DOCSLIB.ORG

Bartleby the Scrivener, a Tale of Wall Street Study Guide

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Bartleby the Scrivener, a Tale of Wall Street Study Guide Bartleby the Scrivener, A Tale of Wall Street Study Guide © 2019 eNotes.com, Inc. or its Licensors. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher. Summary “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” was one of the first stories that Melville published during the brief period when his work was accepted by the major periodicals. It has become his most widely known story, praised for being ahead of its time. The story focuses on a prosperous lawyer, who prides himself on being a “safe man.” Ensconced in his Wall Street law offices, the lawyer manages an office of complementary contrasting scriveners (law copyists) who represent opposing types. The lawyer works around the limitations of his employees in the optimistic belief that his is the enlightened and most effective way to lead life. In effect, he attempts to avoid conflict and promotes compromise. He stands as a representative of nineteenth century American optimism, an outlook that Melville questioned in much of his writing. When a cadaverous man named Bartleby approaches him for employment, the lawyer, pressed for extra help at the time, gladly puts the new employee to work. Bartleby is clearly capable of doing acceptable work, but before long he exhibits an annoying refusal to engage in certain tedious activities, such as proofreading documents. Pressed for time, the lawyer works around this unusual refusal, but before long he discovers that Bartleby is living in the offices at night, subsisting on ginger nuts that he stores in his desk. The lawyer’s uneasiness is compounded when Bartleby begins to refuse all work, refuses to leave the premises, and spends much time staring out a window at the brick wall only inches away from him. The lawyer’s melioristic optimism is pushed to the limit. He tries to discuss the situation with Bartleby, attempts reasoning with him, even attempts bribing him. He invites him to stay at his home. Bartleby’s maddening response is always the same: “I would prefer not to.” The lawyer eventually surrenders, trying to escape his responsibility for this strange, broken human being by moving his offices and leaving Bartleby behind, but before long the new residents of the building are complaining about the strange character who lives in the hallways. The lawyer renounces any responsibility, and Bartleby is hauled off to the Tombs, the city prison, where he is surrounded by walls such as those he stared at from the lawyer’s window. The lawyer tries to bribe a jailer to assure that Bartleby is treated well, but upon his return weeks later, he discovers that Bartleby has been refusing to eat and has died of malnutrition. At the story’s end, when the lawyer sighs “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!” the reader recognizes the universal implications of the story and knows that the lawyer will be unable to approach life with the same simplistic optimism he had before. As an epilogue of sorts, the narrator adds a bit of information about Bartleby’s past, explaining that he had been previously employed in the dead letter office of the post office. In this position he was repeatedly faced with the tragedies of miscommunication. This revelation should not serve as an easy explanation for 1 Bartleby’s condition, however, for Melville’s story depicts the mystery of despair and argues that some suffering is beyond melioration. Melville’s “story of Wall Street” has been praised for its modernity. Certainly the tale foreshadows the twentieth and twenty-first century theme of urban alienation and describes a dehumanized environment of brick and mortar that is shut off from the consolations of the natural world. Summary “Bartleby the Scrivener” is narrated by a prosperous Wall Street lawyer who, in “the cool tranquillity of a snug retreat,” does “a snug business among rich men’s bonds, and mortgages, and title-deeds.” Among his clients, the nameless narrator is proud to report, was John Jacob Astor, the richest man in the United States at the time of his death. The narrator’s employees, as the story begins, are Turkey and Nippers, who are scriveners, or copyists, and Ginger Nut, a young office boy. The Dickensian copyists present problems for their employer, for each displays a different personality during each half of the working day. Turkey, who is short and fat, works quickly and steadily before noon but becomes clumsy and ill-tempered after his midday meal. At the opposite extreme is the dyspeptic Nippers, nervous and irritable in the mornings but mild and productive in the afternoons. Because they are regular in their inconsistent behavior, the narrator reports that he “never had to do with their eccentricities at one time,” and the work of the office proceeds, with Ginger Nut keeping the scriveners under some control by supplying them with cakes and apples. The unusual order of the office is disrupted when the lawyer, because of extra work created by his being appointed a Master in Chancery, hires an additional copyist. At first, Bartleby works constantly, but one day he suddenly declines to compare a copied document and its original, offering no explanation, saying simply, “I would prefer not to.” Gradually, he prefers not to perform any of his tasks. His employer also discovers that Bartleby has no home other than the office and is sleeping there nights and weekends, eating little more than ginger nuts (small, spicy cakes). The lawyer pleads with Bartleby to work or leave, but the obstinate scrivener continues to pursue his preference not to do anything. Growing increasingly distraught over these circumstances, the lawyer finally moves his chambers to another building. When Bartleby is expelled from the office by the new tenant, he remains in the building. The lawyer makes final pleas, even offering to take Bartleby home with him. Still, the scrivener prefers not to make any change, and the narrator flees the city in his frustration. On his return, he learns that Bartleby has been taken to the Tombs, the forbiddingly named city prison, as a vagrant. The lawyer bribes a Tombs employee to take care of Bartleby, but the prisoner refuses to eat, preferring to stand beside and stare at the prison wall. The narrator tries to convince him that his surroundings are not that depressing; the prisoner replies, “I know where I am.” Eventually, he dies. After Bartleby’s death, the lawyer learns that he had previously been a clerk in the Dead Letter Office in Washington and thinks that such a melancholy duty explains the poor man’s peculiar behavior. He ends his story by proclaiming its pathetic universality: “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!” Summary: The Law Office on Wall Street and Bartleby's Peculiar Resistance The Law Office on Wall Street The narrator of "Bartleby the Scrivener" begins the story by introducing the reader to the law office on Wall Street of which he was the manager when he first met Bartleby. The narrator describes himself as an 2 unambitious, elderly lawyer who has enjoyed a comfortable tenure as Master in Chancery. Before hiring Bartleby, the narrator—henceforth referred to as the lawyer—employed two law-copyists, or scriveners, and one office boy. The lawyer describes each of his employees in turn. The elder scrivener, nicknamed Turkey, is nearing sixty and it is implied that he drinks heavily on his lunch hour. The other scrivener, who goes by the nickname Nippers, is younger and considered overly ambitious by the narrator. The office boy is called Ginger Nut after the cakes which he brings to the two scriveners. Bartleby's Peculiar Resistance Because of an increased work load at his office, the lawyer is forced to hire a third scrivener. He hires Bartleby mostly on account of his sedate and respectable demeanor, which he hopes will temper the manners of his other two scriveners. The lawyer situates Bartleby behind a high folding screen and in front of a window that looks out upon a wall. Bartleby is quietly industrious in his work until the third day, when he is asked to proofread some documents. To the lawyer's astonishment, Bartleby responds to his request with the simple reply, "I would prefer not to." The lawyer feels the urge to dismiss Bartleby instantly, but he finds himself unnerved by Bartleby's perfect composure. A few days later, the lawyer asks Bartleby again to proofread some documents with the other scriveners. Once again, Bartleby declines with the curt refusal, "I would prefer not to." This time the narrator attempts to reason with Bartleby and demands a fuller explanation of his unwillingness. When Bartleby will not respond, the lawyer points to the reasonableness of his request and appeals to Bartleby's common sense. Failing to sway him, the lawyer entreats Turkey, Nippers, and even Ginger Nut to attest to the reasonableness of the request. They comply, but Bartleby remains unmoved. Vexed by Bartleby's resistance, the lawyer carries on with business, unwilling to take any action. The next day, Bartleby again refuses to proofread and also refuses to run an errand, each time explaining softly, "I would prefer not to." While Turkey offers to "black his eyes," the lawyer instead chooses to tolerate Bartleby's disobedience without punishment. The lawyer stops by the office on a Sunday on his way to church. To his surprise, he discovers that Bartleby has been living in the office, apparently because he has no other home.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Girardian Reading of Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor James Mcbride
    University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class Volume 3 | Issue 2 Article 6 Revisiting a Seminal Text of the Law & Literature Movement: A Girardian Reading of Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor James McBride Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/rrgc Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation James McBride, Revisiting a Seminal Text of the Law & Literature Movement: A Girardian Reading of Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor, 3 U. Md. L.J. Race Relig. Gender & Class 285 (2003). Available at: http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/rrgc/vol3/iss2/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UM Carey Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UM Carey Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. REVISITING A SEMINAL TEXT OF THE LAW & LITERATURE MOVEMENT: A GIRARDIAN READING OF HERMAN MELVILLE'S BILL Y BUDD, SAILOR* James McBride, J.D., Ph.D.** Ay, there is a mystery; but, to use a scriptural phrase, it is a "mystery of iniquity," a matter for psychologic theologians to discuss. But what has a military court to do with it? -Captain Vere in Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor' All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity itself to the reigning of interest.
    [Show full text]
  • Bartleby's Lawyer and the Common Law Nathan M
    Osgoode Hall Law Journal Article 5 Volume 24, Number 3 (Fall 1986) "Plus 'IL' Change, Plus 'IL' Reste Le Meme:" Bartleby's Lawyer and the Common Law Nathan M. Greenfield Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj Article Citation Information Greenfield, Nathan M.. ""Plus 'IL' Change, Plus 'IL' Reste Le Meme:" Bartleby's Lawyer and the Common Law." Osgoode Hall Law Journal 24.3 (1986) : 635-666. http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol24/iss3/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Osgoode Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Osgoode Hall Law Journal by an authorized editor of Osgoode Digital Commons. "Plus 'IL' Change, Plus 'IL' Reste Le Meme:" Bartleby's Lawyer and the Common Law Abstract This article responds in part to Bryan Schwartz's "A Meditation on 'Bartleby'" published in volume 22(3) of this Journal. The uthora here suggests that the Lawyer narrator of Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" is not transformed by his contact with Bartleby. Rather, the story exemplifies the Lawyer's unchanging reliance on and approval of common-law contract theory in order to identify and deal with societal problems. This article is available in Osgoode Hall Law Journal: http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol24/iss3/5 19861 "Plus 'il' change, plus 'il' reste le nzme:" "PLUS 'IL' CHANGE, PLUS 'IL' RESTE LE MIEME:" BARTLEBY'S LAWYER AND THE COMMON LAW By NATHAN M. GREENFIELD* This article responds in part to Bryan Schwartz's "A Meditation on 'Bartleby'" published in volume 22(3) of this Journal.
    [Show full text]
  • Metaphorical Use of the Bible in the Beginning Part of Melville's Typee
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Kitami Institute of Technology Repository Metaphorical Use of the Bible in the Beginning Part of Melville's Typee 著者 平野 温美 journal or 人間科學研究 publication title volume ４ number 4 page range 111-129 year 2008-03 URL http://id.nii.ac.jp/1450/00007481/ Metaphorical Use of the Bible in the Beginning Part of Melville's Typee（論 111文） Metaphorical Use of the Bible in the Beginning Part of Melville’s Typee Harumi Hirano* Abstract Melville’s theological contexts in his first book, Typee, have not been duly discussed, since critics have considered the issue proper to his later books. The intent of this study is to show that Melville ingeniously insinuates Biblical episodes in the beginning part of the book so as to give the described incidents additional quality and depth which relate to the perspective of Ishmael in Moby-Dick. Here we also discuss the idea of the Covenant of God with man, the central doctrine of New England Puritan theology. This thesis concludes that the narrator’s flight from the “arbitrary and violent” captain of the ship signifies Melville’s metaphorical assertion that the narrator annuls the covenant with orthodox Puritan God. In his book “about the semantics of cultural forms” for the students of anthropology, Edmund Leach reminds them of the grave importance of verbal categories in one’s realizing and interpreting the outside world. What does one do to shape an internal perception of the continuous sequence of the visual outside world in which adjacent elements are not perceptibly different from each other? One makes it possible by cutting the continuum into recognizable parts and giving each of them a name to distinguish from each other.
    [Show full text]
  • Evaluation-Essay-Sample.Pdf
    Evaluation Essay Sample Obsession and Depression: Bartleby’s Place in the Melville Canon Herman Melville is best-known for his stories about adventure on the high seas and encounters with native peoples. Typee, Moby Dick, and “Benito Cereno” all take as their setting ships, the sea, and remote islands populated with native peoples. At first glance, Melville’s short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener” does not appear to adhere to the themes and conventions present in his other work. There are obvious differences between this story and Melville’s other works; “Bartleby, the Scrivener” has nothing to do with seafaring, for example. And yet, this story is perfectly at home in Melville’s body of work. “Bartleby, the Scrivener” embodies the classic Melville themes of obsession and depression, despite its modern setting. Many of Melville’s characters grapple with depression. We need only be introduced to Captain Ahab in Moby Dick to see the depths of his obsession with vanquishing the great white whale. Bartleby is just as obsessive, single-mindedly copying documents day after day. The narrator reveals, on more than one occasion, that Bartleby appears to work unendingly, producing an “extraordinary quantity of writing” (Melville 10). Bartleby’s obsession with his work arguably pushes him into a deep depression, made all the worse by his confinement in a two-story office building. The lack of sunlight afforded by the building, due to the office’s proximity to larger, towering buildings, contributes to Bartleby’s condition. In his article “Melville’s Parable of the Walls,” Leo Marx explains that “The Walls are the controlling symbols of the story…the walls which hem in the meditative artist and for that matter every reflective man” (241).
    [Show full text]
  • A Stylistics Analysis of the Works of Herman Melville
    Striking Through the Pasteboard Mask: A Stylistics Analysis of the Works of Herman Melville By Kristal Eilein Metzger-Andersen, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the Department of English California State University, Bakersfield In Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Masters of English Spring 2012 Copyright By Kristal Eilein Metzger-Andersen 2012 Striking Through the Pasteboard Mask: A Stylistics Analysis of the Works of Herman Melville By Kristal Eilein Metzger-Andersen, B.A. This thesis has been accepted on behalf of the Department of English by their supervisory committee: Dr. Steven Frye This thesis is dedicated to Dr’s Charles MacQuarrie and Steven Frye. Without your constant reassurance and encouragement this thesis would never have seen the light of day. A special thanks to my husband, Chris Andersen, who gave me the confidence to continue when I wanted to quit. Thank you so much for being the light in the storm. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Travel Narratives – Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, During a Four Months’ Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas 7 Chapter Two: The Philosophical Narratives – “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” 17 Chapter Three: The Psychological Narrative – Moby Dick; or, The Whale 27 Chapter Four: The Satirical Narrative – The Confidence Man: His Masquerade 37 Conclusion 49 Glossary of Literary Terms 51 Bibliography 53 Metzger-Andersen 1 Introduction Herman Melville is arguably the most influential American writer of the nineteenth-century, yet he was not taken seriously by the critics of his time. Since the early twentieth-century, however, Melville’s oeuvre has been considered an important part of the Western canon and modern critics have been writing about his works at length.
    [Show full text]
  • BARTLEBY the SCRIVENER by Herman Melville
    BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER by Herman Melville THE AUTHOR Herman Melville (1819-1891) was born in New York City. His family later moved to Albany, where his father died and young Herman was forced to go to work in a bank at age 13. He later served briefly as an elementary school teacher and a newspaper reporter. At age 19, he went to sea for the first time. Two years later, he embarked on a lengthy whaling expedition, where he gained the knowledge that became the foundation for his great novels. During the expedition, he and another sailor left the ship on a Pacific island, where he found himself among a tribe of cannibals. His experience became the foundation for his first novel, Typee (1846), the most popular of his works during his lifetime. This was followed by Omoo (1847) and Melville’s great classic, Moby Dick (1851). At the time Moby Dick was published, Melville had recently met Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose work he greatly admired and to whom he dedicated his masterwork. Melville continued writing until his death in 1891, producing increasingly experimental works including the short story Bartleby the Scrivener (1853) and the short novel Billy Budd (1891). Melville was a pessimist, an unhappy loner who struggled with despair throughout his life. In the world around him and within himself he saw little but evil. Bartleby the Scrivener was the first of Melville’s forays into writing for publication in magazines, and is today considered a classic. It has been compared to the greatest stories of human alienation, including the works of Kafka, Dostoevsky, and Camus.
    [Show full text]
  • ANALYSIS Typee
    ANALYSIS Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life During a Four Months’ Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas (1846) Herman Melville (1819-1891) “Whether the natives are actually maneaters or noble savages, enemies or friends, is a doubt sustained to the very end. At all events, they are the most ‘humane, gentlemanly, and amiable set of epicures’ that the narrator has ever encountered. He is welcomed by mermaids with jet-black tresses, feasted and cured of his wound, and allowed to go canoeing with Fayaway, a less remote enchantress than her name suggests. But danger looms behind felicity; ambiguous forebodings, epicurean but inhumane, reverberate from the heathen idols in the taboo groves; and the narrator escapes to a ship, as he had escaped from another one at the outset…. He has tasted the happiness of the pastoral state. He has enjoyed the primitive condition, as it had been idealized by Rousseau… As for clothes, they wear little more than ‘the garb of Eden’; and Melville…is tempted to moralize over how unbecoming the same costume might look on the civilized. Where Poe’s black men were repulsive creatures, Melville is esthetically entranced by the passionate dances of the Polynesians; and his racial consciousness begins to undergo a radical transposition when he envisions them as pieces of ‘dusky statuary.’ On the whole, he believes, ‘the penalty of the fall presses very lightly upon the valley of Typee.’… If there is any serpent in the Marquesan garden, it is the contaminating contact of the white men. If the children of nature are losing their innocence, that is to be blamed upon their would-be civilizers.
    [Show full text]
  • ED329985.Pdf
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 329 985 CS 212 735 AUTHOR Van Noate, Judith, Comp. TITLE Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville: A Research Guide. INSTITUTION North Carolina Univ., Charlotte. a. Murrey Atkins Library. PUB DATE 90 NOTE 20p.; For other guides in this series, see CS 212 732-739. Small print on some pages may affect legibility. PUB TYPE Guides - Non-Classroom Use (055) -- Reference Materials - Bibliographies (131)-- Reference Materials - Directories/Catalogs (132) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS English Literature; Higher Education; Library Guides; *Library Materials; Library Skills; *Literary Criticism; *Nineteenth Century Literature; *Reference Materials; Romanticism; *United States Literature IDENTIFIERS *Hawthorne (Nathaniel); *Melville (Herman); University of North Carolina Charlotte ABSTRACT This handout is a guide to library resources in the J. Murrey Atkins Library at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte for the study of the 19th-century American authors Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. The guide detailsresources in Atkins library for biographical and critical materialon the two authors. The guide is in four sections:(1) Books; (2) Reference WJrks (dealing with criticism in collections, individual bibliographies, and collective bibliographies and checklists); (3) Periodical Indexes; and (4) PASL (Periodicals and Serials List). (SR) *********************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best thatcan be made * * from the original document. * *********************************************************************** SCOPE OP INTEREST NOTICE The ERIC Facility has assigned this document for processing to: In our judgment. this document eIso of Interest to the Cieer. Millheuses noted to the right. loo11144....., Indexing should reflect their WNW points of view. 'offtri44111,40444446.,t...._ 16. Aiterge II Wangs roeSaes k 14\ 4* Aar U 11 DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION °thee of Educational Research and Improvement -PERMISSION TOREPRODUCE THIS GRANTED BY 4.
    [Show full text]
  • "No Life You Have Known": Or, Melville's Contemporary Critics Hester Blum
    "No Life You Have Known": Or, Melville's Contemporary Critics Hester Blum Leviathan, Volume 13, Issue 1, March 2011, pp. 10-20 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/493026/summary Access provided at 9 Apr 2019 00:59 GMT from Penn State Univ Libraries “No Life You Have Known”: Or, Melville’s Contemporary Critics HESTER BLUM The Pennsylvania State University id-nineteenth century evaluations of Herman Melville’s work share acommonattentiontowhatmanyreviewers—anditcanseem Mlike all of them—called the “extravagance” of his writing and his imagination. Critics remarked on his general “love of antic and extravagant speculation” (O’Brien 389) and found that his imagination had a “tendency to wildness and metaphysical extravagance” (Hawthorne and Lemmon 208). In their estimation the “extravagant” Mardi featured “incredibly extravagant disguises” (“Trio” 462) and contained “a world of extravagant phantoms and allegorical shades” (Chasles 262), while Redburn was notable for “episodic extravaganzas” (“Sir Nathaniel” 453). “Unlicensed extravagance” (454) char- acterized even White-Jacket;and“theextravaganttreatment”(454)givento whaling in Moby-Dick stood in for the novel’s “eccentric and monstrously extravagant” nature (“Trio” 463), containing as it did “reckless, inconceivable extravagancies” (“Trio” 463) in addition to “purposeless extravagance” (A.B.R. 364). These surpassed the only “passable extravagancies” of his earlier works (“Book Notices” 93). The critical account offered above was assembled from fragments of criticism of the novels of Melville’s mid-career; readers of Pierre will hear in it the echo of Mary Glendinning’s equally insistent—and equally regulatory— catalogue of her son’s qualities: “A noble boy, and docile..
    [Show full text]
  • Piazza Tales
    THE PIAZZA TALES BY HERMAN MELVILLE AUTHOR OF “TYPEE,” “OMOO,” ETC., ETC., ETC. ------ originally published by NEW YORK; DIX & EDWARDS, 321 BROADWAY LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, SON & CO. 1856. republished by E S P The Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project www.esp.org Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project Foundations Series: American Literature Series Editor: Robert J. Robbins Bibliographical Note This ESP edition, first electronically published in 2017, is a newly typeset, -un abridged version, based on the 1856 edition published by Dix & Edwards. Unless explicitly noted, all footnotes and endnotes are as they appeared in the original work. Production Credits Scanning of originals: ESP staff OCRing of originals: ESP staff Typesetting: ESP staff Proofreading/Copyediting: ESP staff Graphics work: ESP staff Copyfitting/Final production: ESP staff Cover design: R. J. Robbins The Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project welcomes help from volunteers and collaborators, who recommend works for publication, provide access to original materials, and assist with technical and production work. If you are interested in volunteering, or are otherwise interested in the project, contact the series editor: [email protected] © 2017, The Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project http://www.esp.org This electronic edition is made freely available for educational or scholarly purposes, provided that this copyright notice is included. The manuscript may not be reprinted or redistributed for commercial purposes without permission. THE PIAZZA TALES Contents The Piazza . 1 Bartleby . 17 Benito Cereno . 57 The Lightning-rod Man ...............143 The Encantadas; or, Enchanted Islands ....214 The Bell-tower . 215 .
    [Show full text]
  • Visionary of the Word: Melville and Religion
    BOOK REVIEWS 625 and positively of very few things, except of Matters of fact.” As a reference work, focused on “matters of fact,” Guthery’s book shines, but the fragmented nature of the text clouds the results of his research. Amy Fisher is assistant professor of the history of science and technol- ogy in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at the University of Puget Sound. Visionary of the Word: Melville and Religion. Edited by Jonathan A. Cook and Brian Yothers. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017. Pp. 296. $99.95 cloth; $34.95 paper.) Jonathan A. Cook and Brian Yothers begin their volume of ten es- says by calling religion “an often neglected subject in contemporary” Melville studies (3). This is odd since the second part of their use- ful introduction (the first part deals concisely with Melville’s life and reading in religion) traces a critical concern with the subject begin- ning with Raymond Weaver’s biography of 1921 and accelerating in the last forty years or so, with increasing attention to Melville’s late poetry. Religion is currently a hot subject; the difference between older and more recent discussions is that the latter tend to be more cul- tural than intellectual—a mixed blessing with Melville whose engage- ment with religion, while grounded in an intimate possession of the Bible, belongs more to the European and especially Anglophone in- tellectual context than to the native social and denominational one. In this respect the essays in Visionary of the Word are a mix of the tra- ditional and the new.
    [Show full text]
  • ANALYSIS Omoo (1847) Herman Melville (1819-1891) “One Can Revel in Such Richly Good-Natured Style…. We Therefore Recommend T
    ANALYSIS Omoo (1847) Herman Melville (1819-1891) “One can revel in such richly good-natured style…. We therefore recommend this ‘narrative of adventure in the south seas’ as thorough entertainment—not so light as to be tossed aside for its flippancy, nor so profound as to be tiresome.” Walt Whitman Brooklyn Daily Eagle (5 May 1847) “Omoo is a fascinating book: picaresque, rascally, roving. Melville as a bit of a beachcomber. The crazy ship Julia sails to Tahiti, and the mutinous crew are put ashore. Put in the Tahitian prison. It is good reading. Perhaps Melville is at his best, his happiest, in Omoo. For once he is really reckless…. For once he is really careless, roving with that scamp, Doctor Long Ghost. For once he is careless of his actions, careless of his morals, careless of his ideals: ironic, as the epicurean must be…. But it was under the influence of the Long Doctor. This long and bony Scotsman was not a mere ne’er-do-well. He was a man of humorous desperation, throwing his life ironically away…. He let his ship drift rudderless…. When he saw a white man really ‘gone savage,’ a white man with a blue shark tattooed over his brow, gone over to the savages, then Herman’s whole being revolted. He couldn’t bear it.” D. H. Lawrence Studies in Classic American Literature (1923; Doubleday 1953) “The play of fantasy in Omoo takes the form not of nightmarishness or even of daydreaming but of an easy and emotionally liberating current of humorous narrative, always slightly in excess, as one sees with half an eye, of the sober autobiographical facts.
    [Show full text]