84, Charing Cross Road

by Helene Hanff

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Critical Overview

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84, Charing Cross Road is the best-known of Hanff’s four titles published specifically for an adult audience. The work exemplifies an economic and literate prose style, Hanff’s hallmarks that have been traditionally celebrated by critics. Many critics, however, find the appeal of Hanff’s memoir to be a function of its Victorian charm. For example, Tho mas Lask, in a New York Times review, praised the work for its nineteenth-century response to the encroachments of a twentieth-century computerized society. Lask adds that the book is ‘‘an emollient for the spirit and the sheath for the exposed nerve.’’ Other critics cite Hanff’s keen sense of wit as a contributing factor to the success of the text; a quality recognized consistently by critics with respect to her other works.

84, Charing Cross Road gained critical acclaim and was subsequently adapted for film, television, and the stage. Stanley Kauffman’s review in the New Republic did not give these adaptations high marks, however. Calling Hanff’s work ‘‘a hopeless candidate for the screen,’’ Kauffman believes it to be ‘‘almost equally hopeless for the stage,’’ although already dramatized by James Roose-Evans. The problems Kaufmann cites with the work relate to the medium in which they are presented: a series of letters. Kaufmann’s concern is that much has to be inferred from the white space of this collection of correspondence in order to create a more cohesive work, thus the work runs the risk of creative compromise in adaptations.

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