Melville: His World and Work Book

Delbanco's Study Of Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819 -- 1893) is one of the writers I have returned to again and again over the course of years. Thus, I was gratified to receive this new book by Andrew Delbanco, "Melville: His Life and Work" (2005) as a gift and to have the opportunity to read it, think again about Melville, and share my thoughts on this site with other readers. Delbanco is Levi Professor in the Humanities and Director of American Studies at Columbia University. He has published widely on American literature, including a book titled "Required Reading: why our American Classics matter now." Before reading Professor Delbanco's Melville study, I also read the lengthy review by Frederick Crews in the December 1, 2005, "New York Review" which is both laudatory and critical.

The literature on Melville continues to grow, and in recent years biographies have been published that are longer and far more detailed than Professor Delbanco's. But Delbanco's study is accessible, engagingly written, and concentrates, as the subtitle to his book implies, in placing Melville in the historical context of Nineteenth Century America, and on the works themselves. I will discuss each of these factors briefly.

As to Nineteenth Century America, Professor Delbanco discusses Melville's roots as the descendant, on both sides of his family, of heroes of the Revolutionary War. He gives a revealing picture of pre-Bellum America and of the seafaring life. He gives a detailed historical discussion, for a literary biography, of the tumults which split the United States and lead to the Civil War, including the War with Mexico, the compromises of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Professor Delbanco shows how Melville responded to both the literary and political events of his time. He also gives a good, if briefer, treatment of the Civil War and of Melville's life thereafter, as the United States expanded and a crude materialism became dominant. But most vividly, Professor Delbanco gives a picture of New York City, both before and after the Civil War, and argues convincingly for the strong formative influence that the city exerted on Melville's writings.

As to Melville's writings, Professor Delbanco devotes a great deal of space to Melville's four widely-recognized masterpieces: Moby Dick, Bartelby, Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd. He offers textual exposition, compositional background, and a good literary sense of the complexities and ambiguities in each of these works. He offers shorter yet rewarding discussions of several of Melville's more controversial efforts, including Pierre, The Confidence Man, his collection of Civil War Poetry called Battle Pieces, and the long poem Clarel. I think that Delbanco undervalues some of the poetry, particularly Battle Pieces which I have found over the years a provocative literary guide to the Civil War.

The treatment of Melville's life is interrelated well with a study of his works, as Professor Delbanco gives succinct discussions of Melville's early years, his decision to go to sea, his marriage, the question of his sexual orientation, the friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, his travels and wanderings, the tragic deaths of two of his sons, and the long reclusive years Melville spent as a customs inspector in New York City. We see Melville with all his difficulties and as a great but in his lifetime forgotten writer. Readers interested in a good novelistic portrayal of Melville may wish to read Frederick Busch's "The Night Inspector", to which Professor Delbanco refers.

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I came away from Professor Belbanco's book with the desire to revisit some of the Melville works that I have read in the past and, perhaps, to read some of the works that I don't know for the first time. I think it is the purpose of a study such as Delbanco's to return to reader to the words of the author, in this case Melville. Delbanco's book succeeds in doing so admirably.

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Robin Friedman