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Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile, Volume Eight
Unique among Melville's works, Israel Potter was the author's only historical novel, presuming to offer the life history of Revolutionary War figure Israel Potter--based on Potter's own obscure narrative Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter --and featuring characters such as Benjamin Franklin and Ethan Allen. In offering the manuscript to his publisher, Melville assured him, "I engage that the story shall contain nothing of any sort to shock the fastidious. There will be very little reflective writing in it; nothing weighty. It is adventure." This came as a relief, for his previous novel, Pierre, had shocked readers and brought down universal castigation.
This edition is an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors (Modern Language Association of America).
This edition is an Approved Text of the Center for Editions of American Authors (Modern Language Association of America).
235 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1855
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About the author
Herman Melville
2,392 books4,516 followersThere is more than one author with this name
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet, but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw. Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891.
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death, Melville was no longer well known to the public, but the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival. Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels.
Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet, but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. Typee, his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw, the daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw. Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family.
Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly a year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scrivener". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East, and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking a position as a United States customs inspector.
From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis, and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891.
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September 29, 2014
I have long been curious about the relative silence among readers surrounding this late novel of Melville’s. No one I know has ever read it, even people I know who are Melville fanatics. I had always assumed it was a gloomy account of an everyman wandering lost in the Holy Land and never found myself in the mood to read such a novel. But the silence surrounding it still intrigued me. After a rereading of The Confidence Man a couple years ago which reinvigorated my interest in Melville I decided to buy the Library of America volume containing it, and so found myself in possession of Israel Potter. I knew I’d now read it sooner or later, even though I still thought it a gloomy account of an everyman wandering lost in the Holy Land.
It did not take me long to realize that this is easy-going and lean Melville. It is rather a gurgling stream of Melville than a mountain of Melville. It is brisk and fresh, yet vigorous and even honed, though honed on the run as it were, and so is evidence of a master writer, a man capable of laying down engaging words with little effort. To be capable of being so youthful and spry while living through what I understand as a prolonged dark period in his life either attests to Melville’s inherent writerly powers, or to his bi-polarity, or both. The fact that he wrote this for money, as almost hack work, also more than likely freed him to write quickly and surely, without his predisposition to pile on significance and philosophical inquiry. Not that Israel Potter is lacking in significance or philosophical inquiry; it is just that these qualities are inherent in the story rather than added as asides. Check this, one of my favorite paragraphs in the book:
The career of this stubborn adventurer [John Paul Jones] signally illustrates the idea, that since all human affairs are subject to organic disorder; since they are created in, and sustained by, a sort of half-disciplined chaos; hence, he who in great things seeks success, must never wait for smooth water; which never was, and never will be; but with what straggling method he can, dash with all his derangements at his object, leaving the rest to Fortune.
Damn that’s good! Of course it is an aside, but it’s such a brief one by Melville’s standards that it doesn’t interrupt the narrative flow, and besides its meaning is so congruent with the very nature of the narrative – sea battles – that it feels like part of the story. But what really strikes me about this paragraph is that with it Melville not only incapsulates a life’s philosophy but also more than likely describes his method of composition of the book itself. Melville forging ahead! Regardless of personal circumstance and depression. Regardless of accusations of insanity by in-laws. Regardless of incipient poverty. He wrote it for the money, and he wrote it quickly (I assume), but he also wove these contingencies into the fabric of the book itself as part of its “message”.
Not that it necessarily needed a message, as the tale itself is rip-roaring and studded with such colorful characters – Benjamin Franklin very humorously rendered, John Paul Jones as dashing daredevil, Ethan Allen as defiant contradictory American spirit, plus minor characters throughout… - that it’s simply a breezy joy to read.
Melville as breezy joy was not what I expected, though now I feel remiss in never having read his early “adventure” novels, which I can imagine are only more fun and colorful than Israel Potter. So I will forge on ahead to them! Typee, Omoo… these titles now lure me on.
I should say that all is not fun and games and adventure with old Israel, as inevitably his powers of evading misfortune evaporate with his youth, and he ends up as a destitute scuffler, though these 45 years of his life are summarized in just a chapter or two, but this brevity doesn’t lessen the pathos one whit.
It did not take me long to realize that this is easy-going and lean Melville. It is rather a gurgling stream of Melville than a mountain of Melville. It is brisk and fresh, yet vigorous and even honed, though honed on the run as it were, and so is evidence of a master writer, a man capable of laying down engaging words with little effort. To be capable of being so youthful and spry while living through what I understand as a prolonged dark period in his life either attests to Melville’s inherent writerly powers, or to his bi-polarity, or both. The fact that he wrote this for money, as almost hack work, also more than likely freed him to write quickly and surely, without his predisposition to pile on significance and philosophical inquiry. Not that Israel Potter is lacking in significance or philosophical inquiry; it is just that these qualities are inherent in the story rather than added as asides. Check this, one of my favorite paragraphs in the book:
The career of this stubborn adventurer [John Paul Jones] signally illustrates the idea, that since all human affairs are subject to organic disorder; since they are created in, and sustained by, a sort of half-disciplined chaos; hence, he who in great things seeks success, must never wait for smooth water; which never was, and never will be; but with what straggling method he can, dash with all his derangements at his object, leaving the rest to Fortune.
Damn that’s good! Of course it is an aside, but it’s such a brief one by Melville’s standards that it doesn’t interrupt the narrative flow, and besides its meaning is so congruent with the very nature of the narrative – sea battles – that it feels like part of the story. But what really strikes me about this paragraph is that with it Melville not only incapsulates a life’s philosophy but also more than likely describes his method of composition of the book itself. Melville forging ahead! Regardless of personal circumstance and depression. Regardless of accusations of insanity by in-laws. Regardless of incipient poverty. He wrote it for the money, and he wrote it quickly (I assume), but he also wove these contingencies into the fabric of the book itself as part of its “message”.
Not that it necessarily needed a message, as the tale itself is rip-roaring and studded with such colorful characters – Benjamin Franklin very humorously rendered, John Paul Jones as dashing daredevil, Ethan Allen as defiant contradictory American spirit, plus minor characters throughout… - that it’s simply a breezy joy to read.
Melville as breezy joy was not what I expected, though now I feel remiss in never having read his early “adventure” novels, which I can imagine are only more fun and colorful than Israel Potter. So I will forge on ahead to them! Typee, Omoo… these titles now lure me on.
I should say that all is not fun and games and adventure with old Israel, as inevitably his powers of evading misfortune evaporate with his youth, and he ends up as a destitute scuffler, though these 45 years of his life are summarized in just a chapter or two, but this brevity doesn’t lessen the pathos one whit.
October 4, 2015
Around the time that Melville wrote, or began to write Israel Potter, legend has it that he was in pretty dire financial straits. Destitute basically. Therefore, this is a book that he sat down to write in a desperate attempt to make some more money for his family.
Imagine having as much talent as Melville, and knowing deep down inside how talented you are, feeling at the end of your life that half if not most of your works and manuscripts had already been forgotten. That must be a pretty sad, forlorn feeling. Moby Dick did not become an American ‘classic’ until after his death. I heard the manuscript for Billy Budd was not discovered until sometime in the 20th Century. So the question begs – why does America and other countries often fail to recognize and acknowledge geniuses (or is it genii?) in their lifetime? Why do some of them die penniless and lonely? Burroughs died with only about $1,000 in his bank account, Kerouac about a tenth of that amount. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that they are so ahead of their time that nobody can look that far forward ahead to guess a glimpse of what such an author might be seeing. Another way of looking at is that everyone else is behind the times, while these guys have their finger on the pulse of their generation.
Israel Potter is one of Melville’s shorter novels and the language, while still featuring some extremely beautiful, bordering on immaculate, prose, is much easier fare than some of his other more well-known works. And this was probably deliberate as he wanted this volume to sell like hotcakes. The story is about a young man, Israel, who hails from a parochial background (on a farm), and after his father prohibits him from marrying the girl he is in love with, takes off to see the world. He ends up enlisting and fighting at Bunker Hill and memories of this fight come back to haunt him throughout the novel. Even while at sea, the shape of the waves or the ocean remind him of that hill and that battle in which many lives were lost. His luck just goes from bad to worse. He ends up a prisoner for a while, escapes, ends up working as a spy in Britain for locals who are sympathetic to the American cause, travels to Paris where he meets Benjamin Franklin and Captain Paul Jones with whom he later has some crazy adventures on the wide open sea.
The last part of the story where he descends on London, feeling like he has nowhere else to go, including back to his home country, is really sad and forlorn. You can feel the end start to slowly close in on Israel Potter like some noxious web, and by the end of the story you feel like he had been robbed of opportunities to establish a better life for himself, even though some of the time he got himself into hot water due to his own careless or reckless decisions.
If you are looking for a nice easy introduciton into the world of Herman Melville, this is a great place to start. You won’t be disappointed. If you are looking for something more challenging (and longer), then you should check out Moby Dick, White Jacket or the almost Shakespearian elegance found in Mardi, which I believe is his best-written work (although the plot is not as engaging as some of his other works).
This thoroughly enjoyable book by one of America’s best writers is highly recommended. Read this and you will see a small glimpse of the greatness which is Herman Melville.
Imagine having as much talent as Melville, and knowing deep down inside how talented you are, feeling at the end of your life that half if not most of your works and manuscripts had already been forgotten. That must be a pretty sad, forlorn feeling. Moby Dick did not become an American ‘classic’ until after his death. I heard the manuscript for Billy Budd was not discovered until sometime in the 20th Century. So the question begs – why does America and other countries often fail to recognize and acknowledge geniuses (or is it genii?) in their lifetime? Why do some of them die penniless and lonely? Burroughs died with only about $1,000 in his bank account, Kerouac about a tenth of that amount. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that they are so ahead of their time that nobody can look that far forward ahead to guess a glimpse of what such an author might be seeing. Another way of looking at is that everyone else is behind the times, while these guys have their finger on the pulse of their generation.
Israel Potter is one of Melville’s shorter novels and the language, while still featuring some extremely beautiful, bordering on immaculate, prose, is much easier fare than some of his other more well-known works. And this was probably deliberate as he wanted this volume to sell like hotcakes. The story is about a young man, Israel, who hails from a parochial background (on a farm), and after his father prohibits him from marrying the girl he is in love with, takes off to see the world. He ends up enlisting and fighting at Bunker Hill and memories of this fight come back to haunt him throughout the novel. Even while at sea, the shape of the waves or the ocean remind him of that hill and that battle in which many lives were lost. His luck just goes from bad to worse. He ends up a prisoner for a while, escapes, ends up working as a spy in Britain for locals who are sympathetic to the American cause, travels to Paris where he meets Benjamin Franklin and Captain Paul Jones with whom he later has some crazy adventures on the wide open sea.
The last part of the story where he descends on London, feeling like he has nowhere else to go, including back to his home country, is really sad and forlorn. You can feel the end start to slowly close in on Israel Potter like some noxious web, and by the end of the story you feel like he had been robbed of opportunities to establish a better life for himself, even though some of the time he got himself into hot water due to his own careless or reckless decisions.
If you are looking for a nice easy introduciton into the world of Herman Melville, this is a great place to start. You won’t be disappointed. If you are looking for something more challenging (and longer), then you should check out Moby Dick, White Jacket or the almost Shakespearian elegance found in Mardi, which I believe is his best-written work (although the plot is not as engaging as some of his other works).
This thoroughly enjoyable book by one of America’s best writers is highly recommended. Read this and you will see a small glimpse of the greatness which is Herman Melville.
May 16, 2024
While reading this obscure novel I happened upon a page in a notebook dated about 4 years ago, and this was jotted down: "Israel Potter, Herman Melville"
I have no idea why I wrote that down or what had prompted it. When I saw this paperback in a used bookstore, I thought I had never even heard of this novel before.
All of this to say,—nothing. My ignorance and capacity to forget surprises only me.
In Alfred Kazin's introduction, he describes this novel as "uneven". It is at times picaresque, and at times baffling. Much depends on the reader's familiarity with figures from US history and "the war of independence", such as Ben Franklin, John Paul Jones, and Ethan Allen. I'm afraid these sections encountered an uninformed reader.
Israel Potter has the uncanny ability to pop up here and there at turning points in history, the everyman who is everywhere. He is a type of nobody who does everything and goes nowhere.
Israel Potter's adventures slowed somewhat once he encountered John Paul Jones, and participated in lengthy detailed sea battles. Strangely, the last section of this short novel compresses 40 or 50 years into only a few pages.
Yet there are moments of brilliance here, and Melville's brilliance can be dazzling. He apparently wrote this book for money, and it remains relatively obscure. I'm glad I stumbled upon this slim little paperback, even if I did entirely forget why on earth I wanted to read it.
I have no idea why I wrote that down or what had prompted it. When I saw this paperback in a used bookstore, I thought I had never even heard of this novel before.
All of this to say,—nothing. My ignorance and capacity to forget surprises only me.
In Alfred Kazin's introduction, he describes this novel as "uneven". It is at times picaresque, and at times baffling. Much depends on the reader's familiarity with figures from US history and "the war of independence", such as Ben Franklin, John Paul Jones, and Ethan Allen. I'm afraid these sections encountered an uninformed reader.
Israel Potter has the uncanny ability to pop up here and there at turning points in history, the everyman who is everywhere. He is a type of nobody who does everything and goes nowhere.
Israel Potter's adventures slowed somewhat once he encountered John Paul Jones, and participated in lengthy detailed sea battles. Strangely, the last section of this short novel compresses 40 or 50 years into only a few pages.
Yet there are moments of brilliance here, and Melville's brilliance can be dazzling. He apparently wrote this book for money, and it remains relatively obscure. I'm glad I stumbled upon this slim little paperback, even if I did entirely forget why on earth I wanted to read it.
June 3, 2016
Abandoning this 3/4 through. I just cannot read about another sea battle. (Not my thing.)The writing isn't that good, either. Melville wrote this only for the money, and it shows. It's just a bunch of adventures strung together. Just not for me.
December 21, 2007
Wow, this is good. And totally off the radar. Melville, between outrageous experiments, writes a rather straight-forward biography of a forgotten Revolutionary War hero - and the result is hilariously funny. And very, very sad. If only he had written a few more of these "for the money" style books; the clean plot and unexperimental setting actually help one to appreciate the subtlety and charm of his prose. It's a crime this book isn't more widely known. It might be the most interesting and satisfying historical fiction I've ever come across.
April 12, 2017
A very episodic book and some of those episodes are amazing, but some of them are not. The ending is also quite a downer.
December 21, 2019
It is tempting to interpret _Israel Potter_ in the way Melville described it: "very little reflective writing in it; nothing weighty. It is adventure."
But from the opening dedication--a satirical paean to "His Highness, the Bunker Hill Monument"--to the last chapter--where our Revolutionary War hero returns home, only to die anonymously near the very monument intended to remember him--the book offers ironic commentary on the nature of history and memory.
No doubt Israel is uniquely unphilosophical among Melville's protagonists, even stubbornly so. He is chased from one situation to the next, changing clothes with the circumstance, and with a superficiality to match, given little indication by the narrator of sustained intention. Despite his survivor resourcefulness, this makes it difficult to discern his patience from his passivity, or his courage from his impulsivity, and imparts an episodic character to the narrative.
But along the way, he encounters a conspicuous number of renown characters: Ben Franklin, King George, John Paul Jones, Ethan Allen--and, like an 18th century Forrest Gump, he exerts a larger-than-life influence on pivotal events. Through Israel's contributions to a larger story, and the sharp contrast between fame and forbearance, Melville draws attention to the ways in which lives are fragmented, and the sacrifices of the many are forgotten.
The character of Israel Potter is based on a real person, but Melville plays with the symbolism of the name: spending "forty years wandering in the London deserts." From "Potter" comes a more subtle suggestion of earth and humility (from the Latin "humus," meaning "ground"). Near the end of his life, Israel comes into brief maturity as a "brickyard philosopher," according to which "each man is a brick." Staring into a fiery kiln, he observes that the bricks at the bottom of the pile "were haggard, with the immediate blistering of the fire--the midmost ones were ruddy with a genial and tempered glow--the summit ones were pale with the languor of too exclusive an exemption from the burden of the blaze."
If there is any mistaking the meaning, the reader will recall an earlier scene where Israel is hidden in a castle wall (entombed, so to speak), with the promise of a "resurrection" two days later. The rescue never comes, and he is forced to escape on his own, on the fourth day, too "overcooked" even for a Christ.
But from the opening dedication--a satirical paean to "His Highness, the Bunker Hill Monument"--to the last chapter--where our Revolutionary War hero returns home, only to die anonymously near the very monument intended to remember him--the book offers ironic commentary on the nature of history and memory.
No doubt Israel is uniquely unphilosophical among Melville's protagonists, even stubbornly so. He is chased from one situation to the next, changing clothes with the circumstance, and with a superficiality to match, given little indication by the narrator of sustained intention. Despite his survivor resourcefulness, this makes it difficult to discern his patience from his passivity, or his courage from his impulsivity, and imparts an episodic character to the narrative.
But along the way, he encounters a conspicuous number of renown characters: Ben Franklin, King George, John Paul Jones, Ethan Allen--and, like an 18th century Forrest Gump, he exerts a larger-than-life influence on pivotal events. Through Israel's contributions to a larger story, and the sharp contrast between fame and forbearance, Melville draws attention to the ways in which lives are fragmented, and the sacrifices of the many are forgotten.
The character of Israel Potter is based on a real person, but Melville plays with the symbolism of the name: spending "forty years wandering in the London deserts." From "Potter" comes a more subtle suggestion of earth and humility (from the Latin "humus," meaning "ground"). Near the end of his life, Israel comes into brief maturity as a "brickyard philosopher," according to which "each man is a brick." Staring into a fiery kiln, he observes that the bricks at the bottom of the pile "were haggard, with the immediate blistering of the fire--the midmost ones were ruddy with a genial and tempered glow--the summit ones were pale with the languor of too exclusive an exemption from the burden of the blaze."
If there is any mistaking the meaning, the reader will recall an earlier scene where Israel is hidden in a castle wall (entombed, so to speak), with the promise of a "resurrection" two days later. The rescue never comes, and he is forced to escape on his own, on the fourth day, too "overcooked" even for a Christ.
November 13, 2020
Amerika'nın bağımsızlık savaşı döneminde, Amerika'nın tutunamamış Battal Gazi'si İsrael Potter'ın hayatı. Tek başına bir gemiyi bile ele geçirebiliyor ama hayata tutunamıyor yani. Melville'ce bir kahraman hikâyesi.
November 18, 2024
Melville skrev selv om bogen "There will be very little reflective writing in it; nothing weighty. It is adventure". Det er mit problem med den.
Jeg tror Jonassons Den hundredeårige drager inspiration herfra.
Jeg tror Jonassons Den hundredeårige drager inspiration herfra.
August 13, 2014
Probably should rate this lower... most of it is entertaining but forgettable. Historical semi-fiction, partly rewriting a real published autobiography of an obscure Revolutionary War soldier named Israel Potter, though freely adding to it, bringing in both scenes taken from history books that Potter wasn't really involved in and mixing in pure fiction, with swashbuckling sea battles, prison escapes, secret passages, comic set pieces, meetings with historical figures (Ben Franklin, John Paul Jones, Ethan Allen - I generally don't like that sort of thing, but here it was kind of fun). But the final section of the book made it seem pretty subversive, and though less entertaining kind of great. Potter ends up like so many other veterans, absolutely destitute, spending his final decades mending chairs and picking rags. He has 11 children, 10 of whom die. It seems to me that underlying conviction in the book goes against the story book narrative that so many wealthy and comfortable people tell themselves, where hard work and competence, decency and heroism get rewarded, where there is some sort of cosmic justice governing where people end up in their lives. This is, in short, the opposite of Ayn Rand. o lessen the gloom at the end, Melville keeps comparing Potter's 40 years of poverty to the Jews 40 years wandering in the desert, and at the end of his life he and his surviving son make it back to America, as though it were the promised land, but it doesn't really function as a happy ending as no place is recognizable, no one knows him, and there isn't any indication that his sons life is going to become easier for being there. Even the Bunker Hill Monument that Israel finds, as one of the soldiers who fought there, seems like kind of a hollow gesture, and Israel dies penniless. Understandably, after reading this review, most people will absolutely not want to read something that sounds like such a downer, but the depressing end section is no longer than it needs to be. He doesn't linger on it long enough to completely lose the momentum of the adventures that carried you through most of the book.
January 31, 2020
Certainly a "lesser work." Melville cannibalized some rando's diary for a serializable adventure story he could sell to Putnam's magazine to put food on the table. Titular character has crazy adventures in the Revolutionary War and beyond! (Meets Ben Franklin and is pelted with aphorisms! Helps John Paul Jones blow stuff up!). Pretty weak stuff as HM goes.
Interesting to note that even super back-catalog Melville gets great scholarship. The historical notes in the Northwestern/Newberry edition are vast and deep, though they paint a depressing picture. Melville at this time was artistically destroyed by the brutal reception of Moby Dick and Pierre. Israel Potter is him essentially attempting to strip all depth out of his work and write something as blandly palatable as possible. Poor Melville. The world owed you a lot better.
Interesting to note that even super back-catalog Melville gets great scholarship. The historical notes in the Northwestern/Newberry edition are vast and deep, though they paint a depressing picture. Melville at this time was artistically destroyed by the brutal reception of Moby Dick and Pierre. Israel Potter is him essentially attempting to strip all depth out of his work and write something as blandly palatable as possible. Poor Melville. The world owed you a lot better.
July 3, 2018
Melville amusingly derides nationalism and heroism.
August 15, 2022
This was certainly Melville's most accessible work, and by a country mile. It's also a fun read, following a hapless adventurer from one unlikely event to another. Potter's wanderings reads like a who's-who from American Junior High history classes, and though the protagonist himself is really rather bland, the overall story is marvelous.
It reads like a tall tale, and it's safe to say that it's only loosely based on the actual Potter, but it's a great yarn nonetheless. It has a great flow, and doesn't suffer from Melville's longstanding obsession with minutiae. Melville often gives the Founding Fathers a tongue-in-cheek treatment, and much of the book has a delightfully comic tone.
Compared to much of his earlier works, this feels more modern and easygoing. Very easy to pick up and put down.
It reads like a tall tale, and it's safe to say that it's only loosely based on the actual Potter, but it's a great yarn nonetheless. It has a great flow, and doesn't suffer from Melville's longstanding obsession with minutiae. Melville often gives the Founding Fathers a tongue-in-cheek treatment, and much of the book has a delightfully comic tone.
Compared to much of his earlier works, this feels more modern and easygoing. Very easy to pick up and put down.
June 21, 2025
As an inveterate reader and obsessive personality type, I often fall victim to the urge to read everything by an author who impresses me after an initial reading. The term for this type of misguided individual is a “completist.” Often this task is rewarding and not a mere fool’s errand.
My Thomas Bernhard obsession, for example, is entirely rewarding since, for an author with such a large body of work, there are relatively few minor ones, excepting early fragments and ephemera, and posthumously published “later” works (quotation marks because these works were often abandoned early works). I can reread a Bernhard work every other month and always discover something new as I amass increasing expertise and knowledge, especially since I have not yet been through many of his plays. My excuse being that they were meant to be performed, not read, which hasn’t stopped me from owning a complete set of them.1
I also have a Samuel Beckett fixation, though less so in recent years, and can—now and again—entertain myself rereading his major works and attempting some of his novels in both the “native” French and translated English. His later works are sparse and enigmatic, but no less relevant. I feel rewarded for my efforts to have a realm of knowledge concerning Samuel Beckett. Furthermore, my over 30-year friendship with my Irish Literature professor from NYU, Dr. Seamus Blake, owes its humble beginnings to my obsessive ramblings over Beckett’s Murphy.
However, I remain daunted in my completist quest concerning the genius who, posthumously, was crowned the author of the Great American Novel: Herman Melville. I’ve now been through Moby-Dick five times (in various editions), and plan at least one more reread, and love Bartleby the Scrivener so much that my Substack cognomen references the work, which I reread annually. As a mariner I relate to Reburn and White Jacket; the latter contains some hysterical scenes; working on a military chartered vessel has changed little since Melville wrote White Jacket, which I last reread on the USNS Soderman near Saipan when I was deployed as 3rd Mate. As a graduate English student, I have been through both Billy Budd and Benito Cereno and recognize both as masterpieces of world literature. Ditto for Pierre, or the Ambiguities, since it is a veritable wet dream for scholars mining Melville’s wring for autobiographical elements. However, my stomach literally churns at the thought of tackling a work like Clarel, a 523-page prose poem—excluding appendices—which obsessed Melville in his waning years when he tyrannically tortured his sister into transcribing his mad recitations. The American literary critic Andrew Delbanco relates that even after the Melville Renaissance was well underway, in the late 1920’s, scholars accessed a copy of the privately printed Clarel at the main branch of the New York Public library and found the pages still uncut! To paraphrase a Zen koan: What is the sound of a dismissed misunderstood genius ranting in rhyme? So, as I put off these works and others2 which stare at me silently from my Melville dedicated bookshelf, I wonder what work of Melville a can still turn to for some sort of novel sustenance.
My ponderings were answered when I stumbled across a true first edition of Melville’s very minor novel Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (G.P. Putnam and Co., 1855) at last year’s New York Antiquarian Book Fair, offered by James Goldwasser, the proprietor of Locus Solus Rare Books. Critics, almost unanimously dismiss this novel which appeared between four masterpieces mentioned above, as a minor work, written when Melville was cash strapped and churning out prose for Putnam’s Monthly magazine. Let’s just say that since I am a bibliophile and don’t have the cash or inclination to own Melville’s great works in a true first edition, that I jumped at the opportunity to add this true first edition to my Melville bookshelf, where it has remained for six months until my completist urge compelled me to finally read the damn thing a week or so ago. Ergo, the result of my Fool’s Errand:
What does a misunderstood genius do to earn some cash to support his family do after critics have almost universal scorned a work that will become the Great American novel, Moby-Dick, and after he wrote an eerie American gothic response in his follow up work, Pierre, or the Ambiguities, which was immediately dismissed as the confessional ravings of a madman? This is not a rhetorical question. Melville did what so many other writers have been forced to do: He prostituted himself and wrote a mere action novel to be published in installments in a monthly magazine. The result has all the earmarks of a potboiler: An action plot; cliffhanger endings to various chapters with the main action occurring during the Revolutionary War; and various historical personages, e.g. Benjamin Franklin, John Paul Jones, Ethan Allen, and King George III, making cameos.
Israel Potter would translate well onto a movie screen today, but only in a contemporary cinema that caters to mainstream mega buster movies. While watching this movie (not “film”), my ears would cower and surrender to the deafening roar of cannons exploding in Dolby stereo as the protagonist finds himself in one unlikely scenario after another. Naval battles continue interminably allowing for ample special effects. Our hero finds himself at various points, entombed, working as a spy, and working on both British and American naval vessels. What an epic blockbuster!
As with most works that fits a template, the plot is often pirated. Melville borrowed from an 1824 pamphlet memoir and merely rewrote it, adding some famous real-life characters. It’s almost like a modern writer using Chat GPT to conjure up the plot basics and then refining the ideas for publication but forgetting to include the themes that make him timeless. Chat GPT, tell me story about a Revolutionary War protagonist who survives the Battle of Bunker Hill, various naval engagements, and ends up in England, where he meets the King, and in France, where he becomes a spy.
What the novel lacks is any sort of adequate character development. Israel Potter remains a heroic cipher with no other ambition but to return to his native land, which remains a mere image in his mind as he lives in British exile for the vast majority of his life, eventually married to a woman who bares him 11 children, 10 of whom immediately die. In this sense, Melville mirrors his own frustration as a man in his thirties who feels his best years are behind him as he remains unacknowledged for Moby-Dick and as he struggles with family concerns. The constant action in Israel Potter occurs in chapters I-XXV. He settles down married and resigned to living in England in the penultimate chapter, which is a mere 6 pages and returns to New England an octogenarian with his only surviving son in chapter XXVII. Woe to the man who marries! For the life of adventure ends there. The author needs but 6 pages to depict the last 40 or so years. Let the literary critics continue surmising about the state of Melville’s marriage.
Some critics have found the book picaresque. That is a stretch. A picaresque novel contains elements of humor that are lacking in all but a few descriptions that stray into the realm of the mock heroic. However, the biggest flaw, in my estimation, is the lack of any sort of moral ambiguity which drives all of Melville’s greatest works. Aside from yet another literary allusion to an Old Testament wandering Jew, the titular Israel Potter--evidently Melville couldn’t get enough of this allusion: “Call me Ishmael”—there is no attempt to convey a protagonist wresting with a callous morally ambiguous world (or monomaniacal) where religion is but insufficient succor. There is just a forgotten veteran yearning for his El Dorado as he finds himself in one unlikely predicament after another. In short, Israel Potter, is a potboiler that lacks the depth of Melville’s other works.
And yet there are ample traces of genius and an author who thoroughly enjoys rambling prose and pointed interjections. Despite writing for mere lucre and churning out installments in which he was, likely, paid by the word, there is still Melville’s brilliant logorrhea—stated with affection—which can shine through at moments. Very few authors, contemporary or modern can come up with a motley crew description as spot on and entertaining as Melville can:
Sorely against his grain, as a final effort to blend himself openly with the crew, he now went among the waisters: the vilest caste of armed sip’s company, mere dregs and settlings—sea-Pariahs, comprising all the lazy, all the inefficient, all the unfortunate and fated, all the melancholy, all the infirm, all the rheumatical scamps, scapegraces, ruined prodigal sons, sooty faces, and swineherds of the crew, not excluding those with dismal wardrobes.
What contemporary writer can churn out a paragraph like this? And this is far from the only example of Melville being Melville. Despite its potboiler status, Israel Potter is very easy to read, especially when one considers that it is sandwiched between Pierre, or the Ambiguities, which can dissuade many readers, and The Confidence Man, which is so cryptic and full of 1800’s American slang that most contemporary readers grab the annotated Dalkey Archive edition; one ventures to surmise that many of these readers fail to finish the work. Not so with Israel Potter. While a mere adventure tale, there are enough gorgeous Melville sentences and descriptions, especially of naval battles, to keep readers engaged until the end.
1
Almost complete. I lack an edition of Bernhard’s play Minetti, which is pricy and had to find outside of a volume of his complete works.
2
For the sake of brevity, I have not mentioned Melville’s early novels, Typee, Omoo, and Mardi in this paragraph, and only refer to The Confidence Man at the end of this essay. More on them later.
This essay also appears on my Bartleby the Sailor Substack. Sometimes I edit old reviews for the Substack and sometimes I write for the Substack and move the final product to Goodreads. This explains the lack of photos here and my not sifting through 285 editions of the work to find the true first which I read.
My Thomas Bernhard obsession, for example, is entirely rewarding since, for an author with such a large body of work, there are relatively few minor ones, excepting early fragments and ephemera, and posthumously published “later” works (quotation marks because these works were often abandoned early works). I can reread a Bernhard work every other month and always discover something new as I amass increasing expertise and knowledge, especially since I have not yet been through many of his plays. My excuse being that they were meant to be performed, not read, which hasn’t stopped me from owning a complete set of them.1
I also have a Samuel Beckett fixation, though less so in recent years, and can—now and again—entertain myself rereading his major works and attempting some of his novels in both the “native” French and translated English. His later works are sparse and enigmatic, but no less relevant. I feel rewarded for my efforts to have a realm of knowledge concerning Samuel Beckett. Furthermore, my over 30-year friendship with my Irish Literature professor from NYU, Dr. Seamus Blake, owes its humble beginnings to my obsessive ramblings over Beckett’s Murphy.
However, I remain daunted in my completist quest concerning the genius who, posthumously, was crowned the author of the Great American Novel: Herman Melville. I’ve now been through Moby-Dick five times (in various editions), and plan at least one more reread, and love Bartleby the Scrivener so much that my Substack cognomen references the work, which I reread annually. As a mariner I relate to Reburn and White Jacket; the latter contains some hysterical scenes; working on a military chartered vessel has changed little since Melville wrote White Jacket, which I last reread on the USNS Soderman near Saipan when I was deployed as 3rd Mate. As a graduate English student, I have been through both Billy Budd and Benito Cereno and recognize both as masterpieces of world literature. Ditto for Pierre, or the Ambiguities, since it is a veritable wet dream for scholars mining Melville’s wring for autobiographical elements. However, my stomach literally churns at the thought of tackling a work like Clarel, a 523-page prose poem—excluding appendices—which obsessed Melville in his waning years when he tyrannically tortured his sister into transcribing his mad recitations. The American literary critic Andrew Delbanco relates that even after the Melville Renaissance was well underway, in the late 1920’s, scholars accessed a copy of the privately printed Clarel at the main branch of the New York Public library and found the pages still uncut! To paraphrase a Zen koan: What is the sound of a dismissed misunderstood genius ranting in rhyme? So, as I put off these works and others2 which stare at me silently from my Melville dedicated bookshelf, I wonder what work of Melville a can still turn to for some sort of novel sustenance.
My ponderings were answered when I stumbled across a true first edition of Melville’s very minor novel Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (G.P. Putnam and Co., 1855) at last year’s New York Antiquarian Book Fair, offered by James Goldwasser, the proprietor of Locus Solus Rare Books. Critics, almost unanimously dismiss this novel which appeared between four masterpieces mentioned above, as a minor work, written when Melville was cash strapped and churning out prose for Putnam’s Monthly magazine. Let’s just say that since I am a bibliophile and don’t have the cash or inclination to own Melville’s great works in a true first edition, that I jumped at the opportunity to add this true first edition to my Melville bookshelf, where it has remained for six months until my completist urge compelled me to finally read the damn thing a week or so ago. Ergo, the result of my Fool’s Errand:
What does a misunderstood genius do to earn some cash to support his family do after critics have almost universal scorned a work that will become the Great American novel, Moby-Dick, and after he wrote an eerie American gothic response in his follow up work, Pierre, or the Ambiguities, which was immediately dismissed as the confessional ravings of a madman? This is not a rhetorical question. Melville did what so many other writers have been forced to do: He prostituted himself and wrote a mere action novel to be published in installments in a monthly magazine. The result has all the earmarks of a potboiler: An action plot; cliffhanger endings to various chapters with the main action occurring during the Revolutionary War; and various historical personages, e.g. Benjamin Franklin, John Paul Jones, Ethan Allen, and King George III, making cameos.
Israel Potter would translate well onto a movie screen today, but only in a contemporary cinema that caters to mainstream mega buster movies. While watching this movie (not “film”), my ears would cower and surrender to the deafening roar of cannons exploding in Dolby stereo as the protagonist finds himself in one unlikely scenario after another. Naval battles continue interminably allowing for ample special effects. Our hero finds himself at various points, entombed, working as a spy, and working on both British and American naval vessels. What an epic blockbuster!
As with most works that fits a template, the plot is often pirated. Melville borrowed from an 1824 pamphlet memoir and merely rewrote it, adding some famous real-life characters. It’s almost like a modern writer using Chat GPT to conjure up the plot basics and then refining the ideas for publication but forgetting to include the themes that make him timeless. Chat GPT, tell me story about a Revolutionary War protagonist who survives the Battle of Bunker Hill, various naval engagements, and ends up in England, where he meets the King, and in France, where he becomes a spy.
What the novel lacks is any sort of adequate character development. Israel Potter remains a heroic cipher with no other ambition but to return to his native land, which remains a mere image in his mind as he lives in British exile for the vast majority of his life, eventually married to a woman who bares him 11 children, 10 of whom immediately die. In this sense, Melville mirrors his own frustration as a man in his thirties who feels his best years are behind him as he remains unacknowledged for Moby-Dick and as he struggles with family concerns. The constant action in Israel Potter occurs in chapters I-XXV. He settles down married and resigned to living in England in the penultimate chapter, which is a mere 6 pages and returns to New England an octogenarian with his only surviving son in chapter XXVII. Woe to the man who marries! For the life of adventure ends there. The author needs but 6 pages to depict the last 40 or so years. Let the literary critics continue surmising about the state of Melville’s marriage.
Some critics have found the book picaresque. That is a stretch. A picaresque novel contains elements of humor that are lacking in all but a few descriptions that stray into the realm of the mock heroic. However, the biggest flaw, in my estimation, is the lack of any sort of moral ambiguity which drives all of Melville’s greatest works. Aside from yet another literary allusion to an Old Testament wandering Jew, the titular Israel Potter--evidently Melville couldn’t get enough of this allusion: “Call me Ishmael”—there is no attempt to convey a protagonist wresting with a callous morally ambiguous world (or monomaniacal) where religion is but insufficient succor. There is just a forgotten veteran yearning for his El Dorado as he finds himself in one unlikely predicament after another. In short, Israel Potter, is a potboiler that lacks the depth of Melville’s other works.
And yet there are ample traces of genius and an author who thoroughly enjoys rambling prose and pointed interjections. Despite writing for mere lucre and churning out installments in which he was, likely, paid by the word, there is still Melville’s brilliant logorrhea—stated with affection—which can shine through at moments. Very few authors, contemporary or modern can come up with a motley crew description as spot on and entertaining as Melville can:
Sorely against his grain, as a final effort to blend himself openly with the crew, he now went among the waisters: the vilest caste of armed sip’s company, mere dregs and settlings—sea-Pariahs, comprising all the lazy, all the inefficient, all the unfortunate and fated, all the melancholy, all the infirm, all the rheumatical scamps, scapegraces, ruined prodigal sons, sooty faces, and swineherds of the crew, not excluding those with dismal wardrobes.
What contemporary writer can churn out a paragraph like this? And this is far from the only example of Melville being Melville. Despite its potboiler status, Israel Potter is very easy to read, especially when one considers that it is sandwiched between Pierre, or the Ambiguities, which can dissuade many readers, and The Confidence Man, which is so cryptic and full of 1800’s American slang that most contemporary readers grab the annotated Dalkey Archive edition; one ventures to surmise that many of these readers fail to finish the work. Not so with Israel Potter. While a mere adventure tale, there are enough gorgeous Melville sentences and descriptions, especially of naval battles, to keep readers engaged until the end.
1
Almost complete. I lack an edition of Bernhard’s play Minetti, which is pricy and had to find outside of a volume of his complete works.
2
For the sake of brevity, I have not mentioned Melville’s early novels, Typee, Omoo, and Mardi in this paragraph, and only refer to The Confidence Man at the end of this essay. More on them later.
This essay also appears on my Bartleby the Sailor Substack. Sometimes I edit old reviews for the Substack and sometimes I write for the Substack and move the final product to Goodreads. This explains the lack of photos here and my not sifting through 285 editions of the work to find the true first which I read.
July 19, 2012
Your name is destiny. If not in real life than it is if your name is attached to a self-published pamphlet picked up by another author who can't fail to write a paragraph without a symbol or allegory creeping in.
Israel Potter is a man fashioned in the clay of his times to be a man without a country or even an identity, wandering for 40 years in an English wilderness cut off from his American Canaan. Hence the "Israel" and hence the "Potter". While a young man in the Revolutionary War he has many adventures, wounded at Bunker Hill, fighting with John Paul Jones, spy service with Benjamin Franklin - each time fumbling into his next adventure by mistaken identity - or even no identity.
It seems that Israel Potter is being messed about with like a piece of clay on a potter's wheel. Every mess he gets into he has to reformulate who he is. The derring-do he does would put Jason Bourne (hmmm...another identity shifter) to shame, he single-handedly takes over a ship, and later he Errol Flynn's to another ship (and becomes "Peter Perkins" in a hilarious bit). He even ends up as a clay-worker (not quite a potter) where Melville explicitly states his analogy to the clay/potter motif:
Israel Potter is a man fashioned in the clay of his times to be a man without a country or even an identity, wandering for 40 years in an English wilderness cut off from his American Canaan. Hence the "Israel" and hence the "Potter". While a young man in the Revolutionary War he has many adventures, wounded at Bunker Hill, fighting with John Paul Jones, spy service with Benjamin Franklin - each time fumbling into his next adventure by mistaken identity - or even no identity.
It seems that Israel Potter is being messed about with like a piece of clay on a potter's wheel. Every mess he gets into he has to reformulate who he is. The derring-do he does would put Jason Bourne (hmmm...another identity shifter) to shame, he single-handedly takes over a ship, and later he Errol Flynn's to another ship (and becomes "Peter Perkins" in a hilarious bit). He even ends up as a clay-worker (not quite a potter) where Melville explicitly states his analogy to the clay/potter motif:
To these muddy philosophers, men and bricks were equally of clay. "What signifies who we be—dukes or ditchers?" thought the moulders; "all is vanity and clay" ... what is a mortal but a few luckless shovelfuls of clay, moulded in a mould, laid out on a sheet to dry, and ere long quickened into his queer caprices by the sun.Melville's prose in this one is very readable, especially after the wackiness that I encountered in the first novel in the Library of America collection I'm reading - Pierre: or, the Ambiguities.
June 25, 2015
I had never read a thing by Herman Melville and couldn't have told you anything he wrote except for Moby Dick before I took a class about him. I've really come to enjoy his writing. If all you've experienced of Melville is Moby-Dick, you might be surprised by his other writings. This book is a straight forward narrative of the life of a Revolutionary War soldier. It's based on a autobiography of a real soldier but Melville does fictionalize it and loves to add in historical characters.
Israel Potter starts with Potter's life before the Revolution and leads up to his service in the army. He's captured and sent to England and that's where the action really begins. He begins trying to escape and has amazing adventures, including being used as a spy by Benjamin Franklin. He finally makes it back to America but I'll stop there so I won't spoil anything.
This story is straight forward and easy to read. It's entertaining and enjoyable. Melville wrote it because he needed money and soldier narratives were all the rage. He seems, however, to have had several points to make as well. One of the points seems to be how easy it is to build up almost a cult around some of the early leaders of the country and he seems to be asking if they were really as wonderful as they seem. He also seems to be commenting on how we tend to think of soldiers as immediate heroes whether we know them or not. These points are subtle however, and do nothing to keep you from enjoying this as a straight forward adventure. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone wanting a taste of Melville without plunging into Moby-Dick.
Israel Potter starts with Potter's life before the Revolution and leads up to his service in the army. He's captured and sent to England and that's where the action really begins. He begins trying to escape and has amazing adventures, including being used as a spy by Benjamin Franklin. He finally makes it back to America but I'll stop there so I won't spoil anything.
This story is straight forward and easy to read. It's entertaining and enjoyable. Melville wrote it because he needed money and soldier narratives were all the rage. He seems, however, to have had several points to make as well. One of the points seems to be how easy it is to build up almost a cult around some of the early leaders of the country and he seems to be asking if they were really as wonderful as they seem. He also seems to be commenting on how we tend to think of soldiers as immediate heroes whether we know them or not. These points are subtle however, and do nothing to keep you from enjoying this as a straight forward adventure. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone wanting a taste of Melville without plunging into Moby-Dick.
March 12, 2021
Lopsided and loose, a three part structure - opening and closing with intensely felt prosaic biographies anticipating the Calvinistic telescope through which the narrator observes Billy Budd; nestled between, like in a triptych, is an account of naval action in the revolutionary war, which starts off with comic caricatures of Ben Franklin amd King George and concludes with an apocalyptic naval battle with the Ahab-like chivalric-frenzy of Paul Jones, to which our protagonist is but an everyman foil and an observer. This longer middle section really does not relate to the biographyof the protagonist or his development very clearly, and the tone gets disrupted accordingly, almost as though Melville grew excited at poetizing the war and forgot his protagonist. Yet it's almost staggering how through initially dull dialogue exposition Melville was able to arrive at and sustain an infernal ecstasy in the climactic naval battle, and then return to his protagonist with the same careful, rich depth wherefrom he left "poor Israel". My prognostication a few years ago seems correct, that he was simply incapable of writing a not-great book.
April 30, 2013
Quite a curious little book. It's tonally all over the place, purposely, one would think. You can see fragments that remind you of Pierre, of The Confidence-Man, of Redburn and White-Jacket. Highlights include the strange and irreverent portrayals of Ben Franklin, John Paul Jones, and Ethan Allen.
Perhaps strangest of how successful Melville is in delivering a rather poignant end to all the strange mad whirls of styles that have filled the previous 180 pages.
Still, if you're interested in post-MD Melville, you must go with The Confidence-Man or Pierre first.
Perhaps strangest of how successful Melville is in delivering a rather poignant end to all the strange mad whirls of styles that have filled the previous 180 pages.
Still, if you're interested in post-MD Melville, you must go with The Confidence-Man or Pierre first.
July 8, 2009
Charming, very humorous, and ultimately very sad story of a revolutionary soldier's misadventures, grounded in the ultimate failure of human loyalties and intentions against the blind power of pure luck.
January 14, 2014
Melville's one known historical novel is a rollicking read with Ben Franklin and John Paul Jones figuring as major characters. This is his shortest novel and is highly recommended as a first approach to this endlessly enigmatic and and challenging author.
December 20, 2011
Pure Melville, even if he did only write it for a paycheck.
July 30, 2014
Amazing
July 2, 2014
Reminded me of "Born on the 4th of July "....
September 7, 2015
A mini Melville, yet he's in full voice. But then, is he ever not?
December 6, 2023
(1855) Historical novel based on the tall tales of an obscure Revolutionary War figure. From what I’ve read, the real life of Israel Potter proved far more colorful, and checkered, than the heroic adventure Melville chose to tell. But even if he’d known the truth, it might not have dissuaded our author anyway. He was trying to write a potboiler, and his choice of source material and treatment of it show he was partly inspired by idolatrous patriotism. It’s beautiful, Melville’s patriotism.
"I have not yet begun to fight.”
He also takes the liberty of devoting a good portion of the story to the exploits of John Paul Jones. Ethan Allan makes an appearance, and Melville worshipfully dreams up some cute scenes with Benjamin Franklin.
So, Melville and the War of Independence. How could I resist, and where has this book been all my life? Well, though it’s true the combination is great and my enjoyment often coasted on that alone, there is something curiously lacking here. Apparently Melville himself wasn’t happy with the work and said he churned it out for money. You can hear evidence of that in the unusually—for him—generic voice (it doesn’t help that the book seems to have half an eye on the juvenile fiction shelf), and see it in the uneven pacing, which for stretches feels more like a summary of a story than an actual story, but which will then haphazardly render less momentous scenes in detail.
Still, though, something else felt missing.
“Why, no one knows him; no one has ever seen him before; no imagination, in the wildest flight of a morbid nightmare, has ever so much as dreamed of him. Who are you?”
The book starts with an evocation of the Berkshire countryside, introduces our hero as a boy, only to immediately foreshadow his strange end as an English pauper. So it’s about Israel Potter’s downfall. Melville actually alludes to the weakness of this type of story, which, when not dealing in kings and the like, is just too depressing. Perhaps that’s why it’s incidental to the real story (Potter’s up-and-down adventures), and why, even with this basic arc, the novel feels like it lacks a narrative, which is a limitation of bios in general. Besides there being no clear plot development, there’s also no real character development. Israel never comes to life. But then, Melville has always been the most charming character in his novels.
You overlook a lot of this because it’s an adventure full of incident, with many, many snatches of inspiration, and a mercifully easy prose style. Though the dialogue can sometimes be corny, Melville is still an extremely funny writer. There are some hilarious scenes, and one laugh-out-loud set-piece with a scarecrow. And then the ending is unexpectedly moving, poetic and cinematic.
Marginalia:
In one scene you can perhaps detect the germ of that trope, where someone is buried or trapped and the only person who knows and was supposed to smuggle him out dies.
Quotes:
Of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Hobbes, Melville writes, “Franklin all over is of a piece. He dressed his person as his periods; neat, trim, nothing superfluous, nothing deficient. In some of his works his style is only surpassed by the unimprovable sentences of Hobbes of Malmsbury, the paragon of perspicuity.”
“…where modest gentlemanhood is all on one side, it is a losing affair… When among wild beasts, if they menace you, be a wild beast.”
“Long ago the haunt of rank, the Latin Quarter still retains many old buildings whose imposing architecture singularly contrasts with the unassuming habits of their present occupants. In some parts its general air is dreary and dim; monastic and theurgic. In those lonely narrow ways—long-drawn prospectives of desertion—lined with huge piles of silent, vaulted, old iron-grated buildings of dark gray stone, one almost expects to encounter Paracelsus or Friar Bacon turning the next corner, with some awful vial of Black-Art elixir in his hand.”
“What sort of a place is Boston?"
"Pretty considerable of a place, sir."
"Very straight streets, ain't they?"
"Yes, sir; cow-paths, cut by sheep-walks, and intersected with hen-tracks.”
"I have not yet begun to fight.”
He also takes the liberty of devoting a good portion of the story to the exploits of John Paul Jones. Ethan Allan makes an appearance, and Melville worshipfully dreams up some cute scenes with Benjamin Franklin.
So, Melville and the War of Independence. How could I resist, and where has this book been all my life? Well, though it’s true the combination is great and my enjoyment often coasted on that alone, there is something curiously lacking here. Apparently Melville himself wasn’t happy with the work and said he churned it out for money. You can hear evidence of that in the unusually—for him—generic voice (it doesn’t help that the book seems to have half an eye on the juvenile fiction shelf), and see it in the uneven pacing, which for stretches feels more like a summary of a story than an actual story, but which will then haphazardly render less momentous scenes in detail.
Still, though, something else felt missing.
“Why, no one knows him; no one has ever seen him before; no imagination, in the wildest flight of a morbid nightmare, has ever so much as dreamed of him. Who are you?”
The book starts with an evocation of the Berkshire countryside, introduces our hero as a boy, only to immediately foreshadow his strange end as an English pauper. So it’s about Israel Potter’s downfall. Melville actually alludes to the weakness of this type of story, which, when not dealing in kings and the like, is just too depressing. Perhaps that’s why it’s incidental to the real story (Potter’s up-and-down adventures), and why, even with this basic arc, the novel feels like it lacks a narrative, which is a limitation of bios in general. Besides there being no clear plot development, there’s also no real character development. Israel never comes to life. But then, Melville has always been the most charming character in his novels.
You overlook a lot of this because it’s an adventure full of incident, with many, many snatches of inspiration, and a mercifully easy prose style. Though the dialogue can sometimes be corny, Melville is still an extremely funny writer. There are some hilarious scenes, and one laugh-out-loud set-piece with a scarecrow. And then the ending is unexpectedly moving, poetic and cinematic.
Marginalia:
In one scene you can perhaps detect the germ of that trope, where someone is buried or trapped and the only person who knows and was supposed to smuggle him out dies.
Quotes:
Of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Hobbes, Melville writes, “Franklin all over is of a piece. He dressed his person as his periods; neat, trim, nothing superfluous, nothing deficient. In some of his works his style is only surpassed by the unimprovable sentences of Hobbes of Malmsbury, the paragon of perspicuity.”
“…where modest gentlemanhood is all on one side, it is a losing affair… When among wild beasts, if they menace you, be a wild beast.”
“Long ago the haunt of rank, the Latin Quarter still retains many old buildings whose imposing architecture singularly contrasts with the unassuming habits of their present occupants. In some parts its general air is dreary and dim; monastic and theurgic. In those lonely narrow ways—long-drawn prospectives of desertion—lined with huge piles of silent, vaulted, old iron-grated buildings of dark gray stone, one almost expects to encounter Paracelsus or Friar Bacon turning the next corner, with some awful vial of Black-Art elixir in his hand.”
“What sort of a place is Boston?"
"Pretty considerable of a place, sir."
"Very straight streets, ain't they?"
"Yes, sir; cow-paths, cut by sheep-walks, and intersected with hen-tracks.”
June 11, 2019
In the arc of Melville’s life, his earliest years (with the publication of Typee, Omoo, and Mardi) were his most successful. Each subsequent novel, including Moby Dick, sold less well than its predecessor. At what seemed the nadir—after his seventh novel, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities—needing cash, Melville re-worked the story he found in a 2-penny pamphlet.
The real-life Israel Potter composed that autobiographical 2-penny pamphlet at the end of his life, when he’d returned to the United States after having lived an obscure, penurious life in England for 45 years. The story Melville tells of Israel Potter is filled with a young man’s adventures, told with simple, wide-eyed wonder. Israel was born and grew up in pre-Revolution Connecticut, served on a whaler for several years, returned and joined the militia, fought at Bunker Hill, served aboard a ship that was captured and taken to England, escaped, hired on as a spy, reconnoitered with Ben Franklin in France, served as first mate with Captain John Paul Jones on the Bon Homme Richard, was again captured by the British, and again escaped. This last escape, however, led him into the oblivion of an anonymous life in London. The last dozen pages of this short novel describe the last 50 years of Potter’s life: relatively soon after the new century (1800), when a return to America is possible, Potter is snared by marriage and then children. His homecoming is delayed nearly a half century, and it is unheralded and Israel is unrecognized and unknown.
There is nothing overt to suggest Melville is refracting his circumstances in Potter’s, and the story is largely a straight, uncontemplative account of events in Israel Potter’s life. Nonetheless, I sensed—or chose to read into this unassuming novel—Melville’s wry exposure of himself to the world as a flash-in-the-pan success, trapped by circumstance (which included marriage and children) that further ensnared him, and further drove him to measures that hastened failure and banishment to insignificance. (Interestingly, when I take this tack, I further observe that this novel was written in the same period as Bartleby the Scrivener, another tale that examines a man’s life as it recedes from society.)
The brevity of this autobiographical adventure story is almost enough to recommend it—especially when you factor in Potter’s droll and candid views of a genial, but often condescending Ben Franklin and of the dashing, rakish John Paul Jones—but its place in Melville’s life and oeuvre suggest a more compelling reason: to see how Melville points back to himself when he depicts a life characterized by early fame, long neglect, and late obscurity.
The real-life Israel Potter composed that autobiographical 2-penny pamphlet at the end of his life, when he’d returned to the United States after having lived an obscure, penurious life in England for 45 years. The story Melville tells of Israel Potter is filled with a young man’s adventures, told with simple, wide-eyed wonder. Israel was born and grew up in pre-Revolution Connecticut, served on a whaler for several years, returned and joined the militia, fought at Bunker Hill, served aboard a ship that was captured and taken to England, escaped, hired on as a spy, reconnoitered with Ben Franklin in France, served as first mate with Captain John Paul Jones on the Bon Homme Richard, was again captured by the British, and again escaped. This last escape, however, led him into the oblivion of an anonymous life in London. The last dozen pages of this short novel describe the last 50 years of Potter’s life: relatively soon after the new century (1800), when a return to America is possible, Potter is snared by marriage and then children. His homecoming is delayed nearly a half century, and it is unheralded and Israel is unrecognized and unknown.
There is nothing overt to suggest Melville is refracting his circumstances in Potter’s, and the story is largely a straight, uncontemplative account of events in Israel Potter’s life. Nonetheless, I sensed—or chose to read into this unassuming novel—Melville’s wry exposure of himself to the world as a flash-in-the-pan success, trapped by circumstance (which included marriage and children) that further ensnared him, and further drove him to measures that hastened failure and banishment to insignificance. (Interestingly, when I take this tack, I further observe that this novel was written in the same period as Bartleby the Scrivener, another tale that examines a man’s life as it recedes from society.)
The brevity of this autobiographical adventure story is almost enough to recommend it—especially when you factor in Potter’s droll and candid views of a genial, but often condescending Ben Franklin and of the dashing, rakish John Paul Jones—but its place in Melville’s life and oeuvre suggest a more compelling reason: to see how Melville points back to himself when he depicts a life characterized by early fame, long neglect, and late obscurity.
December 21, 2022
Melville claims that he’s done nothing to this story except change the pronoun. In truth he’s made it deeply Melvillean, in ways which are absolutely fascinating; for one, giving it a slightly autobiographical flavour, in adding time spent in the Berkshires and aboard a whaleship, which brings it into conversation with Melville’s other books, and the slippery way they play with storytelling and truth. (though I could wish Israel had more of that dreamy, chaotic personality so common to Melville’s narrators—my copy has excerpts from the autobiography that formed the basis of this book, and the real Israel is actually more endearing than the fictional!)
The most significant one, the one I can’t get over, though, is the way in which the retelling of one person’s life becomes a discourse on one of Melville’s deepest concerns: the nature of Providence and fate. To what extent can we trust in a benevolent universe - and to what extent should we act to take control of our own lives? Is there a broader pattern to things, or is it something we try to impose on the decisions, our own and others’, that affect our lives? This book almost feels like a choose-your-own-adventure story in a way, as you get a sense of how Israel’s decisions have led him to his current situation, and how his life might have gone if he had chosen differently. Melville doesn’t answer the questions he raises, but it’s notable that where the real Israel will ascribe his circumstances to fortune, Melville will stress the actions the fictional one has taken. “God helps those who help themselves”, says Benjamin Franklin in this, and that feels like the key line for understanding this book.
Melville also makes the American Revolution into a particularly apt setting for exploring these themes, as the colonists take their destiny into their own hands. John Paul Jones is absolutely depicted as a Miltonian rebel angel, with shades of Ahab; and Ethan Allen similarly.
For all the book’s metaphysical seriousness, though, Melville’s love of wordplay and sense of humour are plain to see, as are his concern for the poor and his affection for the picaresque.
Despite these positive elements, I’d still consider it a middling work as Melville’s books go—some of the early stretches are less engaging, and it suffers from having a less charming narrative voice than that in e.g. Moby-Dick, White-Jacket, Omoo or Redburn. But Israel Potter features so little in any discussion of Melville’s work, that it was a pleasure and a surprise to discover how clever and thoughtful and funny it really is.
The most significant one, the one I can’t get over, though, is the way in which the retelling of one person’s life becomes a discourse on one of Melville’s deepest concerns: the nature of Providence and fate. To what extent can we trust in a benevolent universe - and to what extent should we act to take control of our own lives? Is there a broader pattern to things, or is it something we try to impose on the decisions, our own and others’, that affect our lives? This book almost feels like a choose-your-own-adventure story in a way, as you get a sense of how Israel’s decisions have led him to his current situation, and how his life might have gone if he had chosen differently. Melville doesn’t answer the questions he raises, but it’s notable that where the real Israel will ascribe his circumstances to fortune, Melville will stress the actions the fictional one has taken. “God helps those who help themselves”, says Benjamin Franklin in this, and that feels like the key line for understanding this book.
Melville also makes the American Revolution into a particularly apt setting for exploring these themes, as the colonists take their destiny into their own hands. John Paul Jones is absolutely depicted as a Miltonian rebel angel, with shades of Ahab; and Ethan Allen similarly.
For all the book’s metaphysical seriousness, though, Melville’s love of wordplay and sense of humour are plain to see, as are his concern for the poor and his affection for the picaresque.
Despite these positive elements, I’d still consider it a middling work as Melville’s books go—some of the early stretches are less engaging, and it suffers from having a less charming narrative voice than that in e.g. Moby-Dick, White-Jacket, Omoo or Redburn. But Israel Potter features so little in any discussion of Melville’s work, that it was a pleasure and a surprise to discover how clever and thoughtful and funny it really is.
August 23, 2024
I became curious when I read that Herman Melville had written a historical novel and decided to give this a chance. Apparently, there really was such a person who was wounded at Bunker Hill, went to sea, and, through a series of misadventures, spent most of his life in poverty in England before being repatriated just before his death.
That is certainly an interesting footnote to history, but Melville seems less interested in Potter than in the opportunity to draw portraits of those Potter encountered. Yes, he apparently conversed with King George III in Kew Gardens. Melville clearly enjoyed creating the portrayal of Benjamin Franklin, both admiring and satirical, endlessly spouting wise advice like Polonius. John Paul Jones and Ethan Allen seem larger than life as if to say that American independence was not only won by the sage diplomacy of Franklin but by such pugnacious cocks of the walk.
Melville’s own shipboard experience makes the sea battles come alive, and by transporting Potter’s home to the Berkshires, Melville indulges in reimagining this landscape he loved as it would have been eighty years earlier.
Once Potter stops encountering leading figures of the Revolution, though, Melville seems to lose interest in him, summarizing forty years in a few short chapters before bringing him back home.
I can see why this is less well-known than Melville’s other works, but I found it readable and moderately interesting.
That is certainly an interesting footnote to history, but Melville seems less interested in Potter than in the opportunity to draw portraits of those Potter encountered. Yes, he apparently conversed with King George III in Kew Gardens. Melville clearly enjoyed creating the portrayal of Benjamin Franklin, both admiring and satirical, endlessly spouting wise advice like Polonius. John Paul Jones and Ethan Allen seem larger than life as if to say that American independence was not only won by the sage diplomacy of Franklin but by such pugnacious cocks of the walk.
Melville’s own shipboard experience makes the sea battles come alive, and by transporting Potter’s home to the Berkshires, Melville indulges in reimagining this landscape he loved as it would have been eighty years earlier.
Once Potter stops encountering leading figures of the Revolution, though, Melville seems to lose interest in him, summarizing forty years in a few short chapters before bringing him back home.
I can see why this is less well-known than Melville’s other works, but I found it readable and moderately interesting.
December 21, 2017
Renewed interest Melville's fiction is well-deserved. Literary historians revisited Israel Potter recently, so I decided to give it a read. Its a historical novel and simultaneously a novelized biography. Melville created in Israel Potter the first American Ulysses. The story is epic and tragic, but the final and penultimate chapters offer one of the more sophisticated affirmations of the United States as a sort of morally regenerative moral space. When the aged Potter finds the foundations of his childhood home, the reader is hard to pressed not to see resurrection in the aire (Melville explicitly calls Potter's return to Massachusetts "a resurrection." And so Potter serves as a sort of American St Simeon the Elder, who sees the infant Christ/American Republic, and thereby quietly dies, knowing that the world's salvation is at hand. One of Melville's finest works.
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