Everybody knows the story of Moby Dick: the great white whale, and Captain Ahab who pursued it. The book is considered to be the greatest American novel ever written. This judgment is rendered by professors of literature in colleges across America. Hollywood has also paid homage to the book by producing at least one feature film (screenplay by Ray Bradbury) and, who knows, Oprah may yet select it for her book club.
Yet today hardly anyone really reads Moby Dick. Even the Classic Comic version barely gets a skim. But then, maybe you don’t have to really read it. Big albino whale, enraged and insane captain, what else is there to know?
Actually, quite a lot.
I fell in love with Herman Melville after reading his first book, Typee. The book’s plot is simple. A sailor jumps ship while its anchored near a south Pacific island. He’s quickly captured by the local inhabitants and is kept as a kind of human lucky charm. The story contains hints of cannibalism and lots of naked Polynesian women. The 19th century American reading population loved it. It bounced Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter right off the best seller list.
Melville quickly followed up with a second book, Omoo. Again, it was pretty much the same tale as the first: life among the heathen. And again it was a monster hit. Melville suddenly smelled a literary career. He then did the absolute worst thing a man pursuing such a career could possibly do: he took himself seriously.
His next book, Mardi, was a flop. It contained the usual Melville motifs- exotic landscapes, unwashed heathen, scantily dressed Polynesian women, but he also wove into the plot symbolism and metaphor. This over estimation of the literary sensibilities of his readership was a huge mistake. Melville would continue to make the same blunder with everything he wrote after Omoo. Granted, the intellectual class loved this stuff. But the general public scratched their collective heads while thinking “what the hell?”
Consider his next novel: Redburn. In this novel a young man travels from America to London. It is told in first person by an older version of the main character. A large part of the fun in reading the book are the insights the older version of the character makes while examining the younger version of himself. Now factor in that this point of view is not Herman Melville’s, but the thoughts of a totally imagined character. In literary terms this is a point-of-view trifecta!
Of course sales went nowhere.
Then, after a few more disappointing novels, Melville unleashed Moby Dick. As everyone knows the story is told through a sailor named Ishmael. Well, sort of. Midway through the book Ishmael becomes a kind of omniscient narrator being able to comment on the thoughts of other characters.
Is Ishmael mad? Or is it Melville the author that’s unreliable? Or should the reader just accept it and move on with the story?
As the book progresses Ishmael examines the whale from every possible perspective only to end with the mystery still in tact. By the conclusion of the story the novel’s entire structure begins to crack revealing a narrative so large, so symbolically complicated that it resembles nothing less than the literary equivalent of a painting by Picasso. In many ways the book is a kind of proto-post modern novel akin to Pynchon’s V. Or is it V that is mimicking Moby Dick?
Graduate papers are still written postulating the meaning of the whale. Is it God, evil, everything, nothing or all of the above?
Predictably sales for Moby Dick were abysmal.
Melville’s last novel published in his lifetime is my favorite- The Confidence Man. The plot: On April Fool’s Day Satan, in the form of a mute, boards the Steamboat Fidele and proceeds to bilk the hypocrites onboard. Again, the book is filled with symbolism, allegory, metaphor and satire. Even the chapter titles are an essential part of the structure of the novel. Sometimes it seems that the novel’s voice transcends the printed page to discuss plot points with the reader! This was Melville showing off, flexing his literary muscles. But his readers were unimpressed and uninterested. He was casting his pearls before a rapidly vanishing audience.
He then withdrew from writing and made his living as an official at a customs house. But Melville always wrote. He published poetry and produced a book of short stories and, in the process, created another literary classic: The Scrivener. In this story the main character, a scrivener- a kind of human Xerox © machine- holds the reader’s attention by doing, literally, absolutely nothing.
In 1891 Melville died. It wasn’t pretty. He had been mentally ill for years and largely forgotten. An obituary the size of a postage stamp marked his passing.
And then he became great.
Thirty years after his death Moby Dick was rediscovered and at last appreciated. In 1924 Melville’s posthumous novel, Billy Budd, was published with critics claiming that it rivaled Moby Dick for its sublime, subtle symbolism and subdued style.
This is why I love Herman Melville.
Because of his stories,
Because of his unappreciated genius.
Because he never gave up.
And because he continued to write long after his audience left.
He is the rare example of a man who was great in spite of his audience, not because of it.
Next: Citizen Gaines (1963)
No comments:
Post a Comment