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FeaturesDecember 1996 Melville in the try-pots On Melville: A Biography by Laurie Robertson-Lorant & Herman Melville: A Biography, Volume I: 1819-1851 by Hershel Parker
If the acutest sage be often at his wits’ end to
understand living character, shall those who are not
sages expect to run and read character in those mere
phantoms which flit along a page, like shadows along a
wall?
—Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man How shall we read the character of Herman Melville (1819–1891)? For many years the conventional view was that he rose to international fame on the basis of Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), two tales of idyllic life among the Polynesians of the South Seas; that he attained his greatest literary achievement in a book that bombed with most readers and critics of the day, the epic whaling adventure Moby-Dick (1851); and then, after a series of nervous disorders and experimental disasters highlighted by Pierre (1852) and The Confidence-Man (1857), he all but disappeared from critica ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 15 December 1996, on page 23 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/melvilleintrypots-tuttleton-3421
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