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Life Arts    H4'ed 9/6/21

Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker on Melville's Sensationalistic 1852 Novel (REVIEW ESSAY)

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A much more extensive selection of the contemporary reviews and commentaries can be found of Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker's book Critical Essays on Herman Melville's Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1983, pages 31-88). In it, Higgins and Parker reprint their own 1978 essay "The Flawed Grandeur of Melville's Pierre" (pages 240-266).

In addition, Higgins and Parker reprint E. L. Grant Watson's extraordinary 1930 essay "Melville's Pierre" (pages 161-184). In it, Watson says that Pierre is "the greatest of Melville's books" (page 183). Watson also says, "The book is a far better artistic whole than Moby-Dick; there is less matter irrelevant to the main theme, and the elaborated fabric in which Melville's thought and intuition meet and are interwoven, is [of] a quality quite unmatched by any other work of his time" (page 183). In addition, Watson says, "Pierre, as I have said, was the center of Melville's being, and the height of his achievement, and although his literary style and his artistic sense are seen to better advantage in Piazza Tales [1856], Pierre [1852], like a mountain, towers above the rest" (page 183).

For the record, Watson also published an appreciation of Moby-Dick in 1920, which Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker reprint in their massive 570-page book Critical Essays on Melville's Moby-Dick (New York: G. K. Hall,1992, pages 152-159).

Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker have also published Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Also in 1995, the short version of Melville's 1852 novel as the book titled Pierre; or, The Ambiguities: The Kraken Edition, edited by Hershel Parker; illustrations by Maurice Sendak (New York: HarperCollins)

In addition, Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker have published the book Reading Melville's Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (Louisiana State University, 2006). In the "Preface" (pages vii-ix), Higgins and Parker explain that the novel "seemed to its author, in the early stages of its composition, as likely to be greater even than Moby-Dick" (page vii) - before he had seen any of the reviews of Moby-Dick. Higgins and Parker also say that "Melville completed the book in a short form at the end of 1851" (page vii) - before he had written the additional material that appeared in the 1852 published edition of Pierre.

Of course, it is possible that Melville was mistake in his assessment that the novel was likely greater than Moby-Dick. But what if Melville's assessment was right? What if we as readers have not yet learned how to read the phantasmagoria of styles in his 1852 novel Pierre?

Now, in Higgins and Parker's "Preface," they clearly explain how they have organized their 2006 book: "In chapter 1 [pages 1-31], we focus on Melville's composition of the first version of Pierre in late 1851, setting the book in the context of his life and literary career. In chapters 2-5 [pages 32-143], we analyze what we can plausibly reconstruct of this original version (the version represented in the [1995] Kraken edition). In our 1978 essay [which I have mentioned above], we gave a sequential reading of the published 1852 version of the novel, even though we argued that Melville's belated decision to turn Pierre into an author had introduced major inconsistencies into the work. Here, in chapters 2-5, we read the same Pierre that students of Melville are all familiar with, with the big exception that we read nothing about Pierre as an author. In the process we demonstrate both the cohesion and the eventual discontinuities of this original version of the novel. Then, in chapter 6 [pages 144-174], we briefly set forth the circumstances of Melville's abrupt decision to declare that Pierre had been a juvenile author and his further decision to portray Pierre as an author still young but forced too early into would-be maturity. More than we did in 1978, we next analyze these added passages on Pierre as an author, demonstrating that, while some of them are powerfully written, they frequently contradict or obscure Melville's original intentions and achievements. Chapter 7 [pages 175-185] gives a brief account of the publication and reception of the book in 1852 and their effect on Melville's subsequent career. In chapter 8 [pages 186-212], we focus on critical assessments of Pierre since the late nineteenth century and document the accumulation of factual information about the book's composition and publication since the Melville Revival [which started around 1919, the centennial of Melville's birth] - information that has generally been slighted by critics. . . . Ways in which our thinking about Pierre has evolved over the last thirty years are noted in chapter 8" (pages viii-ix).

However, as informative as their own introductory overview of their 2006 book is, Higgins and Parker's 2006 includes the following parts:

Chapter 1: "Toward a Kraken Book" (pages 1-31);

Chapter 2: "'This dream-house of the earth': Books I and II" (pages 32-56);

Chapter 3: "'The flowing river in the cave of man': Books III-V" (pages 57-80);

Chapter 4: "'The manly enthusiast cause': Books VI-XII" (pages 81-111);

Chapter 5: "The Pamphlet and the City: The Kraken Ending" (pages 112-143);

Chapter 6: "Cobbling the Harper Pierre: January-February 1852" (pages 144-174);

Chapter 7: "Aftermath" (pages 175-185);

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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book (more...)
 

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