BOOK REVIEWS Hershel Parker. Herman Melville: A Biography. of financial woe. The struggle of Herman's Vol. 1: 1819-1851. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins mother, Maria Gansevoort Melville, to keep the University Press, 1996. xx + 941 pp., b+w plates, family from disintegrating, shaped Melville's genealogical tables, documentation, index. US future. It cut off his formal education at age $39.95, cloth; ISBN 0-8018-5428-8. twelve, sent him into a series of menial jobs before he reached eighteen, and eventually forced Hershel Parker follows Herman Melville's course him to sea. Parker's detailing of the family's from his early life in Albany to his success as one finances explains why the son of patrician New of America's most popular writers of sea adven- Yorkers should have shipped on the whaler tures at mid-century. This first volume ends in Acushnet out of New Bedford in January 1841. 1851, when Melville was thirty-two and his The bulk of this first volume concerns the magnum opus, Moby-Dick, was about to reach period after the Acushnet set sail. For a writer print. At nearly nine hundred pages, this bio- who made his reputation by the sea, Melville's graphy creates a complex, composite portrait of sea experience was relatively sho rt and unpleas- Melville, built from diverse and wide-ranging ant. Parker shows that those sailors who, like sources. One comes away from it feeling bulked Melville, chose to "go ashore" before their four- up with a great knowledge of Melville and his year cruise was completed, outnumbered those family, their day to day activities, and the atmos- who toughed it out. Melville jumped ship early, phere of local and national events within which in August 1841 at the Marquesas Islands. Subse- they struggled. If at certain points one would wish quently, he spent another two years whaling and for more incisive commentary to bring Melville's wandering in the South Seas, until he enlisted on writing into focus, Parker compensates with com- the USS United States at Honolulu, and served at prehensive and impeccable scholarship. the mainmast until being disharged in Boston in Parker is eminently qualified to do justice to 1845. By Parker's reckoning, the United States his subject. He has written and edited many was Melville's Yale and Harvard, leading him volumes by and about Melville. As editor of The toward a literary career. On board, he immersed New Melville Log, continuing Jay Leyda's life himself in the ship's extensive library, soaked up project that set out in the 1940s to compile docu- the atmosphere, rehearsed the tales that would ments relevant to Melville's life and writing, later make him famous, and observed the lessons Parker writes what might best be described as a dictated by life under the Articles of War. cultural biography, encompassing an incredible Earlier attempts to reveal Melville's years documentary record of American life during spent in the South Seas have been obscured by Melville's lifetime. Parker has a compelling tale embroidered recollections of friends and relatives, to tell. He reveals the financial exigencies that muddied greatly by the fictionalizations of Mel- shaped the destiny of the Melville family during ville's tales and books. Given Melville's penchant the risk2filled days of national expansion in the for hyperbole, Parker has returned to the docu- 1820s. Melville's early life was tainted by that mentary record to set straight previous exaggera2 peculiar poverty made all the more painful given tions and confusions, using an array of documents the remembrance of wealth. His family stemmed from the whale fishery, exploration expeditions, from Revolutionary War heroes and American the South Sea missions, and the ghost log of the aristocracy on both sides. By the time of Mel- first mate on the United States. Parker also adds villesof Melville'svvville's birth in 1819, much of this glory had been important evidence of Melville's home life after squandered. Allan Melvill, by Parker's estimate a 1845. The recent discovery of papers belonging loving father, was a merchant doubly-cursed by to Herman's younger sister, Augusta, who squir- unrealistic, aristocratic ambitions and little busi- reled away manuscript fragments, letters, and ness sense. When he died in 1832, he left a legacy other documents of the Melville clan, are likely 75 76 The Northern Mariner the last big find in Melville scholarship. They ery of Shakespeare to the splendours contained in make Parkers biography timely and necessary. Moby-Dick. Parker can offer no such startling Parker nicely encapsulates the mixture of hypothesis. The surface details are all here, but intrigue, titilation and moral indignation that Parker can only hint at the inner workings of made Melvilles first book, Typee, an instant sen- Melvilles mind. He offers little insight into the sation in London and New York during 1846. phenomena of Moby-Dick's creation. Surprisingly, it made Melville Americas first The psychological portrait Parker presents media sex symbol, an "American Crusoe." Parker proves partly unsatisfactory because the story is also shows that the combination of realistic detail incomplete. By ending this volume in 1851, on and romantic speculation that characterized that "happiest day" when Melville presented Melvilles later work was present from the begin- Hawthorne with a copy of Moby-Dick, Parker ning. The account of Typee reveals Melvilles leaves the downward spiral unexplored. The com- transformation of the three week stay with the mercial failure of Moby-Dick, increasing debts, Marquesas natives into four months in Paradise accusations of madness, estrangement from his among the Cannibals. Yet Melvilles desire to wife, early loss of his sons to tuberculosis and explore philosophical and high literary topics suicide, and the final years of obscurity and destined him to write books that, as he put it, silence all lay ahead. To a writer so attuned to the "were made to fail." When the satiric, mythic and darkness, to plumbing the depths, Parker has philosophical Mardi (1848) was received with added much light. His second volume, which he confusion and silence by critics expecting more indicates is ready for publication, will need to tell sea adventures, Melville returned to the tried and a much darker, more disturbing tale. true, dashing off Redburn and White Jacket in an amazing flurry of writing during the summer of Marc Thackray 1849. However, sometime in 1850 his plan to Corner Brook, Newfoundland write about life on a whaling ship took a nose dive back into the depths. Heinrich Paasch. Paasch's Illustrated Marine Parker skillfully weaves in and out of the Dictionary. "Conway Classics"; London: Conway Augusta papers to reconstruct Melvilles daily Maritime Press, 1997. x + 206 + CIV pp., illustra2 routine as he wrote Moby-Dick. The description tions, English index. £15, cloth; ISBN 0-85177- of life in Melvilles farmhouse in the Berkshires, 70027. Canadian distributor, Vanwell Publishing, the influence of his reading, of his literary friends St. Catharines, ON. such as Evert Duyckinck, and of Nathaniel Hawthornes presence in the area, all contribute to an This book will appeal primarily to readers inter- understanding of Melville during this most impor2 ested in detailed information on the various com2 tant period. Parkers aim to show Melville im- ponents used in the construction of nineteenth- mersed in family life, surrounded by mother, four century ships of both wood and iron. The book sisters, wife and child, counters earlier depictions comprises a list of terms that cover hull parts, of the tormented loner. This domestic setting for engines, anchors, and related equipment, masts Moby-Dick's composition gives the biography and spars, rigging, sail, tackle, blocks, ropes, some much needed humour, as well. It is strange knots, bends and splices. The terms are presented to think that the direction of the novel might have in English, French and German, arranged in depended upon Melville giving up the reins of columns. Over eighty illustrations interspersed Charlie, the family horse, so that his mother and throughout the pages show different steamers and sisters could transport themselves to town. sailing ship rigs, parts of both wooden and iron Parkers approach does have its pitfalls. For ships, machinery and equipment, sails, rigging all the evidence and careful documentation, he and tackle. The book concludes with tables of cannot seem to reveal the intricacies of Melvilles equivalents in Imperial and Metric for measure- mind engaged in producing one of the great ments of length as well as details of weight for books. Fifty years ago, Charles Olsons Call Me such items as iron plate, angle iron, flat- and Ishmael presented a mixture of biography and square-rolled iron, copper, brass and lead compo2 textual sleuthing to attribute Melvilles rediscov2 nents, both manila and wire rigging, and steel Book Reviews 77 hawsers. A trilingual index follows. H. Abrahamson, P. Lindquist, Y. Lindström , L. Heinrich Paasch was well qualified to write Stenholm, B. Swahn. Aktuellt 1997 Marin Mu- this type of book. He was at sea at age ten; five seum. Karlskrona: Marin Museum, 1997. 192 pp., years later he joined the German navy, and subse- illustrations, plans. [No price given], hardbound; quently served in the Danish navy as well. He ISBN 1103 5595. broadened his experience by serving in German, Dutch and American merchant ships, rose to com- In June 1997, the Naval Museum's fine new mand vessels, and finally settled in Antwerp facilities at Karlskrona were officially opened by where he supervised the construction and repair the King of Sweden. Curiously, no mention is of ships, acting as a surveyor for Lloyd's register. made of this event in the museum's 1997 year- Recognizing the need for this type of book, he book, though it contains a wealth of information financed its publication himself.