Topical Guide 529
Mark Dorset
Self: Re-invention or Renovation
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 6:
Maybe I’ve already done the thing that’s needed. I’ve changed. I’m not the man I was. I’m different. I’m not even aware of all the ways I’ve changed. […] That’s what I have to work on. I have to be different from what she remembers.
Herb ’n’ Lorna: Chapter 1:
In “Self-Reliance,” Emerson had written:
Traveling is a fool’s paradise. . . . At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. . . . My giant goes with me wherever I go.
Chacallit’s own Transcendentalist, Wilhelm Huber, my great-great-grandfather, a sharp-witted descendant of Inge who refused to be silenced, expressed his abhorrence of Chacallit’s name-changing in remarkably similar terms:
This business of changing the name of our town is a foolish practice. . . . We imagine that if we call ourselves Naples, or Rome, we will become intoxicatingly beautiful, and the Naples Collar-Pin Company will come a-courting, or the Roman Sleeve Garter firm will affiance us, and we will then, at last, be laughingstocks no longer. We tear down our old signs, erect our new signs, and embark next morning on a new life as Naples, but in our mirrors we still see the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that we meant to flee from: our giant, ourselves.
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