Herman Melville (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

The second volume of Hershel Parker’s biography of Herman Melville covers the period from the publication of Melville’s masterpiece, Moby Dick, in 1851 to the author’s death in 1891. Enthusiastic readers of Melville’s first two books, Typee: A Peek at Polynesian Life (1846) and Omoo: A Narrative of Adventure in the South Seas (1847), simply could not forgive the author for foisting upon them the deeper and more difficult novels that followed. As a result Melville’s last four decades are years of increasing neglect by the reading public and of a deepening sense of his failure among family members keenly aware that neither was he a good provider. Parker captures the poignancy of a man determined to pursue relentlessly his literary art when almost no one recognized the greatness so obvious to his admirers today.

Parker writes as a biographer, not a critic, and in discussing Melville’s works is largely content to describe the reactions of unenlightened reviewers to his books. An important exception is his treatment of the long philosophical poem “Clarel” (1876), which he analyzes carefully with emphasis on the explication of a character named Vine, patterned upon Nathaniel Hawthorne, with whom Melville developed a close but short-lived friendship in 1850 and 1851.

This biographer knows his subject thoroughly and writes well, but he expends far too much of his attention on nondescript persons who were related to Melville but almost totally unrelated to his creative life. In the process Parker dilutes much of what is truly valuable in his study. This second volume, like its predecessor, would have been a better book had its author reduced its nearly one thousand pages by a full half.

Sources for Further Study

The Atlantic. CCLXXIX, January, 1997, p. 96.

Boston Globe. December 15, 1996, p. N16.

Library Journal. CXXI, September 15, 1996, p. 69.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. December 15, 1996, p. 8.

The New York Times Book Review. CI, December 22, 1996, p. 12.

The New York Times Magazine. December 15, 1996, p. 60.

Publishers Weekly. CCXLIII, October 14, 1996, p. 70.

The Spectator. CCLXXVIII, January 4, 1997, p. 32.

The Times Literary Supplement. January 10, 1997, p. 3.

The Wall Street Journal. November 22, 1996, p. A12.

The Washington Post Book World. XXVI, December 1, 1996, p. 8.