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Mysteries, December 2008–January 2009
Maritime literature, January–March 2009 Melville read-through, part I, Typee—White-Jacket, December 2009–January 2010 Whirlwind tour of Russian literature, February–May 2010 Epistolary literature, July 2009–June 2010 Melville read-through, part II, July–September 2010
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Well, I’ve come to the end! Let me state the usual for a project recap: I did not do as much as I wanted, and I still have lots more I want to read! (Even more Melville: I did not read every single poem or short story, and hardly any of his letters.) But…I [...] For a novella so heavy on the psychology, it should perhaps not be surprising that the narrator of Billy Budd spends a lot of time describing people’s eyes. The whole aspect of the three main characters and several of the minor ones is described in minute detail. This is another instance of Melville’s focus [...] After Clarel, Herman Melville published only two books of poetry, both privately, before his death in 1891, but he also worked on a piece of prose that would be found among his papers and remain unpublished until 1924, during his revival. Billy Budd was begun around 1886 and recalls much about Melville’s earlier work. [...] Reading all of a writer’s work is super awesome and rewarding not just for the insight into a writer’s “project” or even the excellent reading experience itself, but also for the “Easter eggs,” I’ll call them—the unexpected shiny objects that glint back at you only if you’ve been exploring. Melville recycles so much he’s [...] If anyone else had ever read Clarel, I would ask you to guess which of the many characters, major and secondary, I liked best. I think you would get it right, but since Clarel is, if not unreadable, certainly unread, I will tell you that it is Mortmain, the Swede who never “relaxes in [...] Clarel may be beautiful, in part, in its way, but the ground it covers is not. Melville started his career practically as a travel writer, recounting stories of some of the most beautiful places on earth. Here, in the Holy Land, he describes a desolate, alien wasteland. Clarel might have been a pilgrim to [...] Amateur Reader, fellow pilgrim through Clarel, noted last week that Melville’s poetry is “often less poetic than his prose!” No joke! Walter Bezanson’s historical and critical note to the poem similarly explains, “Once we face up to the idea that Melville’s poetry is not an extension of the lyric vein of his famous novels [...] After writing The Confidence-Man, Melville was worn out physically and mentally, and his family was concerned. His father-in-law financed a vacation for him—a trip to the Holy Land. According to Walter Bezanson’s historical and critical note to the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Clarel (which truly is essential, though if you read it you may feel [...] While I will be addressing one of Melville’s poems in a big way next week, that still leaves a lot undiscussed, not least of which is Battle-Pieces, and Aspects of the War. Amateur Reader wrote about it earlier in the week (along with other Melville poetry). I still have not finished the collection, and [...] Moby-Dick is well known for its many doubles, but they’re elsewhere as well; twinning things seems to have been almost unavoidable for Melville. The major twin in The Confidence-Man is confidence and distrust. Everything comes down to confidence or distrust. Whether passengers give to a beggar is a sign of whether they have confidence [...] |
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