Herman Melville - Mardi (1849)

After the successful one-two punch of his first books (Typee and Omoo), Melville took a little more time to produce his next novel. In the interim, he got married and contributed to journals (he wrote 'Hawthorne and His Mosses' at this time). Unfortunately, when released, Mardi was such a complete critical and financial failure that it single-handedly destroyed his newly-won success as a writer. Melville never recovered his audience after Mardi and, after reading this fiasco, it's not hard to see why.

Mardi actually starts off very well as a third episode in Melville's South Seas adventures, picking up where Omoo left off. However, the plot is much tighter than in Omoo and far more interesting. In fact, for the first fifth of the book, Melville's definitely bringing his A-game. There is some grandiose phrasing unlike his typically crisp style, but it doesn't detract much. At first.

About a fifth of the way into Mardi though, after the characters melodramatically rescue a girl named Yillah from some island priests, the plot collapses. Several chapters ensue that are, quite frankly, pale retreads of the 'island life among the savages' stuff that Melville did much better in his two previous novels. Then Yillah, who has become the main character's squeeze for no apparent reason, disappears. Unfortunately, since Melville never made her anything more than a two-dimensional presence, I really didn't care about her or the narrator's feelings for her. This left me uninterested as a reader, and effectively diffused Melville's plot. Incidentally, for those who debate about Melville's sexuality, his descriptions of Yillah are absolute proof he was gay - especially when you compare these tepid platitudes with the homoerotic, head-over-heels rhapsodies he pens for Jarl ('his Viking'). It's pretty clear who he thought was yummy! But I digress.

Not only did the plot collapse, but it was also at this point that Melville's writing turns into amateur, pretentious crap. His prose is slathered with endless mythological allusions and stilted language that strangles his narrative flow and renders anything he is trying to say laughable. He describes Yillah's beauty: 'Of her beauty I say nothing. It was that of a crystal lake in a fathomless wood.' How vague, trite, and random is that? Then there's: 'For oh, Yillah; were you not the earthly semblance of that sweet vision, that haunted my earliest thoughts?' There's page after page of this hoity-toity phrasing, and no viable plot to help you look past it. Much of Mardi, in fact, is directionless, unrelated ramblings sewn together like Frankenstein's monster.

A great example of how overgrown Melville's prose had become while he was writing Mardi is in the chapter 'Mardi by Night and Yillah by Day'. The core of this chapter is Melville's beautiful panoramic word painting of the Mardi islands at night, and the poignant emotions such a scene stirs in him. However, the brief description and his emotions are buried within a two page 'chapter' of stilted writing, overwrought metaphor and simile, and adolescent histrionics.

You want stilted writing? How about: 'obeying a restless impulse, I stole without into the magical starlight' or 'but how your mild effulgence stings the boding heart.' You want histrionics? How about: 'Am I a murderer, stars?' Or try out this little gem (and try not to laugh): 'Oh stars! oh eyes, that see me, wheresoe'er I roam...tell me Sybils, what I am.' Melville groupies - judging from some reviews of this book I've read - are able to excuse anything from the man who wrote Moby Dick. I'm sure Melville had high aspirations for this book, but that really doesn't excuse anything. Mardi is pompous, sentimental writing that would have made the stereotypical 'lady novelist' pull out her editing pen. Coming from Melville, it's just embarrassing and I felt bad for him.

Unfortunately there's more. Throughout Mardi, Melville layers on bombastic (and oftentimes trite) metaphors and similes like a baker using super sugary icing to cover up that his cake isn't all that good. In the brief two page chapter noted above, Melville references Saturn, Indian wigwams, waterfalls, Greek mythology (two or three times), gnomes, and elves sailing on nautilus shells - all in ONE paragraph! This is awful writing however you spin it and, after a dozen chapters like this with no plot or coherent thematic thread, I'd had it!

In short, Mardi is unreadable. I am not surprised it was a flop in Melville's time, nor that it single-handedly finished him with the reading public and the critics. Melville realized his error, as well, for his next book - Redburn - was a return to the pseudo-autobiographical approach he had used with Typee and Omoo. Published less than a year after Mardi, it was obviously an attempt to sweep the failure of Mardi under the rug and recapture Melville's public. Unfortunately, the damage was too great and Melville was ignored for the rest of his life. This meant there was no one paying much (if any) attention when he produced a masterpiece in Moby Dick.

Although some empty-headed academics may worship anything the author of Moby Dick wrote, the objective truth is that Mardi is every bit the debacle it is usually painted as, and only Melville's name on the cover keeps it in print. Consider yourself warned!