'Herman Melville Crazy'

Okay, I have officially fallen short in my goal in reading all of Herman Melville's novels in the order they were written in. The truth is that I have found Melville's novels - for the most part - deserve the praise or scorn that they have earned over the years. Since his novels after Moby Dick are largely ignored (as they were at the time he published them), I'm not really motivated to read them.

Still, 6 out of 9 (I'm not counting Billy Budd as a novel) is not bad. The ones I didn't get to are Pierre (infamously panned in an article titled 'Herman Melville Crazy'), Israel Potter, and The Confidence-Man. The only other work of his that I have read was one of his short stories (Bartleby, the Scrivener). It was an interesting piece that was almost proto-modern in its style and the depiction of the title character.

So long for now Hermy. But life twists and turns, so maybe I will return to you someday and finish what I started.

Herman Melville - Moby-Dick (1851)

It took me a while this time around, but I've finally finished Moby-Dick. This is my third time reading it, and I'm probably going to need a couple entries to deal with it.

Anyway, I am now six novels deep into my attempt to read all of Herman Melville's novels in the order they were written. The scourge of high school students everywhere, Moby-Dick is probably one of the most written about and discussed books in world literature (certainly US literature). It's certainly the novel upon which Melville's reputation largely rests. So let's start unpacking what I think about this monolith.

First things first. My issue with Moby-Dick has always been my uncertainty as to whether the thematic depth of the novel is truly the result of careful and ambitious craftsmanship on Melville's part, revealing his absolute genius; or is it that the book was never quite 'finished' and that this patchy product ends up opening a lot of tantalizing doors that ultimately lead nowhere and add up to nothing, creating a thematic hall of mirrors for the reader to painstakingly make sense of. I'm not saying the book has nothing to say or is devoid of a theme (I think it has a very clear theme). However, I believe there is a lot of 'junk' - for lack of a better word - Melville left lying around or included for no particularly good reason. These red herrings and dead-ends are, at minimum, annoying and, at worst, make you question whether the book - and Melville - really deserve the accolades they have received.

From Melville's statements at the time and his reactions to meeting Nathaniel Hawthorne, it's pretty clear he was trying to craft something deeper in Moby-Dick than he felt he had done in his two prior novels (Redburn and White-Jacket). Since his last overt attempt at something 'artistic' was a hideously pretentious mess (Mardi), no one should be blamed for approaching Moby-Dick with scepticism (regardless of the hype).

Moby-Dick starts off as Melville's most atmospheric work to date. The story of Ishmael, who seems very much like the main character in Redburn in terms of situation, seeks out a whaling ship and comes upon the Pequod. Everything about his arrival in town and what he does there is full of drear foreshadowing. Humor, as well as Melville's always bracing narratives about sailors and the sea, breaks up the mood at times, but you never get away from the sense that something mysterious and dark is lurking under the surface. There are paintings that vaguely display destruction at sea, eulogies for dead seamen, warnings from madmen, dark shadowy figures on the Pequod. The mood Melville weaves is a spellbinding additional layer to his traditional storytelling, and is so well done that you clearly feel you are in the presence of a great writer.

Part of this beginning includes the much discussed two-men-in-a-bed scene between Ishmael and Queequeg. While I'm the first to argue that Melville was at least bi, I think people make far too much of this scene. Sure it's homoerotic, but there are other passages in Melville's writing that far more convincingly suggest the direction of his sexuality and that he was trying to communicate under the radar to any reader who could pick up on gay code. Anyway, now that the elephant in the middle of that room is dealt with, let's move on. The main purpose of Queequeg, in my mind, is an extension of Melville's theme of civilization versus 'the natural man'. Since Queequeg is a non-character once the Pequod goes to sea, I think it's safe to say that's where he begins and ends. Again, this an example of Melville starting something and then going nowhere with it both in terms of characterization and theme. What was the point of developing Queequeg as a character in such detail only to completely ignore him for the remaining two-thirds to three-quarters of the book?

For all this, Moby-Dick initially moves pretty well. At the same time, you can pick up Melville's theme starting to take shape like an evil fog just at the edge of your field of vision. This heightens the dread to a sharp edge. However, about 24 chapters into Moby-Dick, the Pequod sails. At this point, Melville shifts tone, focus, drops his storyline, and even kicks his structure to the curb as he enters into dozens of chapters that may or may not have anything to do with anything.

He has several opinion pieces (e.g., C.24 'The Advocate'). Some of them are interesting, of course, but others (C.32 'Cetology') are excessive and stultifying drab. There's a few chapters introducing the remaining main characters: Starbuck, Daggoo, Stubb, Tashtego, Flask, and ultimately Ahab. But Melville only gets back to his story around C.36 ('The Quarter-Deck') with Ahab's ever famous speech of intent to hunt the White Whale because the whale took off his leg. It's clear Ahab hasn't got both oars in the water (like my nautical imagery?) but most of the crew goes along gleefully with his vendetta which is sealed with an almost demonic religious rite, of a consecration. It's a very powerful scene that deserves its hallowed place in literary history.

Then you kiss the story goodbye for the bulk of the book. There's loads of Melville's little vignettes of seafaring and his pompously penned airy-fairy musings on...whatever. Frustratingly, for the reader, some of these chapters contain little glimmers of symbolism, and you think "Okay he's got a point in here I guess." For example, at the end of C.35 ('The Mast-Head'), there is a dark warning to those who meditate too deeply on one idea, as it may lead to their destruction. This warning fits the tone of the early chapters and seems to build into the theme of seeking, which we know will take it's most complete shape in Ahab chasing his White Whale. But too often these passages lead nowhere. They do not connect to the thread of the story or theme in any way and, as a result, they strongly suggest Melville was either a very poor editor or was just not in control of his material (and possibly both).

It's not until nearly a hundred chapters go by (in the vicinity of C.119 'The Candles'), that the story comes back to the foreground and the dark majesty of the first 24 chapters is somewhat revived. The narrative flow is largely unbroken through what's left of the novel, but that means Moby-Dick contains an awfully large amount of dead space and poorly conceived passages to slog through. Even if I accept that this is a masterpiece with a amazingly complex theme, did Melville really require all those pages to convey what he wanted to say? Was there no way to integrate it into his story? As it stands, the structure of Moby-Dick amounts to 24 chapters of narrative, 100 chapters of various odds and ends, and the concluding chapters which complete the story begun in the first 24. Such a lack of integration is the sign of either a bad writer (which Melville really isn't) or a writer who just didn't take (or have) the time to polish his work.

Even when the narrative returns, I can't say that the writing measures up to Melville's start. And it isn't until the last page, that Ishmael returns as the narrator. I think we're supposed to assume he's the narrator throughout, but the voice of the character just isn't there, and we're really dealing with an omniscient third party narrator. There seems to be little point in this shift (although I'm sure a clever Melville groupie could concoct some brilliant intent behind it), and it kills the immediacy of the story.

Melville further errs by toying with playwriting devices. He introduces characters and settings at the beginning of several chapters, not in his text, but as bracketed comments you'd see in a screenplay. This reaches a head in C.40 ('Midnight, Forecastle'), which is completely laid out as a play, rather than as narrative. While this may have eased his ability to display the famed 'microcosm' of the Pequod's multi-racial/national crew, it would not have required much effort to get this across in narrative form. To me, this is two parts laziness and one part gimmick. Doesn't add up to brilliant writing at all.

In fact, I would have to say that this encapsulates my ultimate opinion about Moby-Dick. It's got some brilliant writing in it, and some tremendous themes (to those in another post), but it's terribly underwritten and contains too many ideas that Melville played with, didn't develop, and left half-baked in the novel. The result is a continual sense of being interrupted or having to suffer digressions or losing the thread of where Melville is going. As a writer, he's like a tour guide who is charged with taking you to see the Empire State Building, but who ends up taking you to seventeen uninteresting and wholly unrelated stops along the way. You start to wonder if you will ever get to the Empire State Building at all or whether the guide even knows where it is! In short, Moby-Dick is brilliant in places, but frightfully amateur in others (many others).

Some critics call this 'modern' and praise Melville as being ahead of his time stylistically. While I agree some modern writers intentionally create disjointed and convoluted prose to get their point across, the difference is that I find them to be in control of what they are doing and why. I do not get this from Melville at all; he just seems messy and unfocused. Maybe Melville was ahead of his time, but that doesn't excuse a lack of craft. Personally, I do not believe he was ahead of his time; I think he just didn't work hard enough honing Moby-Dick (despite the fact he apparently drove himself to drink over it). In many ways, after reading six of Melville's novels, my feeling is that he is a talented, but very lazy, writer. He's big on ideas, ambitious in vision, but he isn't up to the effort required to edit himself or hone his craft in order to create art out of his big ideas.

Melville's masterpiece received some good notices, but just as many poor ones. Few people in the reading public were interested one way or the other, and Melville was pretty much irrelevant and forgotten at this point in this career. Not counting, Billy Budd, which I have never yet read. Melville write three more novels after Moby-Dick and all of them were ignored and, when reviewed, ridiculed. I can relate to his public from the time as, despite my desire to read all his works, I have little interest in tackling these last three.

Maybe later in life I'll pick up where I left off.

Stopgap Melville Entry

I am still reading Melville!

As all three people who actually follow my blog know by now, I've been working my way through Herman Melville's books in the order in which he wrote them. It's my latest self-assigned reading challenge. I'm on number six: Moby Dick.

I've actually already read this book twice, but I was hoping it would take on even deeper meaning in the context of this other works. I think it has. I've gotten a better 'feel' for Melville as a writer going through all his stuff. Moby Dick is just as challenging and frustrating as I remember it. There are some passages that are just brilliant and (as writer) make my skin crawl with envious pleasure, and others that are so grueling that I just want to put a fork in my eye.

Each time I read the book, I find more depth to it. There is just so much going on thematically. At the same time, I'm not fully convinced Melville was completely in control of his subject matter. I'm about two-thirds done, so hopefully I can post a proper set of thoughts once I finish.

Herman Melville - White-Jacket (1850)

It's often said that, in Huckleberry Finn, "life is a river". White-Jacket, Herman Melville's fifth novel, may be his take on this: "the world is a ship". In fact, the subtitle of White-Jacket is The World in a Man-of-War. This is an interesting idea for an allegory and, in many ways, Melville succeeds. Using the events on the man-of-war Neversink, Melville draws many parallels to society in general and human justice in particular. Further, in the final chapter, Melville provides a moral to tie his allegory together.

However, despite these successes, White-Jacket pretty much fails as a novel. The main problem is that Melville exercises no control over his allegory. White-Jacket contains far too much content that doesn't add to the allegory, and some of it clearly is not even meant to. While every word and chapter does not necessarily have to drive an allegory (unless you're Dante and writing something genius like The Divine Comedy), the narrative that does not propel the allegory should have some point. Unfortunately, that is not the case here and it makes White-Jacket pretty tedious.

The excess material is especially frustrating because White-Jacket quite simply tells no story. There is no plot, no character development, no conflict, nothing other than the allegory. So if a chapter doesn't fit in with the allegory, it really serves no purpose whatsoever! Although I did find many of the vignettes interesting, it just wasn't enough. And, quite frankly, if Melville had honed his allegory the way he should have, his final chapter - which is terribly prosaic - would not have been required.

Oddly, it seems to me that in writing his fourth, fifth, and sixth novels, Melville repeats the path he took with Typee, Omoo, and Mardi (his first three). His fourth book (Redburn) was like Typee, even though Typee was more romantic and Redburn darker. Both are quite successful works, tell a great story, and have clear themes communicated by those stories. Omoo suffered from a directionless narrative that never came together as a story, very much like what we have with White-Jacket. In his third book, Melville made an ambitious attempt at something deeper and, since his sixth book is Moby-Dick, the parallel seems to hold.

I also found myself thinking of Redburn and White-Jacket as two halves of the whole that would become Moby-Dick. Redburn focuses on the story, and White-Jacket focuses on an all-encompassing theme. In Moby-Dick, Melville would attempt both in a single novel. In addition, Moby-Dick's theme of the microcosm echoes the 'world in a man-of-war' theme in White-Jacket.

Okay, all that aside, is this a book worth reading? The answer is 'no', unless you're interested in delving into Melville's development as a writer or have an urge to learn in great detail what it was like to serve on a man-of-war in the 1800s. Bottom-line, in White-Jacket, Melville was overtly trying to write another 'tale of the sea' to earn money and regain the attention of his readers, while creating a deeper work 'under the radar'. However, the lack of plot means the book fails dismally as the former and the lack of control by Melville undermines the latter. White-Jacket could have been much better, but Melville clearly needed more time, effort, and craft on this novel to realize this potential.

Herman Melville - Redburn (1849)

Herman Melville had quickly achieved renown as a writer with his first novel Typee in 1846. Just over three years later, his success as a novelist hit a brick wall when his attempt at a more ambitious project (his third novel, Mardi) was a resounding flop, critically and financially. Once it was clear to Melville that his glorious experiment was a failure, he quickly produced another book to recapture his public. Written in a style that had more in common with Typee and Omoo, Melville's fourth novel achieved little notice. In fact, Melville would never again enjoy even modest success as a writer.

This is unfortunate, because Redburn is his best book to this point. Although his writing returns to the crisp style employed for his South Sea adventure tales, the focus has shifted to recount his experiences as a greenhorn sailor on a ship going from New York harbor to Liverpool and returning with a cargo of immigrants. Like Typee, Melville uses the story to alternately entertain, inform, and communicate a particular point. Unlike his colorful first novel, however, Redburn is much darker in tone.

The protagonist, Wellingborough Redburn, is a young man of good birth who, due to reduced fortune, has decided to ship as a sailor. Redburn's sometimes florid expectations regarding etiquette, as well as his lack of experience with the sea, make him the perfect narrator for a modern reader who likely knows as little as he does. Melville's knowledge of sailing ships helps him set the stage as he shows how even in words, a greenhorn can get into trouble, and this also tinges the story with a realism that is bracing. I found myself very engaged with Redburn as a person, for he is easily Melville's most fully realized character to this point. Even when I could see poor Redburn was making a big mistake, I could relate to him as he tried to make the best of his situation. I keenly felt his homesickness, his loneliness, and especially his joy at the end of his voyage.

Melville also does a good job depicting an array of secondary characters which really come alive as people. There's the pretentious Captain Riga, ill-fated Harry Bolton, the sinister Jackson, and a romantically sketched Italian immigrant named Carlo. This helps color the tapestry of experiences Redburn meets on his voyage, including learning how to get by as a greenhorn, the rampant poverty he finds in Liverpool, seeing an Indian vessel, and the realities of immigration at this time. This last is most interesting as an eye-opening dose of reality about what it took for many of our ancestors to come to America. Not a pretty picture at all.

Melville has several themes that he explores in the pages of Redburn although he does so without sacrificing his plot or without resorting to the pompous overwriting that sank Mardi. First, there is the painful consciousness Redburn has of his former station in life and his current poverty. This flows easily into his experiences with the poor of Liverpool and the exploitation of immigrants. He is also sympathetic to the sailor's life, with some hair-raising episodes relating to the drinking and dissipation that overtakes many of them. Lastly, there is the coming of age of Redburn himself. At the start of the voyage, he is as green as green can be and a bit of a snob. By the end, he has a lot more common sense and is even a guide for his friend Harry. One definitely feels Redburn has learned from and even is glad of his adventures and that he will meet his situation in life with more success because of his sea voyage.

Altogether, Redburn is Melville's tightest and most rewarding book yet. The darker tone does not depress or overwhelm the material, but rather renders the narrative more true-to-life and thereby enhances the dramatic tension of the story. Unfortunately, Melville couldn't appreciate his own creation and only reluctantly retreated from the pretenses of Mardi. In his letters, he was quite open about how he only wrote Redburn to make money.

This suggests to me that Melville's weakness as a writer was that he had no sense that simply written prose does not equate to simple-minded prose. Instead, he apparently linked pretentious, ornate text with art. If only he had realized the soul of a book is more important that the words it's wrapped in, he might never have ruined his career with Mardi and maybe he could have better appreciated the excellent book he created with Redburn.

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!

Herman Melville - Omoo (1847)

One year after Melville struck gold with Typee, his first novel and a colorful account of life in the Polynesian islands, he published Omoo. Melville's success with Typee, while not stratospheric, was significant enough for his publisher to print Omoo sight unseen. Unfortunately, Omoo is a prime example of the dreaded sophmore slump so feared by artists. Omoo is more of the same subject matter found in Typee, but as we all know lightning rarely strikes twice in the same place. Omoo is a pale imitation of Typee.

The main issue is Omoo lacks a unifying theme, such as Melville's captivity on a tropical island which gave Typee a core. On top of that, Melville tales (or yarns, depending on how much truth you believe are in these pseudo-autobiographical novels) this time out are not nearly as interesting as those found in Typee. I was pretty bored with Omoo for many of its pages.

Melville's writing is just as crisp and immediate as it was in Typee, but this book centers more around Melville's wanderings in Tahiti than it does on Polynesian life. Other sailors and the colonial towns are really at the forefront of this book. There's more commentary on the missionary movement which may be interesting from a cultural standpoint but it just doesn't come alive.

I found some of the items Melville touches on interesting from time to time, but the overall travelogue feel of this book - which Typee largely managed to avoid - means Melville can't develop any of them. For example, a Polynesian joins Melville on a ship as they leave the Marquesas, and this man's homesickness is touching. However, the character just vanishes at some point, and I don't even remember where or why. Another example is the author's meeting with Pomaree, the Queen of Tahiti. There's a big build up to this meeting, but the pay-off is a drab let-down.

Omoo was a modest success for Melville due to it being enough like his first book to lure readers back for a retread. Most modern readers should probably read Typee and skip Omoo.

Herman Melville - Typee (1846)

I love reading classic literature. To me, if it hasn't lasted at least fifty years then why take the risk! I think I am the most happy when I am sitting in my living room all alone with a nice hardcover book, a glass of red wine, dark chocolate in easy reach, and a nice breeze blowing in the window. Bliss!

Right now, I'm on a Herman Melville kick. I'm reading his books in order of when he wrote them. Last year, I did a James Fenimore Cooper run and read all five books of the Leatherstocking Tales. We'll see how long I make it with Melville.

Typee was Melville's first book, and it became an immediate success because of his colorful handling of his (arguably) real adventures after deserting a whaleship in the South Seas and living with the natives for a few months. I'm pretty sure that, were it written today, Typee would be classified as 'narrative fiction', meaning he took his actual experiences but molded them a bit to communicate a larger idea he had in mind.

Melville's theme in Typee is the contrast between so-called civilized Europeans and the 'savages' of the South Sea islands. What I love about reading books from this long ago is that they can be a window to a time and place that is completely lost. Even though Melville can't explain many of the Typees' customs, it's fascinating to read his account and see a 'peep' of how they lived before the incursion of Europeans. While the plot is a little thin, Melville switches subjects quick enough so that you don't get bored and there is enough of a plot to keep this from turning into a travelogue.

I enjoyed Typee a lot. After I read it, I went onto amazon.com to see what other people thought and I had to laugh. There were some Melville groupies on there talking about how 'deep' and 'symbolic' Typee was. I think sometimes people think that just because Melville wrote Moby Dick that everything he wrote was some complex meditation on nature and the universe. I guess academic types have to do what they can to make it in the publish-or-perish world.

Anyway, I recommend the book as the topic is just as interesting today as it was to the people in Melville's time who made Typee - and the author - famous overnight.