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Melville: His World and Work
With Moby-Dick Herman Melville set the standard for the Great American Novel, and with “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd he completed perhaps the greatest oeuvre of any of our writers. Now Andrew Delbanco, hailed by Time as “America’s best social critic,” uses unparalleled historical and critical perspective to give us both a commanding biography and...more
Hardcover, 448 pages
Published
September 20th 2005
by Knopf
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The preface is splendid. In it Delbanco describes his biographical strategy, which is among the best I've read. He writes that the biographer's task is to evoke the past, to evoke an at-"home-feeling" about the past (my mangling of one of Hawthorne's phrases, that was the subject's present. Delbanco also quotes Henry James, who wrote that the business of the biographer is "detail." But not just any detail, rather the heaps and mounds of detail that establish the biographer's view of:
- the sort o...more
- the sort o...more
While most biographies of authors energize me to read more of the touted one's work, this did the opposite. No fault of Andrew Delbanco who wrote an unbiased account of Melville's life, I believe, but because I see how much Melville's moodiness and possible mental instability figures in his work. Not to mention dry passages in post-Moby Dick works and his uninspired poetry. At times, he behaved (and wrote) like a loose cannon shooting out spite and malice. However, Delbanco makes an excellent po...more
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Moby Dick was by far Herman Melvilles greatest life achievement. Although he wrote frantically after this work, it was only then again his last book, Billy Budd, that received great acclaim (and this, only posthumously). During his life he also attempted poetry, but this was not well received by fans and critics.
Melville suffered from bi-polar disorder. Financial difficulties exasperated by the uncertainty of income from new writings added to his anxieties. His wife Lizzie and close family memb...more
Melville suffered from bi-polar disorder. Financial difficulties exasperated by the uncertainty of income from new writings added to his anxieties. His wife Lizzie and close family memb...more
A fascinating, readable, and insightful work of synthetic and original scholarship. Delbanco obviously did a lot of reading, covering as he does all the primary material as well as large swathes of the secondary critical and historical material to place Melville's work in cultural and historical context. I enjoyed this work immensely, but then again I enjoy Melville's ouevre immensely as well. My only slight quibble is that Delbanc, during a discussion of the beliefs of American Transcendentalis...more
This book was ok, but if you're already into Melville (taken a few classes here and there, read most of the major novels and stories, read some other books and articles), there isn't anything groundbreaking. There are some good stories and anecdotes about his life but the readings of the works aren't anything that hasn't been published many other places. There is, however, a lot of space dedicated to poetry, including a good bit on "Clarel," probably his most underread work (I admit, I've never...more
THIS is how you do a literary biography. A pleasure to read, erudite, comprehensive though easily digestible, engaged and engaging, well-drawn and sympathetically felt. You get plenty on the good stuff and an excellent investigation of the lesser-known efforts. There isn't very much of Melville that survives, in terms of letters or diaries and so forth, and so Delbanco does a beautiful job of bringing out what he can of a rather insular and extremely complex man.
Great social panorama, too, of t...more
I really enjoyed this book. Delbanco's style is very readable. He offers a great contextual view of Melville's personal life, family life and historical period, interweaving them in a smooth and accessible narrative. The only thing that made me a bit nervous at times was his frequent attempts to tie Melville's fictional characters and journeys to Melville's personal journeys. Sometimes he was persuasive, while other times I was not fully convinced. Perhaps I've been too jaded by the attempts to...more
No other author so fully lived life, including it grandest heights and most abysmal lows. Delbanco's comprehensive portrait of Melville reveals the young adventurer behind Typee, the brooding genius behind Moby-Dick, the weary has-been behind his poems, and the mourning father behind Billy Budd. The biographer writes a compelling, highly readable book, despite the convoluted nature of much of Melville's own writing, and he masterfully teases out revelatory passages from Melville's works to suppl...more
Delbanco's working thesis is spot on: Melville is a writer who covers so much ground that he can speak to everyone. Melville expresses so much ambivalence about God, human nature, politics, in short, ambivalence about everything, that he can strike a profound chord with any reader. Delbanco does an excellent job capturing the ambiguity and exploring the questions that Melville asks but rarely answers. Delbanco also really brings his subject to life, capturing a man who is the product of his own...more
Delbanco does a great job of placing Melville in the time and place in which he lived, and shows how his personal milieu contributed to his ideas and his fiction and poetry. Particularly interesting is Melville's personal struggle with his desire to believe in God, and recent findings in his day and age which pointed to a lack of God's existence.
The sections of this books center around Melville's major works, Moby-Dick, "Bartelby: The Scrivner," and Billy Budd. Delbanco shows with exacting detai...more
The sections of this books center around Melville's major works, Moby-Dick, "Bartelby: The Scrivner," and Billy Budd. Delbanco shows with exacting detai...more
A decent and very balanced trip through the most important events and changes in Melville's life. Especially good on his marriage and family issues. Somewhat lacking as a critical reading of his works, especially the literary merits of his minor sea adventures. But overall a fine introduction to the writer's unfortunate life.
Feb 05, 2009
Bookmarks Magazine
added it
There's little new to say about an author as studied and lionized as Herman Melville. What notes he left have been scoured clean for insight into his thoughts on subjects from sexuality to slavery. Delbanco, Levi Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University and author of The Death of Satan, takes on the role of the great collator. With an eye toward creating a biography for the general reader, he borrows liberally from the work of others, tying the whole together with his own readings and
...more
Solid book, usually very helpful in understanding Melville's background for each of his major works. Some of the research is a bit shoddy, though.
Delbanco's cultural biography of Melville is comprehensive, insightful, and beautifully written. It speaks to both a lay audience and a scholarly one; to do so in a book of this scope is beyond impressive. My only complaint is not that Delbanco sometimes relies upon speculation--such is to be expected of any study wherein there are archival gaps, of course--but that that speculation is usually related to Melville's sex life or relationship with his wife. Those passages could easily have been exc...more
Very readable but amazingly reductive in its discussion of major works: Pierre and Bartleby, particularly. Delbanco can't seem to make up his mind whether Melville is an allegorist or not, although Melville could hardly write a non-allegorical sentence.
One of the best biographies on Melville. V. well done.
May 28, 2012
Tommy
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
biography-autobiography-memoir,
criticism
A solid combination of biography and criticism.
Aug 01, 2012
Tajma
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
biographies-of-writers,
ny-state-of-mind
I would have loved to give this four stars but it was just too light on facts. Delbanco is an incredibly engaging biographer and I kept having to remind myself that his subject has been dead for over a century. It is impossible not to feel for this writer who continued to pursue his craft in the face of near constant rejection and ridicule.
Delbanco gives a lovely sense of the age -- though not as comprehensive a portrait of the intellectual and political climate as David S. Reynolds' great "Walt Whitman's America." This is really a literary biography, with emphasis on the literature, slowly, carefully, comprehensively walking you through Moby Dick, Benito Cerino, et al.
Excellent book. Now need to read "Pierre, or the Ambiguities", "The Confidence Man," and "Billy Budd". And then need to write sprawling metaphysical exploration of human existence. Or a droll eight-line poem. Probably the latter.
i'd like to go on a road trip with my dog and herman melville and malcolm lowry.
Delbanco is brilliant in his assessment of Melville and his work. You get a true feeling for Melville's approach to his writing and the works and experiences that influenced him.
Poor Melville.
May 08, 2013
Bud Parr
added it
Apr 19, 2013
Trevor
marked it as to-read
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Andrew H. Delbanco (born 1952) is Director of American Studies at Columbia University and has been Columbia's Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities since 1995. He writes extensively on American literary and religious history.
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