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 critical view.

There is a measure of truth in this poignant readi ...

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