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It seems incredible that an actual human being stands behind the works of Herman Melville, and we rightly expect a biography to show us that real, tangible man. When Melville made his debut in England, reviewers thought his books must have been the products of an esteemed English gentleman disguising himself under rough Yankee cloth. It was simply inconceivable that any American could produce such noble prose, or that any author could have lived the briny life Melville describes. Hershel Parker finds that life not unimaginable, but difficult to distill. His book is monumental in size and definitive in detail. Readers looking for a digestible portait of one of America's favorite authors may find this well researched book a bit rich (remember this is just Volume I), although it does reveal many new insights into Melville's life and family background. Regardless, Parker's book is a significant scholarly work and essential to serious students of this American master.Book Description

Having left most of Moby-Dick with a printer in 1851, Herman Melville lamented to Nathaniel Hawthorne that he would go down in history as a "man who lived among the cannibals!" Until his death in 1891, Melville was known as the author of Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847)--both semiautobiographical travel books, and literary sensations because of Melville's sensual description of the South Sea islanders. (A transatlantic furor raged over whether the books were fact or fiction.) His most famous character was Fayaway--not Captain Ahab, not the White Whale, not Bartleby, and definitely not Billy Budd, whose story remained unpublished until 1924.

Herman Melville, 1819-1851 is the first of a two-volume project constituting the fullest biography of Melville ever published. Hershel Parker, co-editor of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of The Writings of Herman Melville, reveals with extraordinary precision the twisted turmoil of Melville's life, beginning with his Manhattan boyhood where, surrounded by tokens of heroic ancestors, he witnessed his father's dissipation of two family fortunes. Having attended the best Manhattan boys' schools, Herman was withdrawn from classes at the Albany Academy at age 12, shortly after his father's death. Outwardly docile, inwardly rebellious, he worked where his family put him--in a bank, in his brother's fur store--until, at age 21, he escaped his responsibilities to his impoverished mother and his six siblings and sailed to the Pacific as a whaleman.

A year and a half after his return, Melville was a famous author, thanks to the efforts of his older brother in finding publishers. Three years later he was married, the man of the family, a New Yorker--and still not equipped to do the responsible thing: write more books in the vein that had proven so popular. After the disappointing failure of Mardi, which he had hoped would prove him a literary genius, Melville wrote two more saleable books in four months--Redburn and White-Jacket. Early in 1850 he began work on Moby-Dick. Moving to a farmhouse in the Berkshires, he finished the book with majestic companions--Hawthorne a few miles to the south, and Mount Greylock looming to the north. Before he completed the book he made the most reckless gamble of his life, borrowing left and right (like his wastrel patrician father), sure that a book so great would outsell even Typee.

Melville lovers have known Hershel Parker as a newsbringer--from the shocking false report headlined "Herman Melville Crazy" to the tantalizing title of Melville's lost novel, The Isle of the Cross. Carrying on the late Jay Leyda's The Melville Log, Parker in the last decade has transcribed thousands of new documents into what will be published as the multi-volume Leyda-Parker The New Melville Log. Now, exploring the psychological narrative implicit in that mass of documents, Parker recreates episode after episode that will prove stunningly new, even to Melvilleans.

Customer Reviews (6)

Herman Melville, part 1
A huge biography, too huge for its own good. It covers the years from Melville's birth in 1819 up to the publication of MOBY DICK in 1851. Parker seems to have tracked down every move in Melville's life, but curiously deals very little with his books. (It is definitely not a critical biography.)

One becomes overwhelmed with the minutae, though bits and pieces of them can be interesting: Melville felt that REDBURN was "trash," and he wrote it "to buy tobacco with." He feared being known merely as the author of TYPEE (his most popular book with the public by far), a somewhat scandalous book at the time. Melville also learned on his whaling voyage to the Pacific that sailors appreciated literature, and read or were read to often aboard ship.

Parker has certainly written a fact-filled book, but he doesn't go beyond recording the facts. Disappointing.

Nothing of Value for the Melville Enthusiast
Unless you are a determined and anxiety-ridden Ph. D. candidate studying for an oral exam, avoid this tedious display of pedantry. There are no insights into Melville's life or works here, only the stuff footnotes are made of. I guarantee this book as a cure for insomnia.

For poor devils of Sub-Subs only
A very long and detailed Melville biography. I appreciated the fact that it didn't devote much space to interpretations of the body of Melville's work. There's an awful lot of interpretive criticism already out there, and we didn't need more in a biography. If you're already a Melville fanatic and are really interested in whether Melville actually worked briefly at a bowling alley in Hawaii as a pin setter (the novel that he never wrote) or how he travelled on his honeymoon, you'll want to read this. If you haven't gotten much beyond one or two readings of Moby-Dick - that is if you haven't yet read Typee, Omoo, Whitejacket, Pierre, The Confidence Man - and still want to read the man's biography, I'd go for a more concise one than this. And the best news of all (for all Sub-Subs) is that Volume 2 is now available!

" ... new vitality to my soul. "
If you approach this work with a right understanding, that is a biography and not an interpretation of the works of Herman Melville, then you should honestly be able to rate it as top-notch. What some might call "disappointments " in what they learn about Melville; his family life,they way he behaved at times, and the manner in which he wrote his books,are to me, the lens by which we see more clearly the humanity of the man.Mr. Parker's work might seem too weighty for some, but I can't wait forVolume Two.

The definitive Melville of our time
Hershel Parker's credentials as a Melville scholar are unimpeachable--he's co-edited the authoritative Northwestern-Newberry edition of the complete works and seems to have eaten, slept, and breathed Melville for decades. Despite his daunting c.v., however, his massive, half-finished biography iseminently readable and entertaining.

While it would be impossible todepict a writer's life without addressing his or her work, the focushereis on the events of Melville's life, not his books.The fascinatingnational and family politics that preoccupied him are on particularly finedisplay.Readers with only a casual interestmight see some details asmere minutiae, but each cited incident enriches the portrait of a complexman and artist.

Melville's history is not nearly so well documented asthat of some of his contemporaries, so there is some educated guessworkregarding certain motives and details, but Parker is ever scrupulous aboutseparating evidence from speculation.His immersion in Melville's work andhis sympathetic understanding of the man make this volume the mosttrustworthy and complete biography available. ... Read more

Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville is intended to provide a critical introduction to Melville's work.The essays have been specially commissioned for this volume, and provide a comprehensive overview of Melville's career.All of Melville's novels are discussed, as well as most of his poetry and short fiction.Written at a level both challenging and accessible, the volume provides fresh perspectives on an American author whose work continues to fascinate readers and stimulate new study. ... Read more

Book Description
Strange to relate, it was not till my Viking, with a rueful face, reminded me of the fact, that I bethought me of a circumstance somewhat alarming at the first blush. We must push off without chart or quadrant; though, as will shortly be seen, a compass was by no means out of the question. The chart, to be sure, I did not so much lay to heart; but a quadrant was more than desirable. Still, it was by no means indispensable.Download Description
Strange to relate, it was not till my Viking, with a rueful face, reminded me of the fact, that I bethought me of a circumstance somewhat alarming at the first blush. We must push off without chart or quadrant; though, as will shortly be seen, a compass was by no means out of the question. The chart, to be sure, I did not so much lay to heart; but a quadrant was more than desirable. Still, it was by no means indispensable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A strange allegorical tale of the South Seas

Although on its surface it appears to be a travelogue like his first two books (TYPEE and OMOO), MARDI is actually much more than that: it's a commentary on the age in which it was written, it's a quest story, it's an allegory, it's a love story. It's about many strange things and is not an easy book to follow, mainly because of Melville's use of allusions and digressions. Like Joyce's ULYSSES it almost requires a guide to help interpret what's in the book. As always with Melville its strength is in its language: the descriptions that are almost like poetry and the "borrowings" from favorite authors such as Shakespeare and Swift.

Basically, the story involves a shipwreck in the South Pacific, an attack by native islanders, and the falling in love of the narrator (Taji) with one of the native woman (Yillah). The make their way to the island of Mardi where they live happily for a while, until Yillah disappears. Taji searches for her throughout the islands with some companions; during this search they discuss many topics (here Melville satirizes life in America and England - slavery, politics, Indian policy, the war with Mexico, and also the failures of Christians to follow the love of Christ), until they find Yillah on an island transformed into a handmaiden. Implored to stay there with her, Taji decides to sail on in his endless quest for . . . truth?

The novel sold poorly during Melville's day (the London publisher lost money on it), with the public put off by its utter strangeness. Language lovers will appreciate this novel, however, and perhaps those who enjoy interpreting symbols and allusions. Not an easy book, but worth the effort to get a better picture of what Melville was all about as a great novelist.

The Many Marvels of Mardi
Anyone who loves Moby Dick and is looking for another Melvillean challenge, buy a copy of "Mardi and a Voyage Thither". Alas! many marvels await thee whosoever has the time and fortitude to muse through this early Melville Masterpiece! Reading this novel is like watching Melville's genius grow, while you voyage through his mystical, metaphysical world. The following are some excerpts of what to expect on this joyous journey:

"We are off! The courses and topsails are set: the coral-hung anchor swings from the bow; and together, the three royals are given to the breeze, that follows us out to sea like the baying of a hound. Out spreads the canvas -- alow, aloft -- boom-stretched, on both sides, with many a stun' sail; till like a hawk, with pinions poised, we shadow the sea with our sails, and reelingly cleave the brine."

"But how fleeting our joys. Storms follow bright dawnings. -Long memories of short-lived scenes, sad thoughts of joyous hours -how common are ye to all mankind. When happy, do we pause and say - "Lo, thy felicity, my soul?" No: happiness seldom seems happiness, except when looked back upon from woes. A flowery landscape, you must come out of, to behold."

"For there is more likelihood of being overrated while living, than of being underrated when dead. And to insure your fame, you must die."

"My cheek blanches white while I write; I start at the scratch of my pen; my own mad brood of eagles devours me; fain would I unsay this audacity; but an iron-mailed hand clenches mine in a vice, and prints down every letter in my spite. Fain would I hurl off this Dionysius that rides me; my thoughts crush me down till I groan; in far fields I hear the song of the reaper, while I slave and faint in this cell. The fever runs through me like lava; my hot brain burns like a coal; and like many a monarch, I am less to be envied, than the veriest hind in the land."

"Of the highest order of genius, it may be truly asserted, that to gain the reputation of superior power, it must partially disguise itself; it must come down, and then it will be applauded for soaring...that there are those who falter in the common tongue, because they think in another; and these are accounted stutterers and stammerers."

"The catalogue of true thoughts is but small; they are ubiquitous; no man's property; and unspoken, or bruited, are the same. When we hear them, why seem they so natural, receiving our spontaneous approval? why do we think we have heard them before? Because they but reiterate ourselves; they were in us, before we were born. The truest poets are but mouth-pieces; and some men duplicates of each other;"

"Faith is to the thoughtless, doubts to the thinker."

"Some joys have thousand lives; can never die; for when they droop, sweet memories bind them up."

"Now, I am my own soul's emperor; and my first act is abdication! Hail! realm of shades!" -- and turning my prow into the racing tide, which seized me like a hand omnipotent, I darted through. Churned in foam, the outer ocean lashed the clouds; and straight in my white wake, headlong dashed a shallop, three fixed specters leaning o'er its prow: three arrows poising. And thus, pursuers and pursued flew on, over an endless sea."

Stunning and poetic.
Mardi, the forgotten child ,is yet entirely singular and needs to be read by those who have fallen under the spell of Melville. An encyclopaedic rompthrough an almost fantastical landscape of isles and warriors; Melvilleattempts to pull off one the most extraordinary acts of metaphysicalfiction ever. He doesn't quite rein it all in but the experience of readingMardi is utterly disorientating in the best way. Coming after Typee andbefore Moby Dick, it is somewhat of a nutty middle ground. Theanthropological concerns of Typee are stretched to the limit. Like thestars in the sky, Mardi is vast; (the word is Polynesian for theworld)--and as full of wonder. ... Read more

Book Description
Unlike his fiction, which has been popular and often reprinted, Melville's poetry remains obscure: The last “collected poems” appeared in 1947 and “selected poems” in the 1970s, and only two books dealing exclusively with Melville's poetry have appeared, both published in the 1970s. In this revised edition of his Poems of Herman Melville, Douglas Robillard updates the scholarship on the poetry through his introduction and notes and makes a case for a revised estimate of the importance of Melville as a poet.

The Poems of Herman Melville contains entire texts of “Battle-Pieces” (1866), “John Marr and Other Sailors” (1888), and “Timoleon” (1891). Selected cantos from “Clarel” are reprinted with accompanying notes and commentary.

Melville scholars will appreciate the depth and scope of this addition to the critical study of this American poet. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Is Melville's poetry really worth reading?
If the difficulty of getting hold of it is any indication, then most people think Melville's poetry *isn't* worth it. I've been waiting for years for the poetry volume of the Northwestern-Newberry edition to appear (it was promised for 2002, but still shows no signs of coming out). That will be the ultimate answer, as it'll include all the materials, commentaries, etc. that one could desire.

In the meantime, it makes a lot of sense to collect Melville's own three published volumes of verse in this beautifully compact book. This may not represent his poetic legacy as a whole, but it shows (at any rate) his public face as a poet.

And a very odd poet he is indeed. He has a lot in common with Thomas Hardy, I think: both are addicted to convoluted diction, impossibly complex and confining stanza forms and metrical schemes, a general sense of labouring over every line and of lack of music and ease.

Hardy is, nevertheless, a great poet. When the occasion demands it -- "The Convergence of the Twain" about the Titanic disaster, the superb poems of 1912 about his dead wife -- there's a kind of clumsy power about him which overpowers any reservations.

Melville's technical shortcomings are -- if anything -- even greater. The chains of rhyme and metre chafe him more than virtually any other nineteenth-century poet I can think of. He seems to have almost no natural facility for verse.

And yet (as all readers of his prose are aware) he is a genius. His prose-poetry in Moby-Dick, "Benito Cereno" and "Las Encantadas" is incomparable. And very now and then it glimmers out in the midst of the most clotted poems. There are certain lines from his Civil War poems included in Ken Burns' PBS documnentary series which seem almost to beat Whitman at his own game:

In glades they meet skull after skull
Where pine-cones lay ...
... Some start as in dreams,
And comrades lost bemoan:
By the edge of those wilds Stonewall had charged --
But the Year and the Man were gone. [102]

The equation between the skulls and the pine-cones is haunting, yet unobtrusive, and the invocation of Stonewall as a kind of force of nature works brilliantly. There's a mythic force in some of these Civil War poems which is unsurpassed.

Once you get over the surface defects, then, there's a lot encoded in the depths of Melville's verse -- a submerged continent of perceptions every bit as vivid as his fiction. The wait continues for the definitive edition, but for now I'm just grateful to have this one. It seems somehow characteristic that he should have to wait so long for the critical establishment to do justice to his talents in this field -- Herman Melville (both as a man and a writer), was, it seems , born to be overlooked.

A poet in prose and not in poetry
Consider Melville's prose in 'Moby Dick'. Its complexity and vast metaphorical reach, its narrative reflectiveness and great exploring quality. Melville in his prose is the master of the long line reaching out to encompass and define greater and greater worlds.
Melville of the poetry has his own poetry chopped up into small lines. And somehow the music is lost, the diction seems more archaic and trite, and the great sweep of the story is lost.
The mode of Melville's genius is prose, and his poetry is read today primarily as supplement to further understanding it. ... Read more

Book Description
If Dickens was nineteenth-century London personified, Herman Melville was the quintessential American. With a historian’s perspective and a critic’s insight, award-winning author Andrew Delbanco marvelously demonstrates that Melville was very much a man of his era and that he recorded — in his books, letters, and marginalia; and in conversations with friends like Nathaniel Hawthorne and with his literary cronies in Manhattan — an incomparable chapter of American history. From the bawdy storytelling of Typee to the spiritual preoccupations building up to and beyond Moby Dick, Delbanco brilliantly illuminates Melville’s life and work, and his crucial role as a man of American letters. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Whale of a Book
Is there anything quite like a great biography? A great novel, you say, and I'd agree, but where are they? Meanwhile, we have these marvelous pieces of writing: Ellmann's biography of Joyce, Edel's biography of James, Holroyd on Shaw. This is not a multi-volumed immortal masterpiece but it has all of the characteristics of such a work, save exhaustiveness. This is an introduction, really, more than a complete life, but it serves its purpose as well as can be imagined. The prose style is inviting and easy, the illustrations amusing and pointedly relevant and revealing. The author's point of view is strikingly original. He begins not with Melville's birth, but with his reputation, from his death to the present. American's do not have a great dramatist, so we have made the drama of Melville's life a kind of literary drama surrounding a masterpiece, "Moby Dick." Those who know and love it see it as one of the great pieces of literature of all time. Melville is cast in the role of the likable genius, the sympathetic artist, the neglected and scorned master of American prose. We've been taught to love him, as we have been instructed to hate Hemingway and other dead white male authors. My professor said that Melville wasn't worth reading and recommended in its stead a collection of slave testimony and the lost poems of a female mill worker. I ventured that perhaps I could read him myself and make up my own mind.We live in an odd age that resents greatness. Let's applaud Delbanco's effort to set the record straight.

Delbanco skillfully brings the world of Melville to life
This biography of Melville is as balanced, accessible, and thoroughly entertaining as a biography of a literary figure can get while still being considered "serious." Delbanco has a great skills as a writer himself, skillfully juggling the story of Melville's life, critical discussions of his writing, and finally the social and historical context of the works.

The discussions of the books are excellent, particularly Delbanco's readings of the novels Moby Dick, Typee, and Pierre. But where this biography particularly stands out is the intermeshing the books with aspects of 19th century American literary culture. There are, for instance, interesting discussions of the dominance of English publishing houses, of copyright issues, of publishing in general. Delbanco situates Melville's work before a backdrop of a nation in transition (for example the story "Benito Cereno" is published in midst of the debate about the expansion of slavery into Kansas territory), and before a backdrop of the city of New York under transition too.

Finally, Delbanco discusses the unusual trajectory of Melville's own career and reputation - from almost being forgotten at the time of his death to the towering position he holds in American letters today.

This biography is a great summary of Melville's life, and also in a broader sense, of 19th century literary culture.

A New Study of Herman Melville
Herman Melville (1819 -- 1893) is one of the writers I have returned to again and again over the course of years. Thus, I was gratified to receive this new book by Andrew Delbanco, "Melville: His Life and Work" (2005) as a gift and to have the opportunity to read it, think again about Melville, and share my thoughts on this site with other readers. Delbanco is Levi Professor in the Humanities and Director of American Studies at Columbia University.He has published widely on American literature, including a book titled "Required Reading: why our American Classics matter now."Before reading Professor Delbanco's Melville study, I also read the lengthy review by Frederick Crews inthe December 1, 2005, "New York Review" which is both laudatory and critical.

The literature on Melville continues to grow, and in recent years biographies have been published that are longer and far more detailed than Professor Delbanco's.But Delbanco's study is accessible, engagingly written, and concentrates, as the subtitle to his book implies, in placing Melville in the historical context of Nineteenth Century America, and on the works themselves. I will discuss each of these factors briefly.

As to Nineteenth Century America, Professor Delbanco discusses Melville's roots as the descendant, on both sides of his family, of heroes of the Revolutionary War.He gives a revealing picture of pre-Bellum America and of the seafaring life.He gives a detailed historical discussion, for a literary biography, of the tumults which split the United States and lead to the Civil War, including the War with Mexico, the compromises of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.Professor Delbanco shows how Melville responded to both the literary and political events of his time.He also gives a good, if briefer, treatment of the Civil War and of Melville's life thereafter, as the United States expanded and a crude materialism became dominant.But most vividly, Professor Delbanco gives a picture of New York City, both before and after the Civil War, and argues convincingly for the strong formative influence that the city exerted on Melville's writings.

As to Melville's writings, Professor Delbanco devotes a great deal of space to Melville's four widely-recognized masterpieces: Moby Dick, Bartelby, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd.He offers textual exposition, compositional background, and a good literary sense of the complexities and ambiguities in each of these works.He offers shorter yet rewarding discussions of several of Melville's more controversial efforts, including Pierre, The Confidence Man, his collection of Civil War Poetry called Battle Pieces, and the long poem Clarel.I think that Delbanco undervalues some of the poetry, particularly Battle Pieces which I have found over the years a provocative literary guide to the Civil War.

The treatment of Melville's life is interrelated well with a study of his works, as Professor Delbanco gives succint discussions of Melville's early years, his decision to go to sea, his marriage, the question of his sexual orientation, the friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, his travels and wanderings, the tragic deaths of two of his sons, and the long reclusive years Melville spent as a customs inspector in New York City.We see Melville with all his difficulties and as a great but in his lifetime forgotten writer.Readers interested in a good novelistic portrayal of Melville may wish to read Frederick Busch's "The Night Inspector", to which Professor Delbanco refers.

(...)
I came away from Professor Belbanco's book with the desire to revist some of the Melville works that I have read in the past and, perhaps, to read some of the works that I don't know for the first time.I think it is the purpose of a study such as Delbanco's to return to reader to the words of the author, in this case Melville. Delbanco's book succeeds in doing so admirably.

(...)

Hershel Parker's rehash
All of the comments about this book are true with the exception that the majority of the biographical findings stem from Hershel Parker's groundbreaking, momentuous two-volume work that maintains itself as THE definitive biography of Melville. Credit Mr. Parker for The Isle of the Cross details, not Delbanco who was one of Parker's most vocal critics and once disputed the biographer's findings on The Isle of the Cross. However, if you do not want to wade through Parker's immense work, then go for this.

A World of Hurt
Some parts of Melville's writing are so dense even he got confused in them, for perhaps it was not his conscious self in charge of the words spilling out on the page in splendid, mordant constellation.At the end of his life, he returned after 30 years of sometimes brilliant poetry to write one last short novel, BILLY BUDD, in which most of the quixotic exuberance of PIERRE and MOBY DICK, of earlier years, seems to have been burnt away, as if by great pain.

Intriguing to hear the story (such as it is) of THE ISLE OF THE CROSS, Melville's lost novel, rejected by Harpers Magazine and then disappeared.Maybe this book will return to us someday, miracles have happened before.Written at the height of Melville's powers, ISLE emerges under Delbanco's suggestive treatment as a parable of his relations with Hawthorne, and the pull of the land versus the romance of the sea.

The great pain must have been the suicide of Mackie, Melville's son, who killed himself at age 18 at home; the coroner decided it must have been an accident, a pistol shot gone wrong, after th family protested his earlier ruling of suicide.How awful to think of Lizzie worrying that Malcolm wasn't getting up in the morning, he'd be late for work, and Melville saying, let him stay in bed if he needs to, and he'll pay for his tardiness if he needs to.And then at the end of the day, when they finally made their way into his bedroom, he was long dead, the gun at his side.Though Delbanco says that we will never know if Melville was a homosexual, it seems to me that the whole Mackie drama doesn't make much sense unless you allow he possibility that the boy killed himself to protect himself from further sexual predation by his father.And that CLAREL, JOHN MARR, and BILLY BUDD were the father's attempts to make sense of the wrong he had done the boy. ... Read more

Book Description
Oh, shipmates and world-mates, all round! we the people suffer many abuses. Our gun-deck is full of complaints. In vain from Lieutenants do we appeal to the Captain; in vain--while on board our world-frigate--to the indefinite Navy Commissioners, so far out of sight aloft. Yet the worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers can not remove them, even if they would. From the last ills no being can save another; therein each man must be his own saviour.Download Description
Oh, shipmates and world-mates, all round! we the people suffer many abuses. Our gun-deck is full of complaints. In vain from Lieutenants do we appeal to the Captain; in vain--while on board our world-frigate--to the indefinite Navy Commissioners, so far out of sight aloft. Yet the worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers can not remove them, even if they would. From the last ills no being can save another; therein each man must be his own saviour. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Harsh Life Aboard a US Navy Ship in the Last Days of Sail
The title, "White Jacket", serves as a double entendre by the author, Herman Melville.He actually sews up a hand-stitched jacket made from white sail cloth and other material, but it is ill-fitting, continually wet, ineffective against the cold, and actually the source of trouble between himself and the crew.So, the white jacket is a suit of his own making that very well brings about his own downfall.In the end, he discards it when he sees himself about to drown.And so, Melville uses this theme to serve as a metaphor for white superiority and the threatening danger of civil war over slavery.

Indeed, Melville experiences effective slavery during his voyage aboard the USS United States (USS Neversink in the book) during its run from the Pacific back to the Atlantic.And like so many black slaves, he and his crewmates suffer the ever-present threat of public lashings for even minor infractions.So, Melville also uses his book as an indictment against a hypocritical system, whereby officers are never wrong and never experience corporal punishment but the enlisted crew remain in perpetual danger of arousing the slightest displeasure of any officer with the ultimate result of a humiliating public lashing. However, no military organization could function effectively if it were a democratic institution; who would ever risk their life in such a case?(Even the early Communists quickly abandoned that principle.)

But the vast majority of the book focuses on the minute details of life aboard a frigate during the age of sail.Several hundred (500?) souls are packed into the space of a single wooden vessel for months on end.How the ship is organized and the rituals of life aboard ship are the mainstay of the book.Melville describes in factual detail the actual work (trimming sails, cleaning decks, etc.), the daily routines (meals on deck, standing watches, playing cards in secret, sleeping in the crew's quarters), the professions (sailor, waistman, quartermaster, boatswain, carpenter, surgeon, captain, commodore, purser, midshipmen, chaplain, pharmacist, cook, cockswain, gunner, and yeoman), the less usual events (floggings, making a port of call, receiving official dignitaries aboard ship, rounding Cape Horn, the order of Neptune initiation rites, rumors of war), and all the underlying social structure and tensions ever-present.

I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone interested in life aboard naval ships in the days of sail.With the rise of modern wireless communication, captains no longer enjoy such an absolute despotism as in times previous, but he still remains the unchallenged master aboard US navy vessels.While much of life aboard ship has changed, probably half of the book would still be quite familiar to modern-day sailors.

Second to one
This book is second only to Moby-Dick in the list of Melville's greatest works. And Melville's greatest works are America's greatest works.

White-Jacket has it all; humor, pathos, poetry and philosophy. This book makes me not only admire Melville the author but love Melville the man.

To suggest that the book would be better off without its "sermons" against cruelty in the Man-of-War's world is to suggest that Melville should have written some other book. He didn't write that book, he wrote this one and this is the one he wanted us to read. God bless him.

Life Within A Total Institution
I read this book after reading Erving Goffman's "Asylums".In that book, Goffman, a sociologist, discusses the rise of "Total Institutions", i.e. institutions that totally control the lives of those within.Melville's "White Jacket" is a book that Goffman often referred to in order to illustrate different aspects of life within the total institution.

The introductory essay to this book discusses White Jacket in relationship to the growing bro-ha-ha over slavery, but I thought the book was much more interesting then that.

What was most suprising to me, having never read Melville before, was how funny some of the chapters were.Episodes involving Surgeon Cuticle amputating the leg of an unwilling seaman recall the funniest moments of television shows like Monty Python or the Simpsons.

Melville's accurate portrayal of life within the "T.I.", reminded me of Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".There, the setting is an insane asylum, here it is a Man O' Wear, but both books deal with the tactics and strategies an individual might employ when faced with an oppressive living environment.

Although I am not sure when, or if, I might try to tackle author's masterpiece 'Moby Dick', I did come away from this book with a profound respect for Melville's capabilities as a writer.I will no longer take for granted his status among the pantheon of American writers.

White-Jacket
I feel quite strange presuming to give a numerical rating to a book by one of American literature's greatest authors.

It's important for readers to realize that White-Jacket is not what would, in the modern day, be considered a novel. There is essentially no plot structure. It's a melange of events, descriptive passages and polemic, narrated by the eponymous White-Jacket, whom I suspect of being Melville himself. At times the book is entertainingly humorous - as when the narrator tries to get rid of his famous jacket. And much of the description of life aboard a man-of-war is fascinating -- the book would make a helpful companion for people reading modern novels such as O'Brian's series. (And, of course, White-Jacket probably was one of the sources used by O'Brian and other aquatic novelists.) The polemic -- Melville's rants against flogging and his pacifist pleas -- I found tiresome, as I always find polemic, regardless of its aims.

Questionable Authority
If you find yourself in a position where the individuals in authority over you are, in the actual state of affairs, your moral inferiors, then on this level alone you will be able to appreciate this book. ... Read more

Book Description

Billy Budd, Sailor and Bartleby, the Scrivener are two of the most revered shorter works of fiction in history. Here, they are collected along with 19 other stories in a beautifully redesigned collection that represents the best short work of an American master.As Warner Berthoff writes in his introduction to this volume, "It is hard to think of a major novelist or storyteller who is not also a first-rate entertainer . . . a master, according to choice, of high comedy, of one or another robust species of expressive humour, or of some special variety of the preposterous, the grotesque, the absurd. And Melville, certainly, is no exception. A kind of vigorous supervisory humour is his natural idiom as a writer, and one particular attraction of his shorter work is the fresh further display it offers of this prime element in his literary character."

Customer Reviews (7)

"I'd prefer not to..."
This book includes one ofmy favorite works by Melville (or anyone, for that matter), "Bartleby The Scrivener". It tells thestory of the document copier (or scrivener) Bartleby asnarratedby his increasingly perplexed, unnamed employer. Unlike Mobey Dick which is so symbolic and philosophical, I gave up on page 13 or so, this story is strangely accessible and contemporary.The alienation that Bartleby feels for his job, his fellow employees, and the narrator is, at once, sad and humorous. Today, when it seemsa job can easily become interchangeable with who we are, the fact that Bartleby is, at first, reluctant to do what's asked of him and later would "prefer not to" do anything at all is a bitter, if accurate, portrayal of the kind of ever-threatening psychosis that nibblesaround the edges of the world of work from time to time, whatever it is we do to make a living.What's the word? Yeah; there's an existential quality to this tale that fits just assecurely in 2007, asit does in the mid-19th century, the story'sactual setting. Like Bartleby, I sometimes find myself fading away before the tasks I am asked to perform on the job; "I would prefer not to..." comes to mind pretty often, but, of course, I push on because at the time it all seems tomean something.And it does....Doesn't it? Melville was on to something.

Ah Bartelby!
This is worth buying if only for the masterpiece that is Bartelby the Scrivener. One of the all time great short stories, it tells the story, narrated by an employer in a Wall Street Law office who finds a peculiar scrivener called Bartelby in his employ.

Bartelby is initially a quiet and efficient copyist, but when asked to undertake extra work, he deflects it with the simple rejoinder 'I would prefer not to.' He repeats this mantra, over and over, calmly and without malice. 'You will not?' thunders his employer in frustration, 'I prefer not,' says Bartelby. And with that simple 'I prefer not', Bartelby strikes a blow on behalf of all the inconspicuous millions who find themselves wasting their lives, their creative human potential, in drab, workaday office jobs, counting down the months of their lives staring at a computer screen, the sterile hum of life passing them by. All the tedium of office life is in Bartelby - anyone who has worked in such an environment will recognise the compulsive snacking, the drab natureless view out the window, the modes and systems of the company affecting the consciousness and behaviour patterns of the staff. Bartelby, simply and effectively, questions all of this with his quiet actions, heading off in another direction from the common herd, unpicking the knot at the end of the string that binds all corporate paperwork together. Hurrah for Bartelby, whose quiet, tragic existence unravells the whole rope, and hurrah for his legacy - for without Bartelby there would be no Camus, there would be no 'Something Happened' by Joseph Heller, no 'And Then we Came to the End' by Joshua Ferris, the masterful debut office novel published this year.

To read Bartelby, to devote a valuable hour of your life to Melville's pioneering existentialist story, is to momentarily glimpse a chink in the darkness, a sense of what might and could be, instead of the living death that a great many people trudge through, like the dead in T.S. Eliot's poem 'The Wasteland', trudging over London Bridge on their way to work.

as always...
a great collection! when it comes to Melville, i usually prefer annotated editions, but, this particular version does not include either 'The Confidence Man' or 'Moby Dick', thus, i believe i will be just fine. If you've already read 'Typee', 'Pierre', or either of the two above mentioned titles, then this collection may just be for you. It's worth it alone just for 'Billy Budd'. My one complaint? The cover artwork depicts ol' Herms to be a distant relative of Leonardo da Vinci, and while ol' Herms was a genius (although not on Leonardo's level), i think Perennial could have offered a better looking picture than the one they chose to use... talk about your old man and the sea...

truth comes in with darkness
This is the beginning of American literature. And these short works I think tell the tale more clearly than that confusing (though still great) big book Moby Dick.Melville wrote from an outsiders perspective and he was an outsider as perhaps all Americans were because we did not yet have an identity as a people. Melville explores our institutions of justice and our ability to comprehend life through them in Billy Budd in the way a foreigner would examine justice and understanding in a land whose logic he was unfamiliar with. He seems to ask "how will our sense of justice be different than France's or England's and therby make us a different nation than theirs?" or even more simply "Is real understanding(of ourselves, or others) ever possible?" Melville is very much the anti-idealist in a work like The Piazza in which one valley dweller imagines existence on the upper slopes to be grander than his own only to travel there one day and be made aware of the opposite. So there is no dreaming colonist in Melville, in him we have a measured study of ourselves as we were in his day, and perhaps still are, a dreaming people,a restless people with only the vaguest notions of what life and its true nature is. The strangest story in this collection is Benito Cereno which is perhaps the work which most defines a democratic nation's uneasy alliance of peoples and points of view. In that work there is no one defining perspective, only differing views of one event that remains disturbingly unclear as all of Melville's worlds are. In Melville we have an author defining what we are or perhaps more importantly what our problems will be in the future. Interesting short works full of that rare kind of insight that does not seem to be trapped in its time but somehow seems to have seen what is to come. There is the idea that a new nation has of itself and a confidence that in the works of Melville is challenged. The mystery in these works is the mystery at the heart of existence and life remains inscrutable even here in this new land with its new ways. In Moby Dick the innocent Ishmael is the only one spared, in Billy Budd(Melville's last tale) the innocent is the one sacrificed. Melville's vision is not a comfortable one. The strange Bartelby,the Scrivener is a tale where personality is consumed by an impersonal system. The story strikes an odd alienated tone which will later be taken up by Kafka and Pynchon and countless others.

THE Collection to buy...
This edition of Melville's short fiction is, I think,
the best...certainly a real bargain at this price.
In this one volume, the reader gets all of Melville's
short fiction -- plus the novella, *Billy Budd, Sailor*
(the Harrison Hayford/Merton M. Sealts, Jr. "definitive"
Reading Text published by the Univ. of Chicago in 1962).
The collection is edited and has an excellent
"Introduction" by Warner Berthoff.
The selections are each preceded by a very informative
"Note" which tells you when the piece first appeared
and in what periodical. Berthoff also supplies in each
"Note" delicious suggestive context insights...which
help the appreciative/analytical/interpretive process
begin to percolate.
The 1st selection is "The Town-Ho's Story" (a
chapter from Melville's novel *Moby-Dick*). But
this chapter was printed in *Harper's New Monthly
Magazine* in October 1851 (according to Berthoff's
"Note")as a portion of a work-in-progress.
The collection presents the pieces in the CHRONOLOGICAL
order of their publication in various magazines.
But it also contains "The Two Temples," which
Berthoff says was rejected for publication. So,
the collection contains all of Melville's "short"
fictional pieces, including prose pieces meant to
accompany poems. These pieces in the collection
include: "The Marquis de Grandvin," "Three 'Jack
Gentian Sketches,'" "John Marr," and "Daniel Orme."
The collection concludes with *Billy Budd, Sailor."
All of the *Piazza Tales* are in this collection
along with "The Piazza " piece, itself.
This is a fine collection. The Northwestern/
Newberry editions of Melville's works are nice,
but expensive. And you would have to get 2
separate volumes to also get the *Billy Budd,
Sailor* which you get included in this one
volume.
However, what the N/N edition of Melville's
prose pieces gives you which this collection by
Berthoff does not (their title is: *The Piazza
Tales and Other Prose Pieces: 1839-1860*)are:
"Fragments from a Writing Desk" (1839),
Melville's inspired essay of idolatry and
insight, "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (17 and 24
Aug. 1850), many other uncollected pieces,
Melville's reconstructed lectures from his
stint as a public speaker/"performer" (Yikes!)
"Statues in Rome," "The South Seas," and
"Traveling." There are also copious notes,
scholarly information, photo facsimiles,
and other helpful items in the N/N edition.
But, unless you are a scholar, a Melville
fanatic, or financially unfrugal, BUY this
edition by Berthoff and published by the
Perennial Library of Harper & Row.
* * * * * * * * * ... Read more

Book Description
Collected in this volume are Bartleby, the Scrivener, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd—presented in the best texts available, those published during Melville's lifetime and corrected by the author. Each text has been carefully edited and annotated for student readers. As his writing reflects, Melville was extraordinarily well read. "Contexts" collects important sources for each novel, including writings by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amasa Delano, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. "Criticism" includes twenty-eight essays about the novels sure to promote classroom discussion. Contributors include Leo Marx, Elizabeth Hardwick, Frederick Busch, Robert Lowell, Herschel Parker, Carolyn L. Karcher, Thomas Mann, and Hannah Arendt. A Selected Bibliography is included.

About the series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Great Volume
This book contains 3 stories: "Bartleby The Scrivener", "Benito Cereno", and "Billy Budd". About a half of the book is "contexts", which are essays about the stories and other texts that shed light on the three stories.

For the scholar, this book is probably the best edition around as far as the "Killer B's" are concerned (Bartleby, Benito, Billy Budd). It contains excellent criticism, and has a neat bibliography which any lit student or scholar will find useful.

As to the stories, well, I have mixed feelings. I absolutely love "Bartleby" and I think it's one of my favourite stories ever. If you are interested by a story which poses the problem of the uncommunicable and inherently hermetic, and of the impossible divisions between humans, that's the fone for you. Considered the ancestor of "absurd literature" by some, by a Christic parable by others, "Bartleby" is of utmost interest in either case.

"Benito Cereno" is a story that I found myself disliking quite a bit. It was as usually wordy as you'd expect Melville to be - which of itself isn't the problem - but the story feels pointless and boring. That is, until you read on, then it gets interesting, but I felt I found that out too late. Also, I readily admit not having given it my best reading time. I got confused and and bored with the style and I had a hard time "seeing" much. So I didn't like this one too much, and whether this is because I poorly read or because of the story, I don't know, and I don't want to read it a second time.

"Billy Budd" is good. I didn't like it as much as "Bartleby", but I liked it a lot more than "Benito". Another tale with an odd character and with Christic aspects. Definitely worth reading.

On the whole, I understand that some readers may find Melville boring; he usually gets that from readers of Moby-Dick, even though that novel is not boring at all (when you know how to read). However, I assume that the usual client of this Norton Critical Edition will have more than "a good time" in mind when considering to purchase it. Although, if you're not a scholar and like to know about the context of the work, then you will definitely have a good time too reading the critical material added to the stories (and more than just critical, you also get Emerson's "The Transcendentalist", which is quite a read). You will not find a better volume containing all three stories. This one has everything you could ask for: notes, additional texts to enlighten your understanding of the stories, and also you will have a joined perception of the three stories as one significant unit, which makes a lot of sense (remember the B's, the fact that each character can be said to be Christic, etc.).

The best edition for those three stories, doubtless.

Three masterpieces in one
In each of these works Melville creates and probes deeply into a complex world of difficult and mysterious human relationships. This is even true in 'Bartleby' the story of the great solitary scrivener who at one point 'prefers not to' do the work he is hired for. The story of Bartleby is the great American parallel to Dostoevsky's 'Notes from the Underground' It is the man who revolts against the urban mass pressing against him to make his own statement of radical individualism and freedom.
'Billy Budd' is a different kind of martyr hero whose innocence and nobility arouse the envy and lust of the cruel Claggart, and whom even the noble Captain Vere is unable to save. 'Benito Cereno' is like Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' a trip into the lower regions of the horror- filled nature of the human soul.
In each of these great tales Humanity is tested and driven to extremes of knowing uncomfortable truths about itself, in language of great literary power and beauty.

borrring
this book was extremely boring. Good story line though. Maybe Melville should have stopped after his bad review of M.D.
Billy Budd has many symbolic meanings but just never could keep my interest. It was as if Melville tried to fit in too much symbolism and did not pay enough attention to the story itself.

great edition here, footnoted text and relevant criticism
This book includes both the text of Melville's short works (Bartleby, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd)-approx 175 pages, and approx 225 pages of contexts (which are just what they sound like, historical background regarding each work, something I find invaluable when reading books written long before I was born) and literary criticism (generally interesting and almost always opened my eyes to new layers of meaning in Melville's writing.)
Invaluable for any reader of 19th century american fiction, college undergrad or grad student.

If you're not a student (I'm not) the background on Melville and his work is incredibly interesting and you will definitely come away with a new understanding of the man, his mind, his writing, and his relevance to all American Fiction. Oh yeah: and it's easy to read, to boot. ... Read more

Book Description
Herman Melville's brilliant works remain vital and provocative for their dark ebullience and visionary power. The sweep of his writings-encompassing ferocious social satire, agonized reflection, and formal experimentation-is represented in this comprehensive edition. Here are Melville's masterpieces: Moby-Dick in its entirety; Billy Budd; "Bartleby, The Scrivener"; "The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles"; the essay "Hawthorne and His Mosses"; and 21 poems, including "The House-top," an anguished response to the New York draft riots. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A good introduction to Melville's works
Although this book should not be called a complete volume, it is rather a collection of Melville's writings, it provides a enjoyable and interesting introduction to one of the most impressive american writers of the 19th century. It contains a real classic -the novel Moby Dick - and some novellas from The Piazza Tales, such as "Bartleby, The Scrivener" (in my opinion, Melville's masterpiece), "Benito Cereno" and "Billy Budd, the Saylor". There is at least a big surprise inside: the essay "Hawthorne and His Mosses", a text from the youth, but full of insights about Melville's friend, Nathanael Hawthorne. A fantastic gift, like most of Library of America editions.

best one-volume melville?
After a lot of browsing among different editions of Melville's works, I chose this one because it was attractive and cheap and contained all of his acknowledged masterpieces. Getting "Moby-Dick," "Billy Budd," and his greatest short stories and poems in one well-made volume, for ($$$) bucks, is indeed a pretty good deal. I wish Library of America would start commissioning some scholarly introductions for their books, though. Their volumes seem to be geared towards intelligent people who are not necessarily experts in a particular field, and it would be useful to provide an introduction that places the works in context and gives a brief idea of the latest scholarship.

There is a "Note on the Texts" here, which is really of interest only to specialists, and a chronology of Melville's life, and some rather random and cursory endnotes: there are only a few pages' worth for "Moby-Dick," for example, which could be annotated much more extensively (and I'm sure it has been). It's unclear why the editors choose to explain some of Melville's allusions but not others. So if you're looking for a well-annotated "Moby-Dick," look elsewhere.

As for the works themselves, there's little I could say about them that hasn't been said a thousand times before. Every one of Melville's lines crackle with dark intensity; his writing is relentless, wild, eccentric, sometimes out of control, but even then it's a pleasure to follow him on his fiery way. His is a kind of uniquely American tragic sense, the dark flip side of Emerson and Whitman's democratic individualism. Ahab, and Bartleby, are supreme individualists, but their uncompromised visions lead to doom rather than liberation.

The Great American Novel
"Moby-Dick" stands out as the great American novel. Billy Budd, written much later, stands as a sober counterpoint. Taken together, Melville's many-layered texts deconstruct western civ (American variety) in the same way that Homer did for the Greeks. From Melville to Madonna-see how we run. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Ernest Hemingway famously declared Huckleberry Finn to be the true font of American prose--and in the case of his own stripped-down stories, he was right. But there's another, more rococo strain in our literature, of which fish fancier Herman Melville would be the undisputed king. So who better to chronicle his life in brief than Elizabeth Hardwick? This deliciously acerbic critic and novelist hasn't, of course, attempted to mimic Melville's language, which often sounds like the sort of thing Shakespeare would have written if he'd been an ichthyologist. But she, too, is the possessor of an eccentric, sometimes shaggy style, and has already written about Melville with rare penetration. Even her opening salvo has an appropriately over-the-top ring to it:

Herman Melville: sound the name and it's to be the romance of the sea, the vast, mysterious waters for which a thousand adjectives cannot suffice. Its mystical vibrations, the great oceans "holy" for the Persians, a deity for the Greeks; forbidden seas, passage to barbarous coasts--a scattering of Melville's words for the urge to know the sparkling waters and their roll-on beauty and, when angry, their powerful, treacherous indifference to the floundering boat and the hapless mariners.

Customer Reviews (12)

Worst Biography of a Major Literary Figure I've Ever Read
This book is appalling.

Consider this: many people find Herman Melville--especially the Melville of "Moby Dick"--to be slow going and difficult to fathom. But in Hardwick's biography, the ONLY passages that are at all lucid are the Melville quoatations. This is, without a doubt, the worst biography I've ever read. Self-indulgent, obscure, boring... it's not really worth my time (or yours) for me to go on.

Read Andrew Delbanco's "Melville" for a much more readable, penetrating insight into the man and his work.

Good reading but not what I bought the book for
The Penguin Lives series has been very good to me.It understands that I don't want to burn all the minutes left in my reading life on dry, styleless steamer trunk sized biographies that beleaguer with minutiae when I want to get acquainted with a historically or artistically significant figure.It also understands that I value good style and original thinking, to avoid a "Cliff's Notes" version of a life.To date it has not disappointed.

That said, I found Elizabeth Hardwick's entry on Herman Melville to not be quite like the others in the series I've read, and it comes down to this:she is really using the occasion to do a critical essay on Melville, not so much a life.In fact, at some point she says, if you want life detail you can get it from reading the exhaustive biographies on him.That she skimps on his life's events can be frustrating when you realize that her treatment is far shorter than most of the Penguin Lives.She could have added 20 - 30 pages and still have been in the series' pagination comfort zone.

That said, I enjoyed the rereading of my favorite Melville books and the introduction to those I'd not read--though be warned: she spoils all the plots.Her rationale for spending far more time on his output than his life is conceptually warranted:here is a man who very much lived in the creation of his books all the while toiling in a small, stressed household filled with extended family.In other words, she is saying the life he led was the books, so that's where she went looking for him.She spends considerable time on the late 20th century theme of his possible homosexuality, the only clues in what is now viewed by some as the employment of homoerotic imagery.However, she refuses to judge and leaves that as a mystery.Ultimately, she says, so much of Melville is "perhaps."

I wish she had spent more time on his life as well as more time on the revival of Melville's reputation in the 1920's and its persistence.I'm not sorry I read this book at all--it is very well written in a fluent, vervy voice--but it wasn't what I'd hoped it to be.

Modernized and Reads Like a 6th Grader's Book Report
I have always been interested in the man behind Moby Dick, one of the great works of literature, but this book gives very little insight into the man and more info about the various books he authored.If you want to know who Melville really was, skip this very limited biography and move to one that is better written and delves deeper into the life of this great author.

Mediocre Biography
Having neither reading anything on or by Herman Melville, I found this book suitably interesting to whet my appitite for more; but overall, the narrative was not that great; Hardwick's writing is somewhat tedious and hampered by her apparent lack of expertise on the subject.

If you want to learn about Melville, skip this one!
Heard the taped version of HERMAN MELVILLE by Karen
White and was most disappointed in it . . . I wanted to learn
more about the life of Melville, but instead, found out very
little about him . . . instead, I got brief summaries of several
of his books . . . and rather than encourage me to reread some
of them (and read others for the first time), if anything, this
short volume discouraged me from doing that . . . the author
even suggests that few of his books would be worth reading

today . . . I usually love biographies, but not this one! ... Read more

Book Description
Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews reprints virtually all the known contemporary reviews of his writings from the 1840s until his death in 1891.Many of the reviews are reprinted from hard-to-locate contemporary newspapers and periodicals.These materials document the response of the reviewers to specific works and show the course of Melville's nineteenth century reputation as travel writer, romancer, short-story writer, and poet. ... Read more

Book Description
Contrary to popular belief, Stanton Garner contends, Herman Melville was not intellectually and emotionally detached from the war. In actuality, Melville brooded over the war's enormous brutality and destructive power. At the same time, his passion for writing, which had suffered greatly in the wake of his grand failures of the 1850s, revived. With renewed purpose, Melville saw an opportunity to establish himself as the prophet--poet of a rededicated America. The vehicle for this ambitious, and ultimately unfulfilled, enterprise was to be Battle-Pieces, an epically conceived book of poems that chronicles the war from John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry through Lincoln's assassination.

Drawing upon previously unknown or neglected archival sources, Garner places Melville's experience within the larger contexts of his extended family, social circles, political beliefs, travels, and reading. He establishes Melville's position in the rift among major Northern writers in which Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and Whittier were on one side and Melville, Hawthorne, and--to some extent--Whitman were on the other.

By delving into the complexities and apparent contradictions of Melville's personal life, Garner reveals why a man who was diametrically opposed to slavery refused to side with the abolitionists and maintained the anti-administration attitude predominant in his Democratic family while supporting the Union war effort. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Great Civil War Book and a Great Herman Melville Book
This book has been wonderful company to me both at home and while travelling.If you are absorbed by the Civil War and Herman Melville, you will love "The Civil War World of Herman Melville" down to your toes.Best of all, no matter how well you think you know Melville or the Civil War, you will learn something you didn't know before. The book is an almost day-to-day journey through the war from the home front to the battle front with a family that just happens to be that of America's greatest writer. I love this book without having been fully convinced by Mr. Garner's views on the value of Melville's war poems, and while disagreeing with his harsh judgement of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.I do agree with the above reviewer who advises having a copy of "Battle Pieces" on hand as a pleasure enhancer.

Aspects of Melville
Stanton Garner details a day by day chronology of Melville's activities during the Civil War and links them to Melville's first published book of poetry, _Battle Pieces: Aspects of the War_.Garner's prose is elegant,his sources are thoroughly documented, and his insights into Melville's artare incisive and illuminating.Readers interested in the Civil War mayfind much of interest pertaining to daily life in northern communities, butthis book is not about the War as much as it is about Melville and _BattlePieces_.

_Battle Pieces_ has been dismissed by some critics as acollection of poorly executed war poems by a failed writer past his prime,but Garner shows us how Melville exercises his prodigious creative talentto build a literary work unlike any contemporary product in the style ofits poems and in its substantive treatment of a complex subject.Byplacing the poems in their historic context and linking them to thefamily's political views (conservative Democrats disposed toward support ofthe McClellan candidacy etc.), we gain insight into many otherwise hiddenassociations.

Garner's chronology begins with Melville's 1859 voyage toSan Francisco aboard his brother's ship _The Meteor_ and continues untiljust after the publication of _Battle Pieces_ in 1866.Among the moreinteresting episodes is Melville's visit to the front during the latewinter of 1864 to see his cousin, Lt. Henry Gansevoort.This leads to anevening's audience with General Grant, where we imagine Melville gainingvaluable material for his work.The next day, he joins an expedition oftroops scouting for Moseby's men during which he is directly exposed to thedangers of war.

Some prospective readers may be tempted to wait for thepublication of Hershel Parker's second volume of _Herman Melville: ABiography_.Parker's work, written in much the same style,will have thebenefit of Parker's decades of experience updating the Melville Log, so wecan expect additional biographical detail.But Garner's insights intoMelville's literary work give _Civil War Years_ enduring value worthy of aseparate volume.

While Garner provides pertinent excerpts of Melville'spoems as he discusses them, readers will want a copy of _Battle Pieces_near them as they read. ... Read more

Book Description
By some strange arts, Isabel's wonderful story might have been, some way, and for some cause, forged for her, in her childhood, and craftily impressed upon her youthful mind; which so--like a slight mark in a young tree--and now enlargingly grown with her growth, till it had become this immense staring marvel. Tested by any thing real, practical, and reasonable, what less probable, for instance, than that fancied crossing of the sea in her childhood, when upon Pierre's subsequent questioning of her, she did not even know that the sea was salt.Download Description
By some strange arts, Isabel's wonderful story might have been, some way, and for some cause, forged for her, in her childhood, and craftily impressed upon her youthful mind; which so--like a slight mark in a young tree--and now enlargingly grown with her growth, till it had become this immense staring marvel. Tested by any thing real, practical, and reasonable, what less probable, for instance, than that fancied crossing of the sea in her childhood, when upon Pierre's subsequent questioning of her, she did not even know that the sea was salt. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Ambiguities indeed!
I found this to be a much better Book Club selection than just a classic read.It is the tragic story of a young man who is naive in the world and his life quickly dissipates into ruin.Herman Melville published this novel a year after Moby Dick.I would not necessarily recommend it, but I thought it was an interesting work, especially if you are interested in the career of Melville.

Rich Chocolaty Goodness
The thing about Bartleby, the Scrivener is that it makes you want to read everything else Melville wrote. Right now I'm about half way through Pierre; or, The Ambiguities and think it an immensely satisfying layer cake so far. When I'm finished I hope to go fishing. Apropos of which, great bolshy yarblockos to Clifton Fadiman, who wrote the following paragraph in an introduction to Moby Dick round about 1941:

"A pessimism as profound as Melville's, if not pathological--and his was not--can exist only in a man who, whatever his gifts, does not posess that of humor. There is much pessimism in Shakespeare but with it goes a certain sweetness, a kind of radiance. His bad men--Macbeth, Iago--may be irretrievable, but the world itself is not irretrievable. This sense of balance comes from the fact that Shakespeare has humor, even in the plays of the later period. Melville had none. For proof, reread Chapter 100, a labored, shrill, and inept attempt at laughter. Perhaps I should qualify these strictures, for there is a kind of vast, grinning, unjolly, sardonic humor in him at times--Ishmael's first encounter with Queequeg is an example. But this humor is bilious, not sanguine, and has no power to uplift the heart."

Is it me or is this just a bit too saucy and overbold? Fadiman was a noted intellectual but was obviously unafraid of making a right eejit of himself--can you beat the blinkered quality of his indictment? Talk about a blind spot! That's the trouble with introductions to novels, they're right there in front, always getting in your way, distracting you with their gibberish. Luckily there's no introduction in my copy of Pierre so I was able to proceed directly to the first page unmolested. The story of Pierre Glendinning is straightforward enough but it unfolds amid a vast and stunningly considered narration that is for me the novel's chief delight. Here's what strikes me at this point: Melville swallowed with obvious relish the Classics, the King James Version of the Bible and most of Shakespeare and then brung them all back up again in a glorious nineteenth-century American amalgam. I'm practically certain that this is some of the most capaciously vivid and readable English I have ever encountered, the type of prose D. H. Lawrence wished he could type but was too blotto with hormones to actually type coherently on his typewriter. Forget everything you've ever read or heard about this novel--the critical response since its first appearance in 1852 has been for the most part laughably inept and spineless--and just start right in. Believe me, if you're a certain type of reader you will be well pleased. Would it help if I told you that the manservant in Saddle-Meadows is named Dates? Or the local clergyman Falsgrave? Perhaps not. Getting back to Bartleby though for a minute, what a peach that is. Funny and poignant and mysterious. When I finished it a couple of weeks ago I went out on my bicycle and did a victory lap round the neighbourhood, sealing my exultant passage with a cigarette which I actually smoked while awheel. Bliss that was. When you smoke on a bicycle the whole world is your ashtray!

Adultery, incest, madness, murder, and suicide--all in "a narrative nervous breakdown"
"Pierre" is perhaps Melville's most difficult and challenging novel--and that's saying something. Despairing over his inability to support his family, Melville began writing a book designed to be popular--a counterpoint to the sensational novels written and read by contemporary women, using inspiration from French romances and even from Hawthorne's novels. Wavering between psychological melodrama and social satire, Melville ultimately increased the book's length by half again, incorporating his rage against the literary world by adding a subplot about a young man's desperate struggle to become a writer.

The stumbling point for most readers is the novel's opaque prose, the "thees and thous" of its antiquated dialogue, and the labyrinthine hodgepodge of a plot. But the density is broken by colloquial asides, sparkling sarcasm, and an occasional passage that approaches Dickensian mirth, such as Melville's description of the "Preposterous Mrs. Tartan!" and her undercover attempts to play matchmaker between Pierre and her daughter: "Once, and only once, had a dim suspicion passed through Pierre's mind, that Mrs. Tartan was a lady thimble-rigger, and slyly rolled the pea."

Behind the mask of the prose, however, is a modernist--even scandalous--story of a young, somewhat deluded man whose nihilistic descent leads to his destruction. Engaged to Lucy Tartan, Pierre adores his mother (their make-believe brother-sister relationship is almost creepy in its amorous undertones) and worships the memory of his long-dead father. This idyllic world is shattered by a missive from a woman, Isabel, who claims to be his half-sister--a claim supported by a more-than-passing resemblance to a portrait of his father. Complicating matters are his romantic feelings for this alleged half-sister.

Convincing himself that he is choosing honor over duty, he breaks off his engagement and flees to Manhattan with Isabel, taking along a local woman who had been disgraced by an out-of-wedlock tryst. Disowned by his mother and cut off from his family fortune, Pierre finds shelter for this odd trio among bohemian neighbors in a dilapidated part of town. His finances slowly evaporating, Pierre struggles to support them by writing a novel. And then, just when the plot can barely handle another twist, his estranged fiancee Lucy shows up at their doorstep.

To go any further would spoil the fun for the reader. Yet even such a basic plot summary omits some memorable and extraordinary scenes and sketches: his first meeting with Isabel, the near-riot that greets them during their first night in Manhattan, the eccentric philosopher who refuses to put his scholarly brilliance into written form.

Adultery, incest, madness, murder, and suicide--all the ingredients of a bleak nineteenth-century melodrama are wrapped in archaic language and modern themes. In her life of Melville, Robertson-Lorant calls "Pierre" "a narrative nervous breakdown" that is a "minefield" for biographers. It's also a goldmine; in no other work does Melville more clearly ridicule his critics, his friends and family, and even himself. The weird universe of "Pierre" is not the place to start if you've never read Melville, but it's certainly where you should go if you want better to understand his life and works.

A mild disclaimer " I didn't get it"
This complicated,work so full of ambiguity and difficulty in language and style is one I have found almost unreadable. The broad spaces and the great ranging adventurous mind of Melville in Moby Dick(The work which preceded this and in which all of Melville's writing climaxed) is followed by a claustrophic, domestic drama which seems to go nowhere.
My sense many other people have a more generous attitude towards this work, than I do and understand it more deeply.
As my old high- school Physics teacher Dave Levenstein ( of blessed memory) said when asked about the Theory of Relativitiy-
"I read some of that Einstein stuff and I just didn't get it."In regard to 'Pierre" I too "just didn't get it."

Melville's Wrong Turn
Ah, Pierre, you lusty Frenchman, where do you go wrong? Actually the main character Pierre is an American in the early 19th century who is well-off leading an easy life, until suddenly a mysterious woman crosses his path, who happens to be his sister, that he has rather strong feelings for, not to mention the creepy way he calls his mother sister in the early part of the book. Overly dramatic, it reads as if Melville made it up as he wrote, since so many crucial facts and events are suddenly mentioned with no foreshadowing or even hint of them. It does have a brief amusing chapter that attacks critics as people who praise medicore writers that risk nothing. Melville desperately wants Pierre to be like Shakespeare's Hamlet, butt alas, Pierre is much too flat and shallow for that. Aside from Melville Scholars, this novel isn't worth serious reading and skimming a few chapters would demonstrate it's many problems. Go for "Moby-Dick" or "Bartleby the Scrivner" for a real sense of Melville's writing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Cryptic short-thought journals...excellent scholarly backup.
These journals present one of the few areas (for me)
in which Melville is less than he might be, but the
scholarly backup provided by the main editor for
this volume, Howard C. Horsford, ably assisted by
Lynn Horth, G. Thomas Tanselle, Harrison Hayford,
and Alma A. MacDougall fills out the volume with
a wealth of "Discussions" (notes to mentioned items
in the texts of the journals -- these notes go from
page 250 to page 542), "Textual Notes" (not very
interesting except to persons interested in the
picayune details of Melville's underlinings,
spellings, cross-outs, etc.), -- but then, the
editors supply a section titled "Melville's
Agricultural Tour Memorandum (1850)", "Melville's
Notes in Hawthorne's _Mosses_ [From An Old Manse],
and "Melville Abroad: Further Records (1849-1860)".
Many of the "Discussions" items are very interesting
and informative, but the excellent additions are the
drawings, photos, and photo-copies which enrich
the text and the references.There is a photo
of the 5 manuscript notebooks used for his journals
on p. 210 of this volume; there is a photo of
Melville and his youngest brother Thomas, captain of
the ship _Meteor_ on p. 196; there are also maps
such as the one on p. 248 of Melville's European
Route 1849-1850, Melville's Mediterranean Route
1856-1857 on p. 380.
The drawings in the volume are very interesting
and fine.There are personal drawings and photocopies
of personal letter entries that show the "human" side
of Melville and his family.On p. 642 there is
Melville's own drawing of his home and fields at
"Arrowhead" (outside of Pittsfield, Mass.); there
is a photo of Melville's children on p. 637 --
frail, thin looking Stanwix, Malcolm looking off
into the distance, and Elizabeth looking glumly
at the camera.It follows a chilling (from the
apparent lack of warmth, but maybe only from the
inability to express it to his own children) letter
which Melville wrote to his son Malcolm while on
his Pacific voyage of 1860.Here is an excerpt
from that letter on pp. 636-637: "I hope that you
have been obedient to your mother, and helped her
all you could, & saved her trouble.Now is the
time to show what you are -- whether you are a good,
honorable boy, or a good-for-nothing one.Any boy,
of your age, who disobeys his mother, or worries her,
or is disrespectful to her -- such a boy is a poor
shabby fellow; and if you know any such boys, you ought
to cut their acquaintance."Knowing that this son
Malcolm committed suicide several years later,
at home, in his bedroom, gives this letter a chilling
bit of resonant context.
The journals included in this volume are: "Journal
of a Voyage from New York to London 1849," "Journal
1856-1857" (of his trip to Glasgow, to Liverpool -- where
he had that most interesting meeting with Hawthorne
and the resulting walk and talk in the sand dunes;
to Constantinople, to Alexandria and Cairo, then
to Jaffa, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea (from which he
would later write _Clarel_), to Athens, to Sicily,
to Naples, to Rome, to Florence, to Venice, Milan,
Turin, Genoa, Berne, Strasbourgh, Heidelburgh,
Frankfort, Cologne, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and
London, and a trip to Oxford ("Most interesting spot
I have seen in England.Made tour of all colleges.
It was here I first confessed with gratitude my
mother land, & hailed her with pride. *** Soul &
body equally cared for. *** I know nothing more
fitted by mild & beautiful rebuke to chastise the
ranting of Yankees."), Stratford, Warwick, and back
to Liverpool. The final Journal is the one of 1860,
"kept on board ship "Meteor" ...From Boston to
San Francisco."
Some of Melville's notes are brief and cryptic,
and one is at loss to know what appears to be a
personal, secretive note to jog his memory at some
later time.Some of the drawings included which I
found interesting were of the Hotel de Cluny,
Ehrenbreitstein, a full image photo of the statue
of Antinous at the Capitoline Museum ("G.S. Hillard
described the Antinous as 'not merely beautiful' but
'beauty itself' --from note on p. 465), the relief
of Antinous at the Villa Albani, the Athena at the
Villa ALbani.
What surprises one from the journals is an awareness
of how much walking, smoking of cigars, and drinking of
various kinds of alcoholic beverages Melville did on
his trips.But then there are also the interesting
people he met such as the young man he dined with
who gave him a flower. Melville was also a lover of
opera, good food in cheap restaurants, and a grumbler
about hotels with crawly critters in the bed clothes.
All in all this is interesting country to travel
through, but more from what its suggests and causes
the imagination to mull over rather than the fully
written text about his travels.Like many, perhaps,
the experience was the thing to be treasured and
remembered, rather than to be rendered into a fully
articulated prose recounting as a creative work itself
(such as Thoreau's journals, or Hawthone's notebooks). ... Read more

Book Description
In a series of 35 original essays, this Companion demonstrates the relevance of Melville’s works in the twenty-first century.

Book Description
Herman Melville is one of the most challenging authors of American literature. Known primarily as the author of Moby-Dick, he wrote several other novels, short stories, and poems. With the rise of interest in Melville in the 20th century, critical and biographical studies of Melville continue to be published at an ever-increasing rate. This encyclopedia is a comprehensive guide to Melville's rich and complex literary career. The volume includes several hundred alphabetically arranged entries for all of Melville's works and characters, and for his family members, friends, and acquaintances. Entries on the most important topics include bibliographies. The encyclopedia is more factual than critical, but scholarship from 1990 and beyond is emphasized throughout. The book also gives special attention to the 19th-century women who influenced Melville, for these women have often been overlooked. A chronology overviews the principal events in Melville's life, and a selected bibliography lists major studies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Fresh Approach to the Great White
In his first book, Shawn Thomson brings to Moby-Dick something that is hard to bring to a 19th century canonical work -- a fresh angle on the text. By situating his discussion of romanticism and Melville within the context of the period's architecture, Thomson brings an invigorating approach to the novel. As an Americanist who teaches Moby-Dick at a liberal arts college, I found myself poring over Thomson's words again and again. This book, with its in-depth exploration of such architectural images as the "marble steeple" of the whale's tail, provides one more springboard to help students connect fiction to other disciplines. ... Read more

Book Description
This unique introduction explores Herman Melville as he described himself in Billy Budd-"a writer whom few know." Moving beyond the recurring depiction of Melville as the famous author of Moby-Dick, this book traces his development as a writer while providing the basic tools for successful critical reading of his novels.

• Offers a brief introduction to Melville, covering all his major works
  
• Showcases Melville's writing process through his correspondence with Nathaniel Hawthorne
  
• Provides a clear sense of Melville's major themes and preoccupations
  
• Focuses on Typee, Moby-Dick, and Billy Budd in individual chapters
  
• Includes a biography, summary of key works, interpretation, commentary, and an extensive bibliography.

Amazon.com
Herman Melville's goal as an author was to become one of the "thought-divers that have been diving and coming up again with bloodshot eyes since the world began." The source of this rather melodramatic approach to the art and craft of writing was a life that encompassed the whaling era and the Civil War and included time spent in Polynesia, where he was flogged, fled from cannibals, joined a mutiny, and frolicked with naked islanders. The result was a body of work that ranged from popular fiction (Typee) to the dreadful gothic romance (Pierre) to the classic Moby Dick. Working with 500 family letters found in 1983, Laurie Robertson-Lorant provides a compelling, multifaceted portrait of one of America's most intriguing literary figures.Book Description
With energetic prose and a gift for relating colorful detail, Laurie Robertson-Lorant presents a richly written biography of Herman Melville, whose life of adventure, struggle, and moral conflict mirrored the themes in his writing, including his masterpiece of world literature, Moby Dick. 40 illustrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

The best Melville biography currently available
Unlike Hershel Parker's, Laurie Robertson-Lorant's Melville biography provides a brilliant historical narrative that shows the broad sweep of 19th-century American history, giving a vivid picture of all the issues which Melville addresses in his fiction and poetry. Since it also is an insightful critique of each of Melville's writings, Dr. Robertson-Lorant's Melville biography should be on the bookshelves ofall students and lovers of American literature, history and biography.

Best Melville biography currently available
Unlike Hershel Parker's, Laurie Robertson-Lorant's Melville biography provides a brilliant historical narrative that shows the broad sweep of 19th-century American history,giving a vivid picture of all the issues which Melville addresses in his fiction and poetry.Since it also is an insightful critique of each of Melville's writings, Dr. Robertson-Lorant's Melville biography should be on the bookshelves of all students and lovers of American literature, history and biography.

Horrible
Laurie Robertson-Lorant's one-volume biography of Herman Melville is stunningly bad.In fact, it just may be the worst piece of historical writing I've ever come across.

This book was listed as "suggested reading" for a class I took on Moby Dick at Stanford University, which celebrated the 150th anniversary of that American classic.In fairness to the professor, he cautioned that he had not read "Melville" himself and strongly recommended the lengthy two-volume biography by Hershel Parker for those seriously interested in the life and times of the author.Relative brevity, it seems, is this book's only virtue.

Robertson-Lorant is a high school teacher and one can't help but wonder if one of her students actually wrote this book - and not a very talented one at that.The writing is tendentious, the footnoting extremely sloppy, and the structure jagged and disjointed.Not only is the style bad; the author also consistently manages to foul up some of the most basic details of American history, such as the roots of the term "Barnburner" and the circumstances behind the outbreak of the Mexican-American War, to name just a very few.

Undoubtedly, Herman Melville is one of the more interesting 19th century American novelists.His early adventures traveling the world on a Navy ship and whaler is fascinating, and the story of his early success and fame with "Typee" and his long, slow decline into frustrating obscurity thereafter is poignant and tragic. One thing is for certain: his life deserves better treatment than this.

Excellent reading aboutMelville and his works
This is the best Melville Biography currently available. It is not only well researched and presented, but also and this is very important especially in literary biographies, quite readable and accessible, especially when compared to the ponderous effort by Hershel Parker. The biography is also well-balanced presenting informative chapters from throughout Melville's life. This must have been quite difficult to do, especially for Melville's later years, as there are few primary sources available. The information about Meville's often eccentric and tragic family and family life is also most interesting adding breadth. While other Melville biographers have concentrated too much on the interpretation of "Moby-Dick", often offering nothing new, Robertson-Lorant gives the reader relevant information on all of Melvile's work, including his for many readers little known poetry. When interpretations are given, for "Moby-Dick" for example, they are on the mark. Here she makes an intertesting comparison between the three mates (Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask) and the three harpooners (Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo) in which the three "savages" become more "noble" than their white ships' officers. The biography concludes with an interesting analysis of Melville's sexuality. On the down side, there are some errors. For example, on the Civil War the contentions that Lee was surrounded at Gettysburg, or that one third of the participants on both sides were killed, (p.453) are just plain wrong. Luckily other errors are not so common as to detract the reader. In conclusion, I recommend this biography highly. It is accessible to both leisurly readers and persons knowledgable about Melville and his works. It is also reasonably priced.

A brilliant, sensitive life of America's finest writer.
With extraordinary skill, brilliance, and sensitivity, Laurie Robertson-Lorant gives us the one-volume life of Herman Melville we've always needed.She ably mixes extensive research in the primary sources (including the recently discovered Gansevoort-Lansing family papers now held by The New York Public Library) with close and attentive reading of Melville's works and the contemporary reactions to them.In addition, nearly always steering clear of the clanky jargon of modern literary criticism, she nonetheless draws on cutting-edge work in that field, in particular the insights of feminist literary criticism, to illuminate our understanding of this remarkable figure who was arguably America's finest writer.Readers should devote special attention to Robertson-Lorant's superb appendix on Melville's sexuality, which is a model of how a modern biographer should address such controversial and frequently-trivialized issues.

If I have one complaint, it is that Robertson-Lorant is shaky on legal contexts, both of Melville's father-in-law, the noted Massachusets jurist Lemuel Shaw, and of the writer's final work, BILLY BUDD, SAILOR.I wish in particular that Robertson-Lorant had used some of the cutting-edge scholarship in the field of Law & Literature, in particular Richard Weisberg's fine book THE FAILURE OF THE WORD:THE LAWYER AS PROTAGONIST IN MODERN FICTION (Yale University Press, rev. ed. 1989).BILLY BUDD, SAILOR is a central work for this field, and arguments over Melville's intentions continue to rage on -- but they appear only fleetingly and tangentially in Robertson-Lorant's pages.

But these quibbles are comparatively minor.Laurie Robertson-Lorant's biography should be *the* biography of choice for anyone interested in Herman Melville's life and work.(It is far more accessible, nuanced, and lucidly argued than is Hershel Parker's long-awaited, mammoth two-volume life now in progress; Volume I is little better than a pile of facts heaped together.)

-- Richard B. Bernstein Adju! nct Professor of Law, New York Law School; Daniel M. Lyons Visiting Professor in American History, Brooklyn College/CUNY (1997-1998); Book Review Editor for Constitutional Books, H-LAW; Senior Research Fellow, Council on Citizenship Education, Russell Sage College ... Read more