Moby-Dick (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (95 page)

What then is Moby Dick?—He is the deepest blood-being of the white race. He is our deepest blood-nature.

And he is hunted, hunted, hunted by the maniacal fanaticism of our white mental consciousness. We want to hunt him down. To subject him to our will. And in this maniacal conscious hunt of ourselves we get dark races and pale to help us, red, yellow, and black, east and west, Quaker and fire-worshipper, we get them all to help us in this ghastly maniacal hunt which is our doom and our suicide.

—from his
Studies in Classic

American Literature
(1923)

 

Mr. Melville cannot do without savages so he makes half of his dramatis personae wild Indians, Malays, and other untamed humanities.

—December 6, 1851

 

[Ahab’s] ravings, and the ravings of some of the tributary characters, and the ravings of Mr. Melville himself, meant for eloquent declamation, are such as would justify a writ
de lunatico
against all the parties.

—January 1852

 

Mr. Melville is evidently trying to ascertain how far the public will consent to be imposed upon. He is gauging, at once, our gullibility and our patience. Having written one or two passable extravagancies, he has considered himself privileged to produce as many more as he pleases, increasingly exaggerated and increasingly dull. . . . Mr. Melville never writes naturally. His sentiment is forced, his wit is forced, and his enthusiasm is forced. And in his attempts to display to the utmost extent his powers of “fine writing,” he has succeeded, we think, beyond his most sanguine expectations.

The truth is, Mr. Melville has survived his reputation. If he had been contented with writing one or two books, he might have been famous, but his vanity has destroyed all his chances for immortality, or even of a good name with his own generation. For, in sober truth, Mr. Melville’s vanity is immeasurable. He will either be first among the book-making tribe, or he will be nowhere. He will center all attention upon himself, or he will abandon the field of literature at once. From this morbid self-esteem, coupled with a most unbounded love of notoriety, spring all Mr. Melville’s efforts, all his rhetorical contortions, all his declamatory abuse of society, all his inflated sentiment, and all his insinuating licentiousness.

Typee
was undoubtedly a very proper book for the parlor, and we have seen it in company with
Omoo
, lying upon tables from which Byron was strictly prohibited, although we were unable to fathom those niceties of logic by which one was patronized, and the other proscribed. But these were Mr. Melville’s triumphs.
Redburn
was a stupid failure,
Mardi
was hopelessly dull,
White-Jacket
was worse than either; and, in fact, it was such a very bad book, that, until the appearance of
Moby Dick
, we had set it down as the very ultimatum of weakness to which its author could attain. It seems, however, that we were mistaken.

We have no intention of quoting any passages just now from
Moby Dick
. The London journals, we understand, “have bestowed upon the work many flattering notices,” and we should be loath to combat such high authority. But if there are any of our readers who wish to find examples of bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English, we will take the liberty of recommending to them this precious volume of Mr. Melville’s.

—January 1852

I have a sort of sea-feeling here in the country, now that the ground is all covered with snow. I look out of my window in the morning when I rise as I would out of a porthole of a ship in the Atlantic. My room seems a ship’s cabin; and at nights when I wake up and hear the wind shrieking, I almost fancy there is too much sail on the house, and I had better go on the roof and rig in the chimney.

Do you want to know how I pass my time? I rise at eight—thereabouts—and go to my barn—say good morning to the horse and give him his breakfast. (It goes to my heart to give him a cold one, but it can’t be helped.) Then, pay a visit to my cow—cut up a pumpkin or two for her, and stand by to see her eat it—for it’s a pleasant sight to see a cow move her jaws—she does it so mildly and with such a sanctity.

My own breakfast over, I go to my workroom and light my fire—then spread my M.S.S. on the table—take one business squint at it, and fall to with a will. At 2-½ P.M. I hear a preconcerted knock at my door, which (by request) continues till I rise and go to the door, which seems to wean me effectively from my writing, however interested I may be.

My friends the horse and cow then demand their dinner—and I go and give it them. My own dinner over, I rig my sleigh and with my mittens and rubbers start off for the village—and if it be a ‘Literary World’ day, great is the satisfaction thereof.

My evenings I spend in a sort of mesmeric state in my room—not being able to read—only now and then skimming over some large-printed book.

—from a letter to his close friend

Evert Duyckinck, editor of
The Literary World
, written from Melville’s farm, Arrowhead, in Pittsfield, Massashusetts (December 12, 1850)

The Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (and I was the merrier for it) when Crash! comes Moby-Dick himself (as you justly say) and reminds me of what I have been about for part of the last year or two. It is really and truly a surprising coincidence, to say the least. I make no doubt it is Moby-Dick himself, for there is no account of his capture after the sad fate of the Pequod about fourteen years ago.

—From a letter to Duyckinck in reference to the disaster of the whale ship
Ann Alexander
, from Arrowhead (November 9, 1851)

1. D. H. Lawrence saw
Moby-Dick
as an allegory of “the maniacal fanaticism of our white mental consciousness” trying to destroy what the whale represents. Given this reading of the novel, what would you say the whale represents?

2. Some critics have found the technical information about whales and whaling intrusive and in the way; or boring; or an example of Melville showing off. Are they right? How would one defend this material? Is
Moby-Dick
less a novel and more an allegory, or something else?

3. From the attitudes, worldviews, and values at play in
Moby-Dick
, would you say that Puritanism is an issue? Even aside from the occupation of whaling (which, after all, goes on elsewhere today), the novel is often felt to be quintessentially American. To see whether people who feel that way are right, you might ask yourself how a novel about whaling written by Joseph Conrad would be different.

4. What do you make of the whiteness of the whale?

The commentary about Melville is enormous. The works listed here are some of those helpful to the general reader, and they can also lead to more specialized study. It’s good to start with a solid, basic collection of essays about the author’s work that will illustrate the wide variety of topics and approaches.

Two editions of
Moby-Dick
contain much additional material.

 

Melville, Herman.
Moby-Dick.
Edited by Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, and G. Thomas Tanselle. First published in 1988 as vol. 6 of the Northwestern-Newberry edition of
The Writings of Herman Melville
. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001. The most important critical edition, part of the scholarly edition of Melville’s complete works, this volume has an editorial appendix with much information about the circumstances of publication and reception, as well as detailed notes on the establishment of an authoritative text.

 

——.
Moby-Dick.
Edited by Luther S. Mansfield and Howard P. Vincent. New York: Hendricks House, 1952. This earlier edition contains extensive “Explanatory Notes” that are valuable for understanding Melville’s use of his sources.

Higgins, Brian, and Hershel Parker. Introduction to their anthology
Critical Essays on Herman Melville’s
Moby-Dick. New York: G. K. Hall, 1992. A compact historical survey of Melville scholarship and criticism.

 

Hayes, Kevin J.
The Critical Response to Herman Melville’s
Moby-Dick. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. A more extended account of the history of Melville scholarship.

 

Selby, Nick, ed.
Herman Melville:
Moby-Dick. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Another important critical collection.

 

For ongoing reports about detailed scholarship, see the annual series
American Literary Scholarship
, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963 to the present. Each volume describes the work published two years earlier; there is a chapter on Melville.

Bryant, John, ed.
Companion to Melville Studies.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986.

 

Gale, Robert L.
A Herman Melville Encyclopedia.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995. This book is intended particularly for the general reader.

 

Kier, Kathleen E., ed.
A Melville Encyclopedia: The Novels.
Second edition; 2 vols. Troy, NY: Whitston, 1994.

 

Levine, Robert S., ed.
The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Hardwick, Elizabeth.
Herman Melville
. New York: Viking Press, 2000. A compact and graceful introduction to Melville’s life and work, intended for the general reader.

 

Howard, Leon.
Herman Melville: A Biography.
1951. Reprint: Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. An earlier life, still dependable.

 

Leyda, Jay, ed.
The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of Herman Melville.
2 vols. Reprint with supplement: New York: Gordian Press, 1969. An important gathering of documents relevant to Melville’s life and works.

 

Melville, Herman.
Correspondence.
Edited by Lynn Horth. Part of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition. Evanston, IL, and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and Newberry Library, 1993.

 

Parker, Herschel.
Herman Melville: A Biography.
2 vols. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, 2002. By far the longest, most detailed, and most authoritative biography.

 

Robertson-Lorant, Laurie.
Melville: A Biography.
New York: Clarkson Potter, 1996. A balanced and readable account.

Bickman, Martin, ed.
Approaches to Teaching Melville’s
Moby-Dick. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1985. Part of the MLA’s series
Approaches to Teaching Masterpieces of World Literature
; intended for teachers who are not experts in the novel, but useful for the general reader as a source of ideas and approaches.

 

Brodhead, Richard H., ed.
New Essays on
Moby-Dick. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

 

Bryant, John, and Robert Milder, eds.
Melville’s Evermoving Dawn: Centennial Essays.
Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997.

 

Jehlen, Myra, ed.
Herman Melville: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1994. Updates a Prentice-Hall collection edited by Richard Chase in 1962.

 

Hayford, Harrison, and Hershel Parker, eds. Moby-Dick
as Doubloon
. New York: W. W. Norton, 1970. Titled from chapter XCIX of the novel, in which members of the crew make different interpretations of the coin’s symbolism.

 

Higgins, Brian, and Hershel Parker, eds.
Critical Essays on Herman Melville’s
Moby-Dick. New York: G. K. Hall, 1992. A large collection, particularly useful for both the history and the character of the commentary. Among other fine articles, reprints the classic essay by Walter E. Bezanson, “Moby-Dick: Work of Art,” which first appeared in the Hillway-Mansfield collection noted below.

 

Hillway, Tyrus, and Luther S. Mansfield, eds. Moby-Dick:
Centennial Essays.
Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist University Press, 1953.

 

Stern, Milton R., ed.
Discussions of
Moby-Dick. Boston: Heath, 1960.

A great many books have been written about Melville, and a short list is bound to seem arbitrary. Most cited here are older works that have stood up well. There are many good later studies; given the large amount of work on Melville, they have tended to become more narrowly focused and specialized, and some are in the rhetoric of “postmodern” theory that can be confusing to nonspecialists. A reader should begin with a good essay collection, like that by

 

Higgins and Parker (see previous section), that will lead to longer works of interest.

 

Arvin, Newton.
Herman Melville.
New York: Sloane, 1960. Still one of the most perceptive and balanced general books, particularly good on Melville’s language.

 

Bryant, John.
Melville and Repose: The Rhetoric of Humor in the American Renaissance.
New York: Oxford, 1993. A careful study of a vital subject in
Moby-Dick
.