If Dickens was nineteenth-century London personified, Herman Melville was the quintessential American. With a historian’s perspective and a c...
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reviews
Apr 15, 2011
Sean
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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 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 More...
Jun 30, 2010
Christopher
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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 Transcendenta
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Jun 02, 2010
Matthew
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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
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Mar 08, 2010
matt
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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 soci More...
Jan 13, 2009
Bill
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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 attempt
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Sep 26, 2009
David
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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
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Oct 16, 2008
Jason
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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
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Nov 25, 2011
John
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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 s More...
The sections of this books center around Melville's major works, Moby-Dick, "Bartelby: The Scrivner," and Billy Budd. Delbanco s More...
Feb 05, 2009
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
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Dec 17, 2010
Todd
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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.
Jul 10, 2008
Cam
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This was a highly praised biography, but I am not sure that it lived up to its billing. As Delbanco himself acknowledges, Melville left very few personal papers, resulting a tenuous and fairly speculative reconstruction of his life, mostly drawn from his novels. I am not sure whether I just don't like biographies in general, or whether this approach is just less "academic" than the other books I have been reading, but it was not as transcendent as I had expected.
On a more More...
On a more More...
Apr 13, 2011
Lauren
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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 ex
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Oct 25, 2009
Wendy
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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.
Jan 12, 2010
Tom
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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.
Aug 03, 2008
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.
Jul 06, 2009
brian
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i'd like to go on a road trip with my dog and herman melville and malcolm lowry.
Nov 25, 2010
James
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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.
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