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Melville: His World and Work
If Dickens was nineteenth-century London personified, Herman Melville was the quintessential American. With a historian’s perspective and a critic’s insight, award-winning author Andrew Delbanco marvelously demonstrates that Melville was very much a man of his era and that he recorded — in his books, letters, and marginalia; and in conversations with friends like Nathaniel Hawthorne and with his literary cronies in Manhattan — an incomparable chapter of American history. From the bawdy storytelling of Typee to the spiritual preoccupations building up to and beyond Moby Dick , Delbanco brilliantly illuminates Melville’s life and work, and his crucial role as a man of American letters.
446 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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About the author
Andrew Delbanco
33 books75 followersAndrew H. Delbanco (born 1952) is Director of American Studies at Columbia University and has been Columbia's Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities since 1995. He writes extensively on American literary and religious history.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
August 14, 2022
This work is much more literary criticism than a biography, though it suffers from extrapolating Melville's life from his work, always a speculative endeavor. I found the approach to Melville's literature relatively even-handed--but the inferences it poses towards Melville's sexual orientation and his role as husband and father leave much to be desired.
Melville wrote few letters, destroyed most of those he received and appears to have left little in terms of journals or notebooks, this was likely exacerbated by his slinking into obscurity during his own lifetime; there's an anecdote regarding Edith Wharton (b. 1862) that during the first half of her life she never saw a book by Melville in a store. Consequently there wasn't a great deal of thought about posterity and it is assumed that whatever working papers he may have collected were thrown away after his death. Despite the sentimental drift into oblivion this book did little to encourage a rereading, which I fear is an indictment of the biography.
Melville wrote few letters, destroyed most of those he received and appears to have left little in terms of journals or notebooks, this was likely exacerbated by his slinking into obscurity during his own lifetime; there's an anecdote regarding Edith Wharton (b. 1862) that during the first half of her life she never saw a book by Melville in a store. Consequently there wasn't a great deal of thought about posterity and it is assumed that whatever working papers he may have collected were thrown away after his death. Despite the sentimental drift into oblivion this book did little to encourage a rereading, which I fear is an indictment of the biography.
August 10, 2022
Delbanco's Study Of Herman Melville
Herman Melville (1819 -- 1893) is one of the writers I have returned to again and again over the course of years. Thus, I was gratified to receive this new book by Andrew Delbanco, "Melville: His Life and Work" (2005) as a gift and to have the opportunity to read it, think again about Melville, and share my thoughts on this site with other readers. Delbanco is Levi Professor in the Humanities and Director of American Studies at Columbia University. He has published widely on American literature, including a book titled "Required Reading: why our American Classics matter now." Before reading Professor Delbanco's Melville study, I also read the lengthy review by Frederick Crews in the December 1, 2005, "New York Review" which is both laudatory and critical.
The literature on Melville continues to grow, and in recent years biographies have been published that are longer and far more detailed than Professor Delbanco's. But Delbanco's study is accessible, engagingly written, and concentrates, as the subtitle to his book implies, in placing Melville in the historical context of Nineteenth Century America, and on the works themselves. I will discuss each of these factors briefly.
As to Nineteenth Century America, Professor Delbanco discusses Melville's roots as the descendant, on both sides of his family, of heroes of the Revolutionary War. He gives a revealing picture of pre-Bellum America and of the seafaring life. He gives a detailed historical discussion, for a literary biography, of the tumults which split the United States and lead to the Civil War, including the War with Mexico, the compromises of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Professor Delbanco shows how Melville responded to both the literary and political events of his time. He also gives a good, if briefer, treatment of the Civil War and of Melville's life thereafter, as the United States expanded and a crude materialism became dominant. But most vividly, Professor Delbanco gives a picture of New York City, both before and after the Civil War, and argues convincingly for the strong formative influence that the city exerted on Melville's writings.
As to Melville's writings, Professor Delbanco devotes a great deal of space to Melville's four widely-recognized masterpieces: Moby Dick, Bartelby, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd. He offers textual exposition, compositional background, and a good literary sense of the complexities and ambiguities in each of these works. He offers shorter yet rewarding discussions of several of Melville's more controversial efforts, including Pierre, The Confidence Man, his collection of Civil War Poetry called Battle Pieces, and the long poem Clarel. I think that Delbanco undervalues some of the poetry, particularly Battle Pieces which I have found over the years a provocative literary guide to the Civil War.
The treatment of Melville's life is interrelated well with a study of his works, as Professor Delbanco gives succinct discussions of Melville's early years, his decision to go to sea, his marriage, the question of his sexual orientation, the friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, his travels and wanderings, the tragic deaths of two of his sons, and the long reclusive years Melville spent as a customs inspector in New York City. We see Melville with all his difficulties and as a great but in his lifetime forgotten writer. Readers interested in a good novelistic portrayal of Melville may wish to read Frederick Busch's "The Night Inspector", to which Professor Delbanco refers.
(...)
I came away from Professor Belbanco's book with the desire to revisit some of the Melville works that I have read in the past and, perhaps, to read some of the works that I don't know for the first time. I think it is the purpose of a study such as Delbanco's to return to reader to the words of the author, in this case Melville. Delbanco's book succeeds in doing so admirably.
(...)
Robin Friedman
Herman Melville (1819 -- 1893) is one of the writers I have returned to again and again over the course of years. Thus, I was gratified to receive this new book by Andrew Delbanco, "Melville: His Life and Work" (2005) as a gift and to have the opportunity to read it, think again about Melville, and share my thoughts on this site with other readers. Delbanco is Levi Professor in the Humanities and Director of American Studies at Columbia University. He has published widely on American literature, including a book titled "Required Reading: why our American Classics matter now." Before reading Professor Delbanco's Melville study, I also read the lengthy review by Frederick Crews in the December 1, 2005, "New York Review" which is both laudatory and critical.
The literature on Melville continues to grow, and in recent years biographies have been published that are longer and far more detailed than Professor Delbanco's. But Delbanco's study is accessible, engagingly written, and concentrates, as the subtitle to his book implies, in placing Melville in the historical context of Nineteenth Century America, and on the works themselves. I will discuss each of these factors briefly.
As to Nineteenth Century America, Professor Delbanco discusses Melville's roots as the descendant, on both sides of his family, of heroes of the Revolutionary War. He gives a revealing picture of pre-Bellum America and of the seafaring life. He gives a detailed historical discussion, for a literary biography, of the tumults which split the United States and lead to the Civil War, including the War with Mexico, the compromises of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Professor Delbanco shows how Melville responded to both the literary and political events of his time. He also gives a good, if briefer, treatment of the Civil War and of Melville's life thereafter, as the United States expanded and a crude materialism became dominant. But most vividly, Professor Delbanco gives a picture of New York City, both before and after the Civil War, and argues convincingly for the strong formative influence that the city exerted on Melville's writings.
As to Melville's writings, Professor Delbanco devotes a great deal of space to Melville's four widely-recognized masterpieces: Moby Dick, Bartelby, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd. He offers textual exposition, compositional background, and a good literary sense of the complexities and ambiguities in each of these works. He offers shorter yet rewarding discussions of several of Melville's more controversial efforts, including Pierre, The Confidence Man, his collection of Civil War Poetry called Battle Pieces, and the long poem Clarel. I think that Delbanco undervalues some of the poetry, particularly Battle Pieces which I have found over the years a provocative literary guide to the Civil War.
The treatment of Melville's life is interrelated well with a study of his works, as Professor Delbanco gives succinct discussions of Melville's early years, his decision to go to sea, his marriage, the question of his sexual orientation, the friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, his travels and wanderings, the tragic deaths of two of his sons, and the long reclusive years Melville spent as a customs inspector in New York City. We see Melville with all his difficulties and as a great but in his lifetime forgotten writer. Readers interested in a good novelistic portrayal of Melville may wish to read Frederick Busch's "The Night Inspector", to which Professor Delbanco refers.
(...)
I came away from Professor Belbanco's book with the desire to revisit some of the Melville works that I have read in the past and, perhaps, to read some of the works that I don't know for the first time. I think it is the purpose of a study such as Delbanco's to return to reader to the words of the author, in this case Melville. Delbanco's book succeeds in doing so admirably.
(...)
Robin Friedman
February 2, 2019
Excellently written, and working well with the paucity of material about the man. Depressing, as are all these bios of artists unjustly neglected in their time, but has certainly enriched my reading of him.
April 8, 2013
The preface is splendid. In it Delbanco describes his biographical strategy, which is among the best I've read. He writes that the biographer's task is to evoke the past, to evoke an at-"home-feeling" about the past (my mangling of one of Hawthorne's phrases, that was the subject's present. Delbanco also quotes Henry James, who wrote that the business of the biographer is "detail." But not just any detail, rather the heaps and mounds of detail that establish the biographer's view of:
- the sort of person his subject had been, his subject's desires, drives/obsessions, motivations, aspirations, projects and fears, etc.
- the world as it presented itself to the biographer's subject
- the subject's grappling response to that world as he goes about doing whatever it is he has to do in order to be a person whose biography is worth reading, not to mention the writing
- the world's response to the subject's action, the interaction, as it were, between subject and world
- the narrative that integrates all of this material - and retains plausibility, evokes in the reader a "willing suspension of disbelief."
A task that is more or less difficult depending upon the scope and magnitude of the subject's remains. Henry James left metric tons and cubic yards of letters (over 12,000 known), diaries, appointment books, calendars, notebooks, drafts and finished work, and so on. Charles Dickens - the same mountainous heaps of stuff to sort through. [In these cases the biographer's problem is endurance, selection, integration and interpretation, at which Peter Ackroyd is a consumate master.] Melville - not so much. Shakespeare and Cervantes - only bits and pieces of transactions here and there. For example, only one letter in Certantes' hand is known. Writing the lives of persons such as these require genius of another sort.
So it will be very interesting to see how Delbanco proceeds.
At End.
An excellent introduction, I would say, even though I don't admire the "life and works" or "world and work" approach. More often than not the writer can't decide how much biography, how much context, how much literary criticism, how much analysis he needs to link context, life and literary output. A very tricky undertaking even if one doesn't feel constrained to tell the story in 300 pages or less.
In this case, I will have to say that Delbanco has succeeded in giving us an excellent example of a type of book that I don't happen to like. More of an introductory work really, but if one were going to read only one book on Herman Melville then as far as I can tell this is the best of the lot.
Having said all that, I find the book unsatisfying, because Delbanco doesn't treat any single dimension of Helville's life and times in sufficient detail to evoke any sense of familiarity, "at-home-ness" in any one of them. But that's the limitation of an introductory work so there's little point in criticising a book that doesn't satisfy me but that is a remarkably successful achievement of the author's purpose.
So on to Hershel Parker (2 vols. - ca 1100 pages) and Dr. Laurant, a biography of ca 600 pages.
- the sort of person his subject had been, his subject's desires, drives/obsessions, motivations, aspirations, projects and fears, etc.
- the world as it presented itself to the biographer's subject
- the subject's grappling response to that world as he goes about doing whatever it is he has to do in order to be a person whose biography is worth reading, not to mention the writing
- the world's response to the subject's action, the interaction, as it were, between subject and world
- the narrative that integrates all of this material - and retains plausibility, evokes in the reader a "willing suspension of disbelief."
A task that is more or less difficult depending upon the scope and magnitude of the subject's remains. Henry James left metric tons and cubic yards of letters (over 12,000 known), diaries, appointment books, calendars, notebooks, drafts and finished work, and so on. Charles Dickens - the same mountainous heaps of stuff to sort through. [In these cases the biographer's problem is endurance, selection, integration and interpretation, at which Peter Ackroyd is a consumate master.] Melville - not so much. Shakespeare and Cervantes - only bits and pieces of transactions here and there. For example, only one letter in Certantes' hand is known. Writing the lives of persons such as these require genius of another sort.
So it will be very interesting to see how Delbanco proceeds.
At End.
An excellent introduction, I would say, even though I don't admire the "life and works" or "world and work" approach. More often than not the writer can't decide how much biography, how much context, how much literary criticism, how much analysis he needs to link context, life and literary output. A very tricky undertaking even if one doesn't feel constrained to tell the story in 300 pages or less.
In this case, I will have to say that Delbanco has succeeded in giving us an excellent example of a type of book that I don't happen to like. More of an introductory work really, but if one were going to read only one book on Herman Melville then as far as I can tell this is the best of the lot.
Having said all that, I find the book unsatisfying, because Delbanco doesn't treat any single dimension of Helville's life and times in sufficient detail to evoke any sense of familiarity, "at-home-ness" in any one of them. But that's the limitation of an introductory work so there's little point in criticising a book that doesn't satisfy me but that is a remarkably successful achievement of the author's purpose.
So on to Hershel Parker (2 vols. - ca 1100 pages) and Dr. Laurant, a biography of ca 600 pages.
April 26, 2020
Considering the subject and at times outright lack of evidence based on the relative obscurity (perhaps infamy is a better word) of the subject in his lifetime, this book splendidly fills the Melville biography slot for those who are interested.
It's a brisk read at 322 pps of prose and that is a positive. Even better, Delbanco's approachable and yet substantive style left me wanting to re-read Melville - yes, particularly Moby-Dick. Indeed, the best parts of the book are his in depth literary analyses of the major books, of which the Moby-Dick and Billy Budd exegeses are the best examples. Solid, incisive, but not too speculative (although at times his insistent Freudian sexual readings of all things Melville, although substantiated, don't lead to an overwhelming overarching revelation about Melville's life). Finished this within 48 hours which is a surely positive justification for 5 stars. This is the one if you are a fan.
It's a brisk read at 322 pps of prose and that is a positive. Even better, Delbanco's approachable and yet substantive style left me wanting to re-read Melville - yes, particularly Moby-Dick. Indeed, the best parts of the book are his in depth literary analyses of the major books, of which the Moby-Dick and Billy Budd exegeses are the best examples. Solid, incisive, but not too speculative (although at times his insistent Freudian sexual readings of all things Melville, although substantiated, don't lead to an overwhelming overarching revelation about Melville's life). Finished this within 48 hours which is a surely positive justification for 5 stars. This is the one if you are a fan.
Read
March 8, 2022Hawthorne on Melville: "...a little heterodox in the matter of clean linen."
June 8, 2013
There are two major challenges facing any biographer of Melville, as Delbanco frankly admits. The first is the paucity of surviving documentation such as correspondence and notebooks. Delbanco overcomes this deficit to some extent by sketching in the historical picture, with some nice descriptions of New York City in the 19th century, for instance, and by delineating the debate over slavery in the lead-up to civil war.
The other challenge stems directly from Melville's own writing. After the popular success of Typee and Omoo, Melville wrote his masterpiece Moby Dick in his mid-thirties. Thereafter, his writing went into a steep decline, as beset by financial worries and resenftful of the lukewarm critical reception, he turned out inconsistent puzzling books and magazine hackwork. With the exception of a few short stories like "Bartleby the Scrivener,""Benito Cereno" and "The Encantadas" and the final spurt of inspiration that gave him "Billy Budd" near the end of his life, Melville wrote nothing else that came close to the genius of Moby Dick.
Since he lived, or rather, survived, to the age of 72, the decline lasted some thirty years. Delbanco's biography, accordingly, lost interest for me in the later chapters. It was agonizing to see the creator of Ahab losing his way, as if the writer went down with his creation after the white whale struck.
The other challenge stems directly from Melville's own writing. After the popular success of Typee and Omoo, Melville wrote his masterpiece Moby Dick in his mid-thirties. Thereafter, his writing went into a steep decline, as beset by financial worries and resenftful of the lukewarm critical reception, he turned out inconsistent puzzling books and magazine hackwork. With the exception of a few short stories like "Bartleby the Scrivener,""Benito Cereno" and "The Encantadas" and the final spurt of inspiration that gave him "Billy Budd" near the end of his life, Melville wrote nothing else that came close to the genius of Moby Dick.
Since he lived, or rather, survived, to the age of 72, the decline lasted some thirty years. Delbanco's biography, accordingly, lost interest for me in the later chapters. It was agonizing to see the creator of Ahab losing his way, as if the writer went down with his creation after the white whale struck.
October 24, 2023
Top tier critical literary biography. We go to Melville for the work more than the details of his life, which is a good thing because our knowledge of the details is fairly limited. Delbanco is especially good on placing Melville against the cultural background of American in transition coming up to and out of the Civil War. But he never loses track of the fact that if it wasn't for Moby-Dick, Bartleby, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd, Melville would be a footnote in American literary history. His readings of each of those books are deft and convincing, making it clear that Melville's great work speaks in some ways more clearly to 20th and 21st century readers than it did to his contemporaries. As is inevitable when comparing responses to work of this magnitude, I have some differences. Delbanco dismisses the cetology chapters of Mody-Dick (very briefly) as digressions that impede the narrative flow. I'd argue (and have watched students entering from the right victor convince themselves) that the cetology chapters are essential: engagements with the chaotic discourses of philosophy, religion, science, cultural theory, etc. All of which just made Delbanco more fun to read. My choice for the best place to start for anyone seeking background, context for Melville's works.
June 6, 2014
I have read "Melville" by Andrew Delbanco twice and dipped into it numerous times for referene and inspiration. Really a fantastic one volume take on a great author. And here's the thing -- if you haven't read "Moby Dick," no problem, read this book, it will serve as an introduction and a basic understanding of what makes this work so powerful even to this day. Perhaps the biggest reason to read the book is a rare step by step examination of how an author deals with early commercial success that proved to be fleeting and unsustainable as his talent and skills increased along with his ambitions. The biography ends up being an insightful look at what Melville went through for most of his career as he continued to write, eventually realizing with grim disappointment that his best work would not be recognized and praised in his lifetime, or ever. And living with his "failure" and the impact it had on his family and his character. The book is very accessible but deep biography that showcases Delbanco's talent and skills as a biographer.
July 31, 2013
This is critical biography laced with history. It's a fascinating look at the times in which Melville lived. Some portions of the biography, such as descriptions of the junctions of the primitive and the technologically superior as experienced by Melville, or the portrait of New York City during the time he lived there, are engaging and necessary subjects explaining the social and intellectual backgrounds which informed his work. That work itself is discussed at length. I'd not come across an analysis of Moby-Dick like Delbanco's before, that of the novel analyzed in terms of American politics in the 1845-1850 period. To read of an Ahab modeled after the fire-breathing Senator John C. Calhoun was surprising yet presented convincingly. Such new ways of approaching a favorite novel, as well as full discussions of the familiar areas of manifest destiny and slavery, is refreshing. Even better is the detailed critical presentation of Billy Budd. Delbanco writes with great insight about what made Melville's fiction so new during his time and what keeps it new today.
March 8, 2010
THIS is how you do a literary biography. A pleasure to read, erudite, comprehensive though easily digestible, engaged and engaging, well-drawn and sympathetically felt. You get plenty on the good stuff and an excellent investigation of the lesser-known efforts. There isn't very much of Melville that survives, in terms of letters or diaries and so forth, and so Delbanco does a beautiful job of bringing out what he can of a rather insular and extremely complex man.
Great social panorama, too, of the world of America (or, least, just New York, but let's face it, when is NY not a microcosm of America?) from the first glimmerings of the 19th Century to the full bore of modernity coming into the 20th...I just lapped this one up, more or less in one weekend.
February 23, 2018
Good on Melville’s styles in their personal and social contexts. Little on Melville’s ideas in their intellectual context.
February 1, 2024
Summary: In "Melville," Andrew Delbanco paints a vivid portrait of the quintessential American author, capturing the essence of a man whose life mirrored the chaotic currents of his era. From Melville's humble beginnings to his literary ascension, Delbanco delves into the heart of Melville's creative genius and the turbulent waters of his personal struggles. Through letters, conversations, and encounters with literary luminaries like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Delbanco traces Melville's journey from obscurity to literary immortality, shedding light on the man behind the myth.
Pros:
🌟 Four stars for a biography that's more illuminating than a lighthouse in a storm. Delbanco's meticulous research and insightful analysis shed new light on Melville's life and legacy, inviting readers to embark on a journey of discovery.
😄 Great book for anyone fascinated by authors and other historical figures. Delbanco brings Melville and his era to life with the skill of a master storyteller, making history as captivating as a sea shanty sung by salty sailors.
📜 A biography critique that dives deeper than a sperm whale hunting squid. Delbanco not only examines Melville's life but also offers a critical appraisal of his works, dissecting themes, characters, and motifs with the precision of a surgeon.
📚 Lots of good history! Delbanco seamlessly weaves Melville's story into the tapestry of American history, providing context and insight into the cultural, social, and political currents of the time.
🧠 I learned a lot! Man, Melville's life was a bit... depressing, that's for sure. Delbanco doesn't shy away from the darker aspects of Melville's psyche, offering a nuanced portrayal of a man grappling with his own demons amidst greatness.
Cons:
⌛ At times, the book drifts like a ship without a rudder, meandering through the vast expanse of Melville's life without a clear course. While the journey is rich in detail, readers might find themselves longing for a more structured voyage.
📚 In conclusion, "Melville" is a captivating biography that plumbs the depths of an American literary legend. Andrew Delbanco, you've crafted a narrative as compelling as the whale-haunted seas of Melville's imagination. Four stars – one for each wave in the ocean of Melville's legacy. 🐋📚
Pros:
🌟 Four stars for a biography that's more illuminating than a lighthouse in a storm. Delbanco's meticulous research and insightful analysis shed new light on Melville's life and legacy, inviting readers to embark on a journey of discovery.
😄 Great book for anyone fascinated by authors and other historical figures. Delbanco brings Melville and his era to life with the skill of a master storyteller, making history as captivating as a sea shanty sung by salty sailors.
📜 A biography critique that dives deeper than a sperm whale hunting squid. Delbanco not only examines Melville's life but also offers a critical appraisal of his works, dissecting themes, characters, and motifs with the precision of a surgeon.
📚 Lots of good history! Delbanco seamlessly weaves Melville's story into the tapestry of American history, providing context and insight into the cultural, social, and political currents of the time.
🧠 I learned a lot! Man, Melville's life was a bit... depressing, that's for sure. Delbanco doesn't shy away from the darker aspects of Melville's psyche, offering a nuanced portrayal of a man grappling with his own demons amidst greatness.
Cons:
⌛ At times, the book drifts like a ship without a rudder, meandering through the vast expanse of Melville's life without a clear course. While the journey is rich in detail, readers might find themselves longing for a more structured voyage.
📚 In conclusion, "Melville" is a captivating biography that plumbs the depths of an American literary legend. Andrew Delbanco, you've crafted a narrative as compelling as the whale-haunted seas of Melville's imagination. Four stars – one for each wave in the ocean of Melville's legacy. 🐋📚
August 31, 2022
4.5 stars. A fairly decent biography on Herman Melville that makes me really want to reread his works.
I guess, some basic points for readers who aren't too familiar with his life, but Herman was born into a fairly bougie family who's fortunes dwindled as he was coming of age. He then set sail on several ships, gathering stories and information about the "natives" that he would tell in his first two coming-of-age novels, Typee and Omoo, which would earn him a little bit of success though would garner some criticism as people didn't really believe that the stuff he wrote about really happened. From there, he publishes a little, before landing on his masterwork, Moby Dick, published when he was 32. As an aside, originally it seemed like he was going to tell a high seas adventure similar to his earlier works, but then made revisions after meeting Hawthorne while on a walk in the rain (in a lovely moment, these two share a cave to wait out the storm). That, along with some of the reading he was doing, such as Shakespeare and Milton, led him to create the masterwork that is renown around the world today (and which wouldn't really be discovered or recognized as such until the Melvillean revival in the 1920's).
From here, Melville's life feels pretty sad, mostly because of his unrecognized genius, his depression (could be manic-depressive), the suicide of his son, and his money troubles. The copies of Moby Dick didn't sell well, and, infamously, all the copies were burned down in a Harper's warehouse fire (though the plates did survive). Churning out stories for his publisher and magazines, he managed to write two well known masterpieces, Bartleby and Benito Cereno. However, after the latter, Melville underwent a metamorphosis when he mostly stopped writing prose, and turned to poetry instead. What struck me was the 28-year period (if I remember correctly) in which he gives up prose writing to work at a customs house as an inspector of some type. Then, of course, towards his end, he writes his third short masterpiece, Billy Bud, which is only printed decades after his death, where its instantly recognized as the genius short story it is.
All in all, a nicely toned biography, with great critical insight into his major and minor works and a nice addition of some history context to understand his times (and how the times may or may not have influenced his art).
I guess, some basic points for readers who aren't too familiar with his life, but Herman was born into a fairly bougie family who's fortunes dwindled as he was coming of age. He then set sail on several ships, gathering stories and information about the "natives" that he would tell in his first two coming-of-age novels, Typee and Omoo, which would earn him a little bit of success though would garner some criticism as people didn't really believe that the stuff he wrote about really happened. From there, he publishes a little, before landing on his masterwork, Moby Dick, published when he was 32. As an aside, originally it seemed like he was going to tell a high seas adventure similar to his earlier works, but then made revisions after meeting Hawthorne while on a walk in the rain (in a lovely moment, these two share a cave to wait out the storm). That, along with some of the reading he was doing, such as Shakespeare and Milton, led him to create the masterwork that is renown around the world today (and which wouldn't really be discovered or recognized as such until the Melvillean revival in the 1920's).
From here, Melville's life feels pretty sad, mostly because of his unrecognized genius, his depression (could be manic-depressive), the suicide of his son, and his money troubles. The copies of Moby Dick didn't sell well, and, infamously, all the copies were burned down in a Harper's warehouse fire (though the plates did survive). Churning out stories for his publisher and magazines, he managed to write two well known masterpieces, Bartleby and Benito Cereno. However, after the latter, Melville underwent a metamorphosis when he mostly stopped writing prose, and turned to poetry instead. What struck me was the 28-year period (if I remember correctly) in which he gives up prose writing to work at a customs house as an inspector of some type. Then, of course, towards his end, he writes his third short masterpiece, Billy Bud, which is only printed decades after his death, where its instantly recognized as the genius short story it is.
All in all, a nicely toned biography, with great critical insight into his major and minor works and a nice addition of some history context to understand his times (and how the times may or may not have influenced his art).
October 24, 2019
Delbanco's book begins with a series of extracts, quotes from Melville's father, critics, and writers that pay tribute to Melville's influence and accomplishments over the years. It's a great way to start for it demonstrates Melville's enduring influence.
This is a literary biography, a cultural biography, and a history of the nineteenth century all rolled into one. And it does all of these things exceedingly well in under 400 pages. I learned so much about Melville's family, his works (including his awful poetry), his contentious relationship with Nathanial Hawthorne, his family tragedies (including the suicide death of his son Malcolm), and his anti-slavery politics.
Delbanco provides astute analyses of all of Melville's output. He resists any temptation to be provocative, contemporary, or trendy in his views, and always attempts to make Melville's work accessible and understandable in its historical and political context. Delbanco explains Melville's place in American literary history, and he demonstrates the ways in which Moby Dick anticipated the later Twentieth Century works of Joyce.
Delbanco's discussion of Nineteenth Century publishing economics was informative and caught me by surprise. With the absence of U.S. copyright protections, most U.S. publishers simply reprinted the works of popular British authors like Charles Dickens rather than gamble on obscure American writers. There were few American novelists, and most of them couldn't support themselves on their writing alone. It's a miracle that original American works like Moby Dick were even published in the Nineteenth Century.
The book is generously illustrated with numerous photographs, maps, comics, and sketches. Gotta hand it to Knopf for spending the money, for the illustrations really enrich the text.
It's a breathless biography, perhaps no more exhaustive in its detail than other Melville books, but more passionate about its subject and his legacy. I finished it with profound admiration for Melville, a bit of melancholy for his tribulations and failures, and an eagerness to revisit his greatest works, particularly Moby Dick, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd.
Unlike many writers, Melville didn't write the same book over and over. He took risks, much to the detriment of his career. Consequently, there are several Melvilles to celebrate, as Delbanco notes in his closing paragraph:
"For some readers, the Melville who speaks most directly to the mind and heart is the chastened author of Billy Budd. For others, the true Melville will always be the boisterous young author of Moby-Dick. Still others have found, with replenished gratitude, that there is a season in life for each."
This is a literary biography, a cultural biography, and a history of the nineteenth century all rolled into one. And it does all of these things exceedingly well in under 400 pages. I learned so much about Melville's family, his works (including his awful poetry), his contentious relationship with Nathanial Hawthorne, his family tragedies (including the suicide death of his son Malcolm), and his anti-slavery politics.
Delbanco provides astute analyses of all of Melville's output. He resists any temptation to be provocative, contemporary, or trendy in his views, and always attempts to make Melville's work accessible and understandable in its historical and political context. Delbanco explains Melville's place in American literary history, and he demonstrates the ways in which Moby Dick anticipated the later Twentieth Century works of Joyce.
Delbanco's discussion of Nineteenth Century publishing economics was informative and caught me by surprise. With the absence of U.S. copyright protections, most U.S. publishers simply reprinted the works of popular British authors like Charles Dickens rather than gamble on obscure American writers. There were few American novelists, and most of them couldn't support themselves on their writing alone. It's a miracle that original American works like Moby Dick were even published in the Nineteenth Century.
The book is generously illustrated with numerous photographs, maps, comics, and sketches. Gotta hand it to Knopf for spending the money, for the illustrations really enrich the text.
It's a breathless biography, perhaps no more exhaustive in its detail than other Melville books, but more passionate about its subject and his legacy. I finished it with profound admiration for Melville, a bit of melancholy for his tribulations and failures, and an eagerness to revisit his greatest works, particularly Moby Dick, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd.
Unlike many writers, Melville didn't write the same book over and over. He took risks, much to the detriment of his career. Consequently, there are several Melvilles to celebrate, as Delbanco notes in his closing paragraph:
"For some readers, the Melville who speaks most directly to the mind and heart is the chastened author of Billy Budd. For others, the true Melville will always be the boisterous young author of Moby-Dick. Still others have found, with replenished gratitude, that there is a season in life for each."
December 19, 2018
When it comes to biographies of Herman Melville, your pickings are limited. If you aren't prepared to take on the gargantuan two volume beast that is Hershel Parker's Herman Melville: A Biography, then you're pretty much left with Delbanco. That is not to say that the book is subpar; in fact, it is quite good. My main criticism of Delbanco is that he occasionally commits the dreaded "lit crit" fallacy. That is, he regularly takes passages from Melville's fiction and assumes it represents Melville's thoughts or feelings about something that happened in his life. Doubtless he is sometimes correct in this assumption, but the practice is dubious albeit attractive as a way to fill in gaps in the historical record. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this bio both for its content and its relative brevity.
July 6, 2009
i'd like to go on a road trip with my dog and herman melville and malcolm lowry.
November 25, 2010
Delbanco is brilliant in his assessment of Melville and his work. You get a true feeling for Melville's approach to his writing and the works and experiences that influenced him.
October 3, 2020
This is a very standard biography. It's pretty good, fluidly and modernly written. If you like biographies as biographies, this is probably what you should read to learn about Melville.
If you like Melville as Melville you are probably not overly concerned with nailing down the precise, documentable details of his life, and more interested in getting inside his head. In that case, read Lewis Mumford's biography, which is less academically rigorous, but is a brilliant and plausible portrait of Melville's mind.
If you like Melville as Melville you are probably not overly concerned with nailing down the precise, documentable details of his life, and more interested in getting inside his head. In that case, read Lewis Mumford's biography, which is less academically rigorous, but is a brilliant and plausible portrait of Melville's mind.
June 18, 2023
3.5*s
Reads more like history at the times and feels like Melville gets pushed into the background. Several 30 or so pages go by before you see Mellville again - this can be irritating. I will grant that we don't know much about him, but god some passages could have been extrapolated on (critical reading of Moby Dick) and others could have been condensed (this quasi-history of the civil war).
Aside: this book confirmed my opinion of Melville's poetry (not that good). His poetry can be quite clunky syntactically. His prose, however, remains supreme.
Reads more like history at the times and feels like Melville gets pushed into the background. Several 30 or so pages go by before you see Mellville again - this can be irritating. I will grant that we don't know much about him, but god some passages could have been extrapolated on (critical reading of Moby Dick) and others could have been condensed (this quasi-history of the civil war).
Aside: this book confirmed my opinion of Melville's poetry (not that good). His poetry can be quite clunky syntactically. His prose, however, remains supreme.
March 11, 2021
This biography read like watered-down coffee. Delbanco's opinions are always noticeable. Water is necessary for a cup of java, but without the proper proportion, opinions cause facts to loose their potency. I left this biography with a better idea of Melville and his world and his works, but without a firm grasp of certainty about any of them.
April 8, 2021
Fantastic book. Rather than being a traditional biography, it really does look at the text primarily, and put Melville's activities in the background. Of course, as the biographer says at the opening, almost nothing is known about Melville, so trying to do a traditional biography would be pure speculation anyway --- that that the lack of material has discouraged biographers for 100 years.
Herman Melville had many quirks. In today's environment, he would be medicated, possibly even diagnosed as manic-depressive. When on his highs, he imagined, visioned worlds that awed and frightened people with their intensity, and he made the craziest connections in his writing. His style was dense, full of literary allusions (especially the Bible and classical writings) and dripping with sexual innuendo and outright graphic details that were beyond the bounds of propriety at the time. (Of course, the limits were pretty tight, as one publisher took out the word "impotent" from a sentence.) In a decade, he wrote 9 novels, including the immortal "Moby Dick."
But when Melville was down, he drank a lot, probably hit his wife and children, and wrote lousy poetry. For 20 years, he wrote nothing but bad poetry, much of it coming in the book-length "Clarel."
He was said to be a wonderful conversationalist, especially after he'd had some wine. But when he tried a lecture tour, similar to what his contemporaries Emerson and Dickens had done, he got universally negative reviews for mumbling, shyness, and strange choice of topic.
Melville was born into a patrician family that was on the way down. His father, basically a business failure, died when Melville was in his teens, and Melville had little education thereafter. He was truly an autodidact, and I think that was part of what drove him to such intense heights. He always had something to prove to the smart people that his intelligence brought him in contact with.
The seminal period in Melville's life was a sea voyage of more than 3 years on a whaling vessel in the 1840s. It was actually 3 vessels, as he jumped ship twice due to dislike of the captain. On the vessels, he lived in a harsh, hard man's world. Hunting whales was dangerous, as ships sailed the seas in all weather, not coming ashore for months at a time. When a whale was sighted, it got even more grim, as the whale slowly bled to death from a couple of harpoon wounds, and then was cut up and hauled aboard, to be rendered in large chunks in greasy pots. Crews were all men, and from all around the world -- men who didn't have better options -- and the humor was rough, the punishments harsh, and the sexual mores unbound.
Melville apparently thrived, despite hating the environment at the same time. His first novel covered his adventures when he jumped ship and lived among Polynesians for a month, apparently treated with sexual favors from women and boys. He fled when he thought he was being fattened for slaughter -- a not unreasonable fear at the time. His second novel covered life on a whaler in which a mutiny happened, as more or less did on his of his vessels. These brought Melville some fame, though not a lot of money. But they were the themes he returned to again and again, finally with his greatest triumphs in Moby Dick and Billy Budd.
This book does a fantastic job of explaining each of Melville's novels, the themes that he picked up from his experiences, and those he got from his reading, and those he likely got from his imagination. This is close, dense reading that finds things like Biblical allusions, but also places Melville visited, specific practices in whaling, references to famous figures of the day, and much more.
The commentary offers interesting speculation as well, with the author being quite clear when there isn't knowledge to be sure, and also when our current sensibilities give us a different understanding of a statement than it would have been received in a the time. This is especially true in the author's interpretation of Melville's ground-breaking (for a novel) psychology. Melville goes deep into the human unconscious, decades before Freud or Faulkner or whomever. He asks tough questions of himself, of his country, of his era, and of humankind. And as he matured, he also saw both sides of an issue -- that mankind can be good, but individual men can be evil. And that even a good man can be forced to do a bad thing (Billy Budd striking and killing his lying accuser) or can acquiesce to a bad man (as the crew does to Captain Ahab).
There's so much denseness to Melville, and this book itself comes in layers. That's what makes it great. It covers the books. It covers what's known about Melville's family life -- a strained marriage and the premature death of his two sons as young adults. It covers what's known of his friendships with Hawthorne, his publishers, and his more conventionally successful brothers. It covers his life in New York City as Gotham blossomed from a relatively provincial town when he was born in 1819 to a colossus a few decades later and where he lived for much of his adult life.
If you haven't read Melville, this book will make you want to read some of his works. If you have read it, this book will add depth and nuance. Either way, it's a winner.
Herman Melville had many quirks. In today's environment, he would be medicated, possibly even diagnosed as manic-depressive. When on his highs, he imagined, visioned worlds that awed and frightened people with their intensity, and he made the craziest connections in his writing. His style was dense, full of literary allusions (especially the Bible and classical writings) and dripping with sexual innuendo and outright graphic details that were beyond the bounds of propriety at the time. (Of course, the limits were pretty tight, as one publisher took out the word "impotent" from a sentence.) In a decade, he wrote 9 novels, including the immortal "Moby Dick."
But when Melville was down, he drank a lot, probably hit his wife and children, and wrote lousy poetry. For 20 years, he wrote nothing but bad poetry, much of it coming in the book-length "Clarel."
He was said to be a wonderful conversationalist, especially after he'd had some wine. But when he tried a lecture tour, similar to what his contemporaries Emerson and Dickens had done, he got universally negative reviews for mumbling, shyness, and strange choice of topic.
Melville was born into a patrician family that was on the way down. His father, basically a business failure, died when Melville was in his teens, and Melville had little education thereafter. He was truly an autodidact, and I think that was part of what drove him to such intense heights. He always had something to prove to the smart people that his intelligence brought him in contact with.
The seminal period in Melville's life was a sea voyage of more than 3 years on a whaling vessel in the 1840s. It was actually 3 vessels, as he jumped ship twice due to dislike of the captain. On the vessels, he lived in a harsh, hard man's world. Hunting whales was dangerous, as ships sailed the seas in all weather, not coming ashore for months at a time. When a whale was sighted, it got even more grim, as the whale slowly bled to death from a couple of harpoon wounds, and then was cut up and hauled aboard, to be rendered in large chunks in greasy pots. Crews were all men, and from all around the world -- men who didn't have better options -- and the humor was rough, the punishments harsh, and the sexual mores unbound.
Melville apparently thrived, despite hating the environment at the same time. His first novel covered his adventures when he jumped ship and lived among Polynesians for a month, apparently treated with sexual favors from women and boys. He fled when he thought he was being fattened for slaughter -- a not unreasonable fear at the time. His second novel covered life on a whaler in which a mutiny happened, as more or less did on his of his vessels. These brought Melville some fame, though not a lot of money. But they were the themes he returned to again and again, finally with his greatest triumphs in Moby Dick and Billy Budd.
This book does a fantastic job of explaining each of Melville's novels, the themes that he picked up from his experiences, and those he got from his reading, and those he likely got from his imagination. This is close, dense reading that finds things like Biblical allusions, but also places Melville visited, specific practices in whaling, references to famous figures of the day, and much more.
The commentary offers interesting speculation as well, with the author being quite clear when there isn't knowledge to be sure, and also when our current sensibilities give us a different understanding of a statement than it would have been received in a the time. This is especially true in the author's interpretation of Melville's ground-breaking (for a novel) psychology. Melville goes deep into the human unconscious, decades before Freud or Faulkner or whomever. He asks tough questions of himself, of his country, of his era, and of humankind. And as he matured, he also saw both sides of an issue -- that mankind can be good, but individual men can be evil. And that even a good man can be forced to do a bad thing (Billy Budd striking and killing his lying accuser) or can acquiesce to a bad man (as the crew does to Captain Ahab).
There's so much denseness to Melville, and this book itself comes in layers. That's what makes it great. It covers the books. It covers what's known about Melville's family life -- a strained marriage and the premature death of his two sons as young adults. It covers what's known of his friendships with Hawthorne, his publishers, and his more conventionally successful brothers. It covers his life in New York City as Gotham blossomed from a relatively provincial town when he was born in 1819 to a colossus a few decades later and where he lived for much of his adult life.
If you haven't read Melville, this book will make you want to read some of his works. If you have read it, this book will add depth and nuance. Either way, it's a winner.
June 2, 2025
This starts out as the ideal biography to me. Then it turns into retelling the books and poems Melville wrote. Perhaps this reflects what is available about his life. He was not successful in later years, and was barely successful in earlier years. This biography works best when it tells about Melville and the broader world he wrote in. The title is accurate.
November 8, 2018
Solid survey of Melville's life, doing a good job of tying him in to his historical context. Quite helpful in my thesis writing for situating particular literary moments in Melville's bibliography.
January 21, 2023
I read this book about Herman Melville on the heels of finally reading (and being blown away by) "Moby-Dick". I had read the Penguin edition of "Moby-Dick", which features a superb introductory essay by Andrew Delbanco, and so I gravitated next to this book that Delbanco wrote about Melville's life experiences and journey as a writer set against the tumultuous times that he lived through.
I found this book absorbing throughout. Despite having limited testimony to draw from (through journals, letters or other remembrances), I feel that Delbanco succeeds at fleshing out the contours of Melville's unique life. From the gusto and unhinged expansiveness of Melville's early writings to the circumscribed, poignant restraint of his final novel, "Billy Budd", we're given glimpses here into the life events that may've most profoundly shaped his transformations as a writer.
Delbanco examines how the shock waves of major events (the 1848 revolutions, the Compromise of 1850, the fracturing of the Whig and Democratic parties largely over the issue of slavery, the Civil War, the ascendance of Darwin's theory of evolution, of industrialization and more) may've impacted Melville personally. Delbanco richly details how the New York City that Melville was born into in 1819 was practically medieval, while the one in which he died in 1891, was essentially modern. He also gives us a sense of Melville's private family life, inferring enough to help us sense the contours of his domestic realm.
There's a sense of tragedy, never too far away, in Melville's life. There are the personal tragedies (especially with losing several children prematurely, one to suicide). We get a sense in the book of how the grieving that Melville experienced after these deaths found some oblique expression in the late works "Clarel" and especially "Billy Budd".
Delbanco presents us with various forms of crises of faith that Melville may've been subjected to throughout his years and gives us a sense of how he attempted to meet these challenges: sometimes with resignation, sometimes bitterness, sometimes just registering the absurd condition of human life with a wryness or tenderness. But he continues to write throughout, even while prose turns to verse and a public writing life becomes more and more private.
There is also, looming quietly throughout, the poignant recognition of how overlooked Melville's writings were during his lifetime, and how he never lived to witness the revivification and exuberant embrace of the works that he poured himself into.
This is a strong book, an enjoyable read and highly recommended for anyone interested in learning more about the pulse of Melville's life and times.
I found this book absorbing throughout. Despite having limited testimony to draw from (through journals, letters or other remembrances), I feel that Delbanco succeeds at fleshing out the contours of Melville's unique life. From the gusto and unhinged expansiveness of Melville's early writings to the circumscribed, poignant restraint of his final novel, "Billy Budd", we're given glimpses here into the life events that may've most profoundly shaped his transformations as a writer.
Delbanco examines how the shock waves of major events (the 1848 revolutions, the Compromise of 1850, the fracturing of the Whig and Democratic parties largely over the issue of slavery, the Civil War, the ascendance of Darwin's theory of evolution, of industrialization and more) may've impacted Melville personally. Delbanco richly details how the New York City that Melville was born into in 1819 was practically medieval, while the one in which he died in 1891, was essentially modern. He also gives us a sense of Melville's private family life, inferring enough to help us sense the contours of his domestic realm.
There's a sense of tragedy, never too far away, in Melville's life. There are the personal tragedies (especially with losing several children prematurely, one to suicide). We get a sense in the book of how the grieving that Melville experienced after these deaths found some oblique expression in the late works "Clarel" and especially "Billy Budd".
Delbanco presents us with various forms of crises of faith that Melville may've been subjected to throughout his years and gives us a sense of how he attempted to meet these challenges: sometimes with resignation, sometimes bitterness, sometimes just registering the absurd condition of human life with a wryness or tenderness. But he continues to write throughout, even while prose turns to verse and a public writing life becomes more and more private.
There is also, looming quietly throughout, the poignant recognition of how overlooked Melville's writings were during his lifetime, and how he never lived to witness the revivification and exuberant embrace of the works that he poured himself into.
This is a strong book, an enjoyable read and highly recommended for anyone interested in learning more about the pulse of Melville's life and times.
August 9, 2020
I first noticed Andrew Delbanco in the CNN documentary "Ivory Tower." He foretold of the day when higher education will look much different than it does now, predicting an economic bubble that will burst. He teaches at Columbia, and he's so forthright, and his voice so clear, and with an education that seemed to surround him like the golden flame of Achilles, I just wanted to take any class he taught. So when I started listening to this master work on the American writer I love so much, I was like, "I think I've heard this voice before." I went back to Ivory Tower, and I was right. It was the same person.
My wife and I visited Arrowhead last year, and the guide was decent and the tour lovely. I sensed he may have been intimidated that I taught Melville and my self-professed "expertise" in American Literature of the mid 19th century. But I'm sure he wasn't bothered at all. But in my ignorance, so much of what I had ignored in Melville, I found in Delbanco's brilliant work of this deep soul and this deep diver. My "mastery" of Melville had been limited to "Moby Dick" and "Bartleby" and his friendship to Nathaniel Hawthorne. (See my review of the Hawthorne biography). But Delbanco opened new channels of his earlier work, that I had glimpsed, and works now that are one my "Must read list" like Billy Budd.
Delbanco does a splendid job of storytelling, weaving the rapidly changing world of America in the 19th century, of New York, of New England, of Melville's works, his friendships and his family, and of insightful illumination of all of his works, major and minor.
New insights into his marriage, into the rocky but essential friendship with the emotionally distant Hawthorne, the contrasting nature of Whitman, and some speculation of his sexual nature and homosexuality (for which this is no proof, but only speculation).
Unlike in Dickinson, we rarely get to know Melville as a real person. We are limited to what he thought of his marriage and his sons and family, in few letters remain. But Delbanco makes up for the missing pieces to find gems of what he felt in passages from his various works.
The book is a must read for lovers of Melville and American history and literature. The pacing is brisk and witty, and the illumination of Melville's work is brilliant. In my new lectures of Melville, now held remotely, lol, I will be citing Delbanco. A great bio.
My wife and I visited Arrowhead last year, and the guide was decent and the tour lovely. I sensed he may have been intimidated that I taught Melville and my self-professed "expertise" in American Literature of the mid 19th century. But I'm sure he wasn't bothered at all. But in my ignorance, so much of what I had ignored in Melville, I found in Delbanco's brilliant work of this deep soul and this deep diver. My "mastery" of Melville had been limited to "Moby Dick" and "Bartleby" and his friendship to Nathaniel Hawthorne. (See my review of the Hawthorne biography). But Delbanco opened new channels of his earlier work, that I had glimpsed, and works now that are one my "Must read list" like Billy Budd.
Delbanco does a splendid job of storytelling, weaving the rapidly changing world of America in the 19th century, of New York, of New England, of Melville's works, his friendships and his family, and of insightful illumination of all of his works, major and minor.
New insights into his marriage, into the rocky but essential friendship with the emotionally distant Hawthorne, the contrasting nature of Whitman, and some speculation of his sexual nature and homosexuality (for which this is no proof, but only speculation).
Unlike in Dickinson, we rarely get to know Melville as a real person. We are limited to what he thought of his marriage and his sons and family, in few letters remain. But Delbanco makes up for the missing pieces to find gems of what he felt in passages from his various works.
The book is a must read for lovers of Melville and American history and literature. The pacing is brisk and witty, and the illumination of Melville's work is brilliant. In my new lectures of Melville, now held remotely, lol, I will be citing Delbanco. A great bio.
September 22, 2024
As an MA English graduate student at NYU back in the early 90’s there was nothing that better illustrated my absurd plight than the poorly illuminated stacks at Bobst Library in the American literature section where aisles of Melville criticism languished unread on shelves, seemingly imitating the colossal pile of dead letters mentioned in one of Melville’s iconic novellas, Bartleby, The Scrivener. Over thirty years later, I can still smell the foxing dusty decaying leaves and buckram rebound bindings with weighty, self-important titles like Melville’s Conception of God. I vowed never to fall prey to this fawning Melville idolatry.
Fast forward more than three decades. As I type this review, I pull some of the more important titles from the self-curated shelves nestled in a maple bookcase, my Melville and Maritime bookcase, the one I handmade with custom measurements so as to insure that the top shelf could hold a slightly oversized edition of Benito Cereno published by the Nonesuch Press in 1926, just as the Melville Renaissance was in full swing, imitating a tsunami that would reach a high water mark with the iconic Random House edition of a couple of years later. The Great American novel had languished in obscurity since the mixed but largely unenthusiastic reviews it received upon publication in 1851; Beginning with the publication of the 1930 Random House edition, Moby-Dick or the Whale would never be out of print again.
Few authors throughout world history have a more valid beef over being misunderstood and marginalized in their own lifetimes than Herman Melville. Not only did he write the proto-Modernist classic where his effusive prose places him among the great inventive stylists throughout literary history, his allusions and themes remain as relevant today as when they were initially overlooked by critics mired in the prejudices of their own era. He also—of course--wrote two of the greatest novellas—both mentioned above--to ever appear in any language. One highlights America’s inability to adequately confront slavery and race relations while the other is—arguably—the greatest tale of a nonentity everyman, an indictment of white-collar drudgery and a callous system that exploits a clerk class as if they were but whale blubber being heated in a vat. These two shorter works are as precise and measured as Moby-Dick is florid, meandering, and effusive. In short, Melville was an absolute master of multiple literary styles.
Then there the manuscript discovered posthumously, almost by happenstance, in a cookie tin on his wife’s desk, that “early” critics then pored over and edited to the best of their abilities and which is now known as Billy Budd, Sailor, a short novel that Thomas Mann, shortly before his death, called “the most beautiful story in the world.”* It has been made into an opera by Benjamin Britten and influenced one of the great movies of all-time, Beau Travail by Claire Denis. No student of American literature or world literature can escape the influence of this work. No film student can escape the effect of his work. No opera aficionado can either.
Yet, despite writing the above enduring classics—and others which also have a great deal of merit—Melville lived the last thirty years of his life in anonymity, earning virtually nothing as a writer, reduced to a day job as a customs inspector on the piers of Manhattan while living in a house paid for with his wife’s family money. When he died, he warranted a death notice, one of which had his name misspelled, not a full obituary.
As a result of Melville’s relative obscurity, there is a paucity of details about his life. This makes some of the biographies an exercise in patience, particularly the early dated ones. Hershal Parker’s two volume tome appeared in the late 1990’s and is the most expansive and comprehensive, if also in contention as the most soporific. In Parker’s biography, Melville’s larger than life legacy is reduced to painstakingly precise academic details that will dissuade all but the most intrepid Melville acolytes. No detail is glossed over, but a sleepy reader will inevitably miss much due to the dry presentation.
So, where should a curious reader reach to learn more about Melville’s life, work, and times? For those who want a quick one-sitting introduction, there is Elizabeth Hardwick’s contribution to the Penguin Lives series, Herman Melville. It is a great place to start. For those who want a bit more scrutiny and detail, Andrew Delbanco’s 2005 Melville: His World and Work (2005) is the obvious go-to. It not only is comparatively recent—incorporating the best of criticism from past eras—but also wears many hats; Delbanco seamlessly shifts from a biographical perspective to an analysis of the United States in perhaps its most fraught era, the years approaching the Civil War. He seamlessly incorporates an analysis of Melville’s era and allusions to race relations into the biographical narrative. He is eminently qualified to do so as the Director of American Studies at Columbia University, bringing a bygone era to life on virtually every page.
Even more impressive is his tenacious ability to parse through so much literary criticism on Melville—both the critical reception of individual works as well as how perspective of these works has morphed over more than a century since his death—extracting real gems that elucidate difficult works like Pierre, or the Ambiguities, as well as putting forth his own observations with lively prose that never strays into the realm of intellectual academic jargon. Delbanco’s books are eminently readable and not to be relegated to dusty rarely traversed stacks in university libraries; one reason Knopf published this book and not some obscure academic press.
Melville: His World and Work should be required reading for true Melville fans as well as New Yorkers and New Englanders, locals where he largely split his years. The vibrancy of Melville’s life, works, era and his enduring legacy are given the attention they deserve. The book is both for serious Melville fans and scholars as well as the curious, who may just want to use the book as a point of departure to learn more about the world in which he lived. Either way, one can get lost in this engrossing tale of a man larger than life and forgotten in his lifetime whose enduring influence is perhaps greater than any writer in the English language since William Shakespeare.
*Delbanco, Melville: His World and Work, pg. 321.
--This review is dedicated to my High School English teacher, Dr. Pamela Sheldon, who first introduced me to Bartleby, the Scrivener.
Fast forward more than three decades. As I type this review, I pull some of the more important titles from the self-curated shelves nestled in a maple bookcase, my Melville and Maritime bookcase, the one I handmade with custom measurements so as to insure that the top shelf could hold a slightly oversized edition of Benito Cereno published by the Nonesuch Press in 1926, just as the Melville Renaissance was in full swing, imitating a tsunami that would reach a high water mark with the iconic Random House edition of a couple of years later. The Great American novel had languished in obscurity since the mixed but largely unenthusiastic reviews it received upon publication in 1851; Beginning with the publication of the 1930 Random House edition, Moby-Dick or the Whale would never be out of print again.
Few authors throughout world history have a more valid beef over being misunderstood and marginalized in their own lifetimes than Herman Melville. Not only did he write the proto-Modernist classic where his effusive prose places him among the great inventive stylists throughout literary history, his allusions and themes remain as relevant today as when they were initially overlooked by critics mired in the prejudices of their own era. He also—of course--wrote two of the greatest novellas—both mentioned above--to ever appear in any language. One highlights America’s inability to adequately confront slavery and race relations while the other is—arguably—the greatest tale of a nonentity everyman, an indictment of white-collar drudgery and a callous system that exploits a clerk class as if they were but whale blubber being heated in a vat. These two shorter works are as precise and measured as Moby-Dick is florid, meandering, and effusive. In short, Melville was an absolute master of multiple literary styles.
Then there the manuscript discovered posthumously, almost by happenstance, in a cookie tin on his wife’s desk, that “early” critics then pored over and edited to the best of their abilities and which is now known as Billy Budd, Sailor, a short novel that Thomas Mann, shortly before his death, called “the most beautiful story in the world.”* It has been made into an opera by Benjamin Britten and influenced one of the great movies of all-time, Beau Travail by Claire Denis. No student of American literature or world literature can escape the influence of this work. No film student can escape the effect of his work. No opera aficionado can either.
Yet, despite writing the above enduring classics—and others which also have a great deal of merit—Melville lived the last thirty years of his life in anonymity, earning virtually nothing as a writer, reduced to a day job as a customs inspector on the piers of Manhattan while living in a house paid for with his wife’s family money. When he died, he warranted a death notice, one of which had his name misspelled, not a full obituary.
As a result of Melville’s relative obscurity, there is a paucity of details about his life. This makes some of the biographies an exercise in patience, particularly the early dated ones. Hershal Parker’s two volume tome appeared in the late 1990’s and is the most expansive and comprehensive, if also in contention as the most soporific. In Parker’s biography, Melville’s larger than life legacy is reduced to painstakingly precise academic details that will dissuade all but the most intrepid Melville acolytes. No detail is glossed over, but a sleepy reader will inevitably miss much due to the dry presentation.
So, where should a curious reader reach to learn more about Melville’s life, work, and times? For those who want a quick one-sitting introduction, there is Elizabeth Hardwick’s contribution to the Penguin Lives series, Herman Melville. It is a great place to start. For those who want a bit more scrutiny and detail, Andrew Delbanco’s 2005 Melville: His World and Work (2005) is the obvious go-to. It not only is comparatively recent—incorporating the best of criticism from past eras—but also wears many hats; Delbanco seamlessly shifts from a biographical perspective to an analysis of the United States in perhaps its most fraught era, the years approaching the Civil War. He seamlessly incorporates an analysis of Melville’s era and allusions to race relations into the biographical narrative. He is eminently qualified to do so as the Director of American Studies at Columbia University, bringing a bygone era to life on virtually every page.
Even more impressive is his tenacious ability to parse through so much literary criticism on Melville—both the critical reception of individual works as well as how perspective of these works has morphed over more than a century since his death—extracting real gems that elucidate difficult works like Pierre, or the Ambiguities, as well as putting forth his own observations with lively prose that never strays into the realm of intellectual academic jargon. Delbanco’s books are eminently readable and not to be relegated to dusty rarely traversed stacks in university libraries; one reason Knopf published this book and not some obscure academic press.
Melville: His World and Work should be required reading for true Melville fans as well as New Yorkers and New Englanders, locals where he largely split his years. The vibrancy of Melville’s life, works, era and his enduring legacy are given the attention they deserve. The book is both for serious Melville fans and scholars as well as the curious, who may just want to use the book as a point of departure to learn more about the world in which he lived. Either way, one can get lost in this engrossing tale of a man larger than life and forgotten in his lifetime whose enduring influence is perhaps greater than any writer in the English language since William Shakespeare.
*Delbanco, Melville: His World and Work, pg. 321.
--This review is dedicated to my High School English teacher, Dr. Pamela Sheldon, who first introduced me to Bartleby, the Scrivener.
September 13, 2021
Delbanco spins out some great interpretations of nearly all of Melville's work, except for some of the poetry. He discusses, with great insight, not just "Moby-Dick" and "Billy Budd," books which he feels characterize Melville's volcano of words in the former and a more lean prose in the latter; he also looks carefully at the short stories, with particularly great interpretations of "Bartleby" and "Benito Cerrino." His account of Melville's experience in the Berkshires while writing "Moby-Dick" proves particularly compelling, as he describes the effects that visits to the nearby Hawthorne home had on the author of a book that has, Delbanco writes, "a continually renewed presentness." He refers to one of the best readers of the novel, the novelist Walker Percy, saying "that Melville seemed to know in advance the great secret of the twentieth century--that 'only the haters seem alive.'"
This comment of Percy's, from his novel "The Moviegoer," could be, of course, the too-open secret of our nation at the present time, one perhaps not yet as filled with hate as the last century, but certainly one that mirrors the antebellum America that Delbanco also describes so well. He covers the work carefully and describes the times of Melville's life with bracing clarity. I recommend this book, which includes a great series of "Extracts" at the opening as a tribute to the Extracts of "Moby-Dick." Delbanco includes excerpts from intellectuals, writers, Mad Magazine and an episode from the 4th season of "The Sopranos" that shows a dinner scene in which "Billy Budd" is discussed. It's a worthwhile and witty way to begin a book I highly recommend and read in two days.
This comment of Percy's, from his novel "The Moviegoer," could be, of course, the too-open secret of our nation at the present time, one perhaps not yet as filled with hate as the last century, but certainly one that mirrors the antebellum America that Delbanco also describes so well. He covers the work carefully and describes the times of Melville's life with bracing clarity. I recommend this book, which includes a great series of "Extracts" at the opening as a tribute to the Extracts of "Moby-Dick." Delbanco includes excerpts from intellectuals, writers, Mad Magazine and an episode from the 4th season of "The Sopranos" that shows a dinner scene in which "Billy Budd" is discussed. It's a worthwhile and witty way to begin a book I highly recommend and read in two days.
June 30, 2010
A fascinating, readable, and insightful work of synthetic and original scholarship. Delbanco obviously did a lot of reading, covering as he does all the primary material as well as large swathes of the secondary critical and historical material to place Melville's work in cultural and historical context. I enjoyed this work immensely, but then again I enjoy Melville's ouevre immensely as well. My only slight quibble is that Delbanc, during a discussion of the beliefs of American Transcendentalists in a deity, takes some of their writings out of context, thus glossing over (albeit subtly) some intricacies of the internal debates over philosophy and a belief in the divine within the Unitarian church, a debate which forms the basis of non-Emersonian (at least) Transcendentalist philosophy in that area.
March 21, 2024
Page 253 my book Nathaniel Hawthorne on Melville
Melville can neither believe, not be comfortable in his unbelief.
We are given an entertaining and thoughtful biography of Herman Melville’s life based mostly on his writings and the time period in which he lived. Of course, the centrepiece is Moby Dick – but the author covers his other works as well.
Melville comes across as a tormented soul – never quite fitting in with those around him – but expressing his multiple visions in his writings.
He had a fraught life. His father was a poor businessman and died broke and incoherent when Melville was 13 years old. Other family members had to come to the financial aid of the family. Melville’s mother, Maria, lived to the age of 80 and is portrayed as a dominant personality, living with Herman and his family for long periods of time. His oldest child, Malcolm, likely committed suicide at the age of 18.
Melville does not come across as a family man. It would appear he spent considerable time away from them traveling – or when at home, sequestered himself for most of the day alone in his writing room. The author suggests that his wife Lizzie (Elizabeth) thought more than once of packing it in and leaving Herman to live with her family.
Melville had an intense relationship with the author Nathaniel Hawthorne during the time he was writing Moby Dick, but this seems to have dissipated after a few years.
As for writing, until Moby Dick, his novels were straight-forward narratives based on his voyages to the South Seas. “Typee” and “Omoo” were embellished stories of sea voyages with flirtations with native girls in the South Pacific. Some of the descriptions were somewhat risqué for the era – which served to promote sales. There was still an ambiguity in these early writings. Melville was becoming a master at multiple perspectives.
Page 96
Melville [was] standing between two fantasies of the Western mind – the Noble Savage and the Enlightened Emissary of Europe – while giving his allegiance to neither.
Melville moved out of the genre – as Moby Dick is anything but straight-forward. So he poured out Moby Dick - an introspective tour de force far ahead of its time. It is a sea voyage with a stream of consciousness and an existentialist angst. There is Shakespearean word play in abundance. It is also ponderous with plenty of elongated tangents.
Page 145-46
Most striking was what happened to Ishmael. Around the twenty-fifth chapter he fractures into multiple voices contending with one another as if taking turns in a stage play and soon the “I’ of the book is telling us things he cannot possibly know… a mobile consciousness, extracted from his own singular identity, then multiplies and redistributed into the mind of every man aboard.
Page 146
He had invented a new kind of writing… anticipated the kind of modernist prose that expresses the author’s stream of consciousness. Melville was the first American to write with such outrageous freedom – as spontaneous and self-surprising as the human mind itself.
It starts with “Call me Ishmael” but after several chapters Ishmael disappears, and in enter Ahab and the white whale – perhaps the most mystifying and perplexing figures in all of literature. Who are they?
Page 162 the crew of the Pequod at work extracting and cooking blubber from the whale Moby Dick, chapter 96
As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooners wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round all her sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander’s soul.
Page 166
[Ahab’s] presence transforms everyone and everything around him.
Ahab has been compared with fanatical dictators/leaders possessed with their singular causes, from Adolf Hitler to George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin.
The book is loaded with vast descriptions of the sea voyage ranging from beautiful to gore, from peaceful tranquility to mayhem.
Melville wrote “Pierre” after Moby Dick – and this is when his sanity started to come into question. As the author stated, it is a very inward-looking book with neurotic personalities. It was soon after, that Melville’s in-laws sent him on a solo vacation to Europe and the Middle East (Egypt and Palestine) hoping that he would regain his composure. Unfortunately, Melville recorded little of his trip.
But this was followed up by some remarkable short stories, namely “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno”, both very different. The biographer is gifted at relating them to Melville’s time period. Melville worked over 10 years on his poem “Clarel” which is hardly known today, but “Billy Budd” was published posthumously and has become a standard feature of the Melville collection and made into an opera by Benjamin Britten.
This is a first-rate analysis of Melville and his work - and of their strengths and weaknesses. Of the biographies I have read of Melville this ranks very highly.
Page 175
Moby Dick was the work of a twentieth-century imagination. [In Captain Ahab] Melville had invented a suicidal charismatic who denounces as a blasphemer anyone who would deflect him from his purpose – an invention that shows no sign of becoming obsolete anytime soon.
Melville can neither believe, not be comfortable in his unbelief.
We are given an entertaining and thoughtful biography of Herman Melville’s life based mostly on his writings and the time period in which he lived. Of course, the centrepiece is Moby Dick – but the author covers his other works as well.
Melville comes across as a tormented soul – never quite fitting in with those around him – but expressing his multiple visions in his writings.
He had a fraught life. His father was a poor businessman and died broke and incoherent when Melville was 13 years old. Other family members had to come to the financial aid of the family. Melville’s mother, Maria, lived to the age of 80 and is portrayed as a dominant personality, living with Herman and his family for long periods of time. His oldest child, Malcolm, likely committed suicide at the age of 18.
Melville does not come across as a family man. It would appear he spent considerable time away from them traveling – or when at home, sequestered himself for most of the day alone in his writing room. The author suggests that his wife Lizzie (Elizabeth) thought more than once of packing it in and leaving Herman to live with her family.
Melville had an intense relationship with the author Nathaniel Hawthorne during the time he was writing Moby Dick, but this seems to have dissipated after a few years.
As for writing, until Moby Dick, his novels were straight-forward narratives based on his voyages to the South Seas. “Typee” and “Omoo” were embellished stories of sea voyages with flirtations with native girls in the South Pacific. Some of the descriptions were somewhat risqué for the era – which served to promote sales. There was still an ambiguity in these early writings. Melville was becoming a master at multiple perspectives.
Page 96
Melville [was] standing between two fantasies of the Western mind – the Noble Savage and the Enlightened Emissary of Europe – while giving his allegiance to neither.
Melville moved out of the genre – as Moby Dick is anything but straight-forward. So he poured out Moby Dick - an introspective tour de force far ahead of its time. It is a sea voyage with a stream of consciousness and an existentialist angst. There is Shakespearean word play in abundance. It is also ponderous with plenty of elongated tangents.
Page 145-46
Most striking was what happened to Ishmael. Around the twenty-fifth chapter he fractures into multiple voices contending with one another as if taking turns in a stage play and soon the “I’ of the book is telling us things he cannot possibly know… a mobile consciousness, extracted from his own singular identity, then multiplies and redistributed into the mind of every man aboard.
Page 146
He had invented a new kind of writing… anticipated the kind of modernist prose that expresses the author’s stream of consciousness. Melville was the first American to write with such outrageous freedom – as spontaneous and self-surprising as the human mind itself.
It starts with “Call me Ishmael” but after several chapters Ishmael disappears, and in enter Ahab and the white whale – perhaps the most mystifying and perplexing figures in all of literature. Who are they?
Page 162 the crew of the Pequod at work extracting and cooking blubber from the whale Moby Dick, chapter 96
As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooners wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round all her sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander’s soul.
Page 166
[Ahab’s] presence transforms everyone and everything around him.
Ahab has been compared with fanatical dictators/leaders possessed with their singular causes, from Adolf Hitler to George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin.
The book is loaded with vast descriptions of the sea voyage ranging from beautiful to gore, from peaceful tranquility to mayhem.
Melville wrote “Pierre” after Moby Dick – and this is when his sanity started to come into question. As the author stated, it is a very inward-looking book with neurotic personalities. It was soon after, that Melville’s in-laws sent him on a solo vacation to Europe and the Middle East (Egypt and Palestine) hoping that he would regain his composure. Unfortunately, Melville recorded little of his trip.
But this was followed up by some remarkable short stories, namely “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno”, both very different. The biographer is gifted at relating them to Melville’s time period. Melville worked over 10 years on his poem “Clarel” which is hardly known today, but “Billy Budd” was published posthumously and has become a standard feature of the Melville collection and made into an opera by Benjamin Britten.
This is a first-rate analysis of Melville and his work - and of their strengths and weaknesses. Of the biographies I have read of Melville this ranks very highly.
Page 175
Moby Dick was the work of a twentieth-century imagination. [In Captain Ahab] Melville had invented a suicidal charismatic who denounces as a blasphemer anyone who would deflect him from his purpose – an invention that shows no sign of becoming obsolete anytime soon.
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