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The Passages of Herman Melville (Hardback)
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Short Description for The Passages of Herman MelvilleJay Parini recreates Herman Melville's adventurous life and tragic death in obscurity, creating a searing portrait of a man of rare psychological intensity.
Full description- Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
- Published: 20 January 2011
- Format: Hardback 464 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Historical Fiction
- ISBN 13: 9781847679796 ISBN 10: 184767979X
- Sales rank: 878,764
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Reviews for The Passages of Herman Melville
- Top review
Too much Mr Melville, not enough Mrs Melville
I've never read any Herman Melville and the only two things I knew about him before reading Jay Parini's novel were that he wrote Moby **** and that musician Moby is related to him. I now know much more about him thanks to reading this book, but have to say that I don't much like the Melville portrayed in its pages.
The book tells us about Melville's life, starting with his youthful journeys to sea and sojourns in the Pacific, then moving on to his literary life and career as an author. This narrative is interspersed with chapters written by Melville's wife Lizzie, giving her views on the great man and his writer contemporaries. Lizzie is a wonderful creation and in my view steals the book from Melville, who by contrast seems affected, pompous and much less easy to get along with than his wife.
I really enjoyed the first half of the book which covers both Melville's early travels and some "flash forwards" of his later life, courtesy of Lizzie. However, when Melville starts his writing career and begins his relationship with fellow author Nathaniel Hawthorne the action becomes less physical and more cerebral, which I found duller than the beginning of the book. I also felt that Melville was fast wearing out his welcome and that the more I got to know him the less I liked him, and increasingly did not want to spend time with him. I came to resent Melville's constant search for enlightenment and for the perfect male companion while his family was neglected and making sacrifices for him. For someone addressing the big questions about the purpose of life, he demonstrates very little self-enlightenment and never seems to learn from experience.
However I think this is deliberate on the part of the author in trying to show us someone who could not come to terms with the fact that he was ageing, had not had the literary glory he felt he deserved and was seeking the elusive something (or someone) that would make his life complete. There's also perhaps the implication that he is damaged by the early death of his father and therefore spends his life trying to fill the hole left by this loss.
I wanted to get to know Lizzie better and to hear more about her daily life and her desires, but we don't get enough of her. We see little of her reaction to family life and tragedies that take place, but this, I suppose, fits in with Melville's world view that she is there to support him and outside that does not have her own existence.
As I knew only my two basic facts about Melville, I can't comment on whether the novel is a realistic portrayal of the man, but it seems to be a realistic recreation of the era. I was "tripped up" a few times by what seemed to be anachronistic language - for example, talk of a sea captain having "leadership skills", and Melville and Hawthorne going to the pub in Liverpool for a "plowman's lunch" (a concept invented by marketing men in the 1960s) - but on the whole felt that the language and style appropriate to the subject matter of the novel.
All in all I enjoyed "The Passages of Herman Melville" and am glad I read it. It hasn't instilled in me any great desire to read any of Melville's work, but it introduced me to Lizzie Melville and for that, at least, I'm grateful. by CuteBadger
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