What do you think?
Rate this book
Hero, Captain, and Stranger: Male Friendship, Social Critique, and Literary Form in the Sea Novels of Herman Melville
A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
20 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 7, 2017
A valuable work of literary criticism, shedding much-needed light on aspects of Moby-Dick which are too often brushed under the rug.
March 16, 2021
As soon as I saw this title, I hoped that this could be the book I was looking for -- rather than a biography desperate for fresh information about a private writer, a contextual history of Melville's philosophy of redemption. Then I saw the publication date and wondered if it wouldn't seem dated -- wasn't there a lot of queer studies to come after 1986? However, this is an important book to me. It helped me make sense of Billy Budd, which I had dismissed as too tragic. But it also helped me connect a lot of dots that I've been doodling, such as the relationship between form and patriarchy, between popularity and selfhood, between the hero's journey and complicity in the status quo. Although these essays were specific to Melville's era of failed attempts to end slavery, downward mobility, strict gender roles, and before the creation of homo & heterosexuality, so many lines spoke to me today as I think about contemporary hybrid, difficult, nonconfessional, provocative writing by queers.
A few notable ideas: "The catalog of pleasures, like the rhapsody or improvisation on a theme, become techniques for working against the fundamental structure of the novel, action > climax, as courtship > marriage." I have never heard this point made, that a non-productive, non-conclusive form is queer because it does not step through the rom-com benchmarks on the way to producing a baby and nuclear family. It reminds me of The Queer Art of Failure, though. That the ways that most of Melville's work failed to secure an audience, and his own failure at finding emotional support, are queer failings and resistances. This is how Martin explains the digressive form, which is so often opposed to "craft," a code word for tightly plotted, empathetic, accessible.
Maybe it's because I avoided literature classes about "the novel" that this genealogy of hero strikes me as remarkable. Martin frames Moby-Dick (and others) as contending with two compulsive story lines: the fall of Eden and its impossible recovery (reminding me of the search for a lost city of gold in the Americas) and a Faustian bargain to acquire knowledge. In subverting these dominant forms, Melville is looking for a way out of the horrors of colonialism, Christianity. His project is treated as worthy but almost unimaginable. Manhood and whiteness itself are pilloried and what is left? Where is masculinity without patriarchy? Where is America if not in white supremacy? These are questions that don't seem seriously taken up (as far as I know) until the Harlem Renaissance and in mainstream literary fiction, still don't seem resolved now.
As much as I learned about Melville and the forming of the American Novel (tm) in the mid-19th century, I also read this book as a roadmap for my own projects. Circular plots, digressiveness, non-reproductive relationships, anti-exploitation of natural resources, non-human characters, etc.
A few notable ideas: "The catalog of pleasures, like the rhapsody or improvisation on a theme, become techniques for working against the fundamental structure of the novel, action > climax, as courtship > marriage." I have never heard this point made, that a non-productive, non-conclusive form is queer because it does not step through the rom-com benchmarks on the way to producing a baby and nuclear family. It reminds me of The Queer Art of Failure, though. That the ways that most of Melville's work failed to secure an audience, and his own failure at finding emotional support, are queer failings and resistances. This is how Martin explains the digressive form, which is so often opposed to "craft," a code word for tightly plotted, empathetic, accessible.
Maybe it's because I avoided literature classes about "the novel" that this genealogy of hero strikes me as remarkable. Martin frames Moby-Dick (and others) as contending with two compulsive story lines: the fall of Eden and its impossible recovery (reminding me of the search for a lost city of gold in the Americas) and a Faustian bargain to acquire knowledge. In subverting these dominant forms, Melville is looking for a way out of the horrors of colonialism, Christianity. His project is treated as worthy but almost unimaginable. Manhood and whiteness itself are pilloried and what is left? Where is masculinity without patriarchy? Where is America if not in white supremacy? These are questions that don't seem seriously taken up (as far as I know) until the Harlem Renaissance and in mainstream literary fiction, still don't seem resolved now.
As much as I learned about Melville and the forming of the American Novel (tm) in the mid-19th century, I also read this book as a roadmap for my own projects. Circular plots, digressiveness, non-reproductive relationships, anti-exploitation of natural resources, non-human characters, etc.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews