s beloved Cape Cod area, there is a feel of the sea and its timelessness which Nathan imbues into the story. The narrator views fourteen-year-old Johanna as nothing more than a child at first. His observations about her, and how we as human beings react to any small affection when deprived of love — or anything to call our own — are quietly profound. Johanna’s reaction to his gift of a dog is a perfect example, as she chooses to hold it tightly only when no one else is watching.

But despite Johanna's haunted simplicity, she is becoming more than a girl. She discovers a kind of emotional heaven, and haven, in a young boy’s affections and attention. But when tragedy occurs on Cape Cod, it causes her to withdraw from the world, and wait for that winter of the heart to return.

Though the reader can sense what’s coming, the narrator is still oblivious. A kindly priest, however, is not. He helps the caring bachelor rescue the girl so she can snap out of her denial and move forward. There is more, of course, because Robert Nathan always wrote about love. Though the story is about more than love, its focal point is the blossoming young Johanna's need to belong. The narrator only gradually realizes that Johanna is someone he cannot live without — no matter how long he must wait.

Wistful and ethereal, the very premise of this story would be tawdry in another writer’s hands, but guided by Nathan, it reaches a loveliness and purity seldom found in American letters. Long After Summer is a story of another time, and must be viewed as such in order to enjoy its innocence, and its message.

What Nathan had to say about love, about being human, was always told in a gentle yet profound manner, and no more so than in Long After Summer. This easily ranks among Robert Nathan’s finest works, a magical trip into the human heart, firmly rooted in a more romantic and less jaded era. A must for fans of this unique — yet sadly — almost forgotten writer.… (mere)

“If you're a singer, you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.” — Mickey Spillane


That insightful quote by Mickey Spillane was never more on display than in this late-career masterpiece of romantic fantasy by Robert Nathan. For decades he had written about love as being everything. His tales were often ethereal, sometimes supernatural, and many, like Portrait of Jennie, were unforgettable. He sprinkled his stories with a tender magic which touched readers’ hearts so deeply his words remained there forever. He never seemed to care about page count; most of his finest works were short stories or novellas. Finally, near the end of his long and illustrious career, this magnificent writer turned inward, and gave us one of his most beautiful pieces of fiction.

In the novella, Nathan seems to be placing a mirror not only in front of himself, but every writer like him, writers who live and breathe their stories of love to the point where their characters become so real, they intrude on reality. Like all of Nathan’s work, Stonecliff has a gentle, otherworldly atmosphere, and is laced with great insight into the human condition. In this brief and terribly beautiful story, Nathan ponders God and the universe, and time and dimensions beyond our understanding in an intimate way, telling a love story for the ages that is both fantasy and science fiction. Or is it?

Michael Robb, an aspiring writer, has come to Stonecliff, overlooking the sea. He is there to interview the aging Edward Granville, whose entire career has been built on beautiful, ethereal stories of love, in which the message is always the same — love is everything. Michael finds Stonecliff enchanting:

“The air was cold and moist, the heavens clear and starry overhead; the sea moved in deeper darkness below us; and again, as from the window of my room, I smelled the over-sweet fragrance of jasmine.”

But Edward is enigmatic, and his wife Virginia is away at the moment. A Mexican woman who runs the house, and a breathtakingly beautiful young woman named Nina are the only two people around as Michael remains to get background from Edward about his life, his work. It doesn’t take long for him to sense that Edward’s characters are more to him than just figments of his imagination:

“I felt the loneliness of the evening, the emptiness of the land...and I thought of all the brave, sad, lonely, merry people of Granville's stories, the loving girls whose ghosts must roam those cliffs and haunt the gardens of oak and cypress in which they had lived their insubstantial lives…”

And it takes him even less time to begin falling in love with the fresh and enchanting Nina. But what is she to Edward, and where is Edward’s wife, Virginia? There seems to be something strange surrounding Edward and Nina’s relationship Michael can’t quite grasp. There is also something strange about the grounds of Stonecliff. Michael hears Edward having a conversation about his book with someone in a treehouse, only to discover no one is there. A fog-shrouded cougar and a snake which is only a rope have Michael wondering — and trying to shake off the unfathomable notion — if in some half-world of illusion, everyone, including himself, might be living in the current story Granville is writing. As Michael and Nina begin falling in love, the tale becomes more mysterious, and fraught with danger:

“It was as if powers were at war beyond the reach of my senses, beyond nature…unreal phantoms, coils of fog, primeval shadows…”

More and more Nina tries not to fall in love with Michael as he has fallen in love with her. Edward Granville’s heart seems to be in just as much turmoil as Nina’s, as he ponders his life’s work, wondering if, as he’s always espoused in his stories, love is all. Before the secret of Stonecliff is finally revealed, Robert Nathan treats the reader to so many lovely moments there isn’t enough space for them here. In essence, this is a writer nearing the end of his literary career, looking inward, showing us love through the eyes of youth, and the aged.

There isn’t much that Robert Nathan wrote which isn’t worth reading, yet in modern times his stories are too seldom mentioned, and even less seldom read. It is sadly ironic that in this beautiful piece of fiction, he has Edward ruminate on a writer’s legacy; how some are remembered and live on, while others sleep unremembered for eternity. Some of Nathan’s stories, such as Portrait of Jennie, are masterpieces. Stonecliff is just as memorable. It might take modern readers a few pages to get into Nathan’s older style of storytelling, but they’ll find the read richly rewarding. Stonecliff is one of those stories which no reader with a romantic heart will ever forget.… (mere)