The Omnigatherum
A Reader's Confessal Archive
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February 2, 2005
A Reader’s Confessal
When Herman Melville died, his literary reputation had sunk so low that the NY Times obituary got his name wrong
(“the late Henry Melville”) and did not even mention his literary career. Or so the story goes. I’ve heard this story
many times, even read it in biographies. So I thought I would look up the obit and write a Confessal on the transitory
nature of fame (or something that sounded equally pretentious). Well, here’s the NY Times obituary:
Herman Melville died yesterday at his residence, 104 East Twenty-sixth Street, this city, of heart failure, aged seventy-
two. He was the author of Typee, Omoo, Mobie Dick, and other sea-faring tales, written in earlier years. He leaves a
wife and two daughters, Mrs. M. B. Thomas and Miss Melville. (NY Times Sept 29, 1891)
Short, but that is not unusual, as he had only just died the night before. Some of his works are mentioned, including
Moby Dick. And most glaringly, he was not misnamed. So, how did the “late Henry Melville” story get started? What
I found was that Melville was not so completely forgotten as the lore would suggest. Though one obituarist wrote that
Melville “has died an absolutely forgotten man” (NY Times Oct 2, 1891), this was not exactly true. The NY Times ran
the first short obit, another a few days later, and a reminiscence a few days after that. Many more newspapers ran
obituaries and several periodicals also ran laudatory pieces in the coming months. It seems that Melville’s books no
longer sold (we have the sales figures to prove this), but he was respected as a serious literary figure by those who care
to keep track of such people. Though the mythology — Melville as a lonely outcast, forgotten by his readers— had
begun, in actuality, he just ceased to be a popular novelist. Announcements for the reprinting of his novels, including
Moby Dick were announced in the papers in early 1892. One introduction to some of his poems stated that Melville’s
early novels, along with “ ‘Moby-Dick; or the White Whale,’ soon became classics of American literature, and are
likely to remain such. They have been continuously in print in England, and new American editions are now in course of
publication.” (Century Illustrated Magazine, May 1892).
So again, how did the “late Henry Melville” story get started? I found the answer in Hershel Parker’s Herman
Melville, a Biography (2002), vol 2 (Thanks to Dr B for the suggestion). The NY Times published a laudatory
reminiscence on Oct 6 1891. The author doesn’t mention Melville’s first name, so the compositor took a guess and
titled the piece, “The Late Hiram Melville.” The editors picked up on the mistake and attempted to obliterate all but the
initial H, so it would read, “The Late H Melville.” Parker states that Hiram was still legible in some copies. In the
image I looked at in the ProQuest database, I could read only the H. (Ironically, the data entrist for the database,
oblivious to the fact that it was intentionally erased, did take a stab at what it should read, and titled the article, “The
Late Harry Melville.”) Melville was not as forgotten as the lore suggested. One compositor set an erroneous first name
and the myth of the outcast Melville was confirmed. Melville was an unknown author only to those who read only the
most contemporary fiction. He was disappointed at not finding a wider readership for his later novels, but, all in all,
Melville was still considered a major literary figure and honored with laurels at his death. We should all be so lucky.
My ghost will not haunt the compositor of an obit entitled “The Late Hiram Pettit.”
You can find some of Melville’s obituaries at:
http://www.melville.org/hmobit.htm
I finally finished Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Sorry to say, my early enthusiasm did not
hold. I very much liked Clarke’s prose style. The tone is delicate, yet firm, even graceful and her ironic Austenian
commentary is often funny (Derivative though it was with it’s faux 19th century tone, I’m not looking for “new” stylists
anyway). But the story bogs down in this leafy novel, especially halfway, and later again when she moves the action to
Venice (which is entirely unnecessary for the plot). What begins as a tightly controlled book, becomes rather
ramshackle as it finishes. Clarke’s poise and balance become a little unhinged. However, I did not regret reading the
book and will probably read her next. There were so many characters worth my while to meet. And the conceit of the
novel, how Regency novel characters would react if actual magic suddenly appeared in their formal, drawing room
world, is lots of fun.
January 17, 2005
A Reader’s Confessal
In Jonathan Rose’s essay “Classics in the Slums”, I read this beautiful quote by Joseph Keating, a Welsh collier and
autodidact:
"Reading of all sorts—philosophy, history, politics, poetry, and novels—was mixed up with my music and other
amusements. I was tremendously alive at this period. Everything interested me. Every hour, every minute was crammed
with my activities in one direction or another. New, mysterious emotions and passions seemed to be breaking out like
little flames from all parts of my body. As soon as the morning sunlight touched my bedroom window, I woke. I did not
rise. I leaped up. I flung the bedclothes away from me. They seemed to be burning my flesh. A glorious feeling within
me, as I got out of bed, made me sing. My singing was never in tune, but my impulse of joy had to express itself."
While I’ve certainly received too much formal education to call myself an autodidact (use of this term itself could be
proof of too much education), I am glad the study of literature has not sullied the thrill I still get from reading. And I feel
so much solidarity with Keating. Reading is, after all, a solitary activity, but the sharing of our passion for books is the
communal mass that binds the congregation of readers. What though I was raised in a middle-class home in Olney and
Keating trod the coal pits of Wales. We both crave the Whitmanesque impulse of joy that emanates from good books.
What though I was first given the fruits of great authors by suited professors and Keating plucked his from second hand
stalls. We both invigorate our selves with the seeds of well-turned verse. While I wile away my hours with pipe and
book, sequestered in my dusty third floor nook of a library, I know that other readers pour over their chosen books in
their own lonely ways. There is solace in this ethereal community. But there is also an ecstatic rush that whisks me from
my chair and sends me shouting to the world, “Read this! Read this!” And I know out there, somewhere, is a Welsh
collier or a suited professor or some other comrade of the book who hears me.
Jonathan Rose on Classics and the Common Reader:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_4_urbanities-classics.html
January 3, 2005
A Reader’s Confessal
On being well-read
I’m sure I’m not the only one who reached a certain age and realized, “Oh my God, I haven’t read the entire Western
Canon (not to mention the vastly accumulating non-canonical books) and now there won’t be time to read them all.” I
have this fantasy that had I started reading in earnest at an earlier age (say three or four) and had I not wasted so many
moments of my life doing all those things so meaningless I can’t remember a fraction of them that now I could be as well
read as I would like to be. (I hope to pass on this curse to my children, much to their current dismay.) Regardless of
any truth in this fantasy, I still plough ahead, churning books in my wake, in the hope I will one day reap this harvest of
words. But what does it mean to be well-read these days? In an age when so few people read fiction (or poetry or
drama), how many books does it take to become corpulently read? The answer, of course, ever expands because
desire to read increases with each book read. I’ve never known a reader to just pack it in one day, satisfied that they’
ve read all the good stuff: “Just got bored with the whole reading thing. Had enough. I like TV better now.” Each
book I read leads to ten others I hadn’t even known about. Part of me yearns for an age with fewer choices, before the
explosion of print (and literacy), a time when it was not inconceivable that a person could read most of the books worth
reading. But that age is probably a fantasy, as well. The trick now is to be very careful about what I choose to read,
which doesn’t mean to read only books that are “good for me.” There are still plenty of revered authors whom I insist
are detrimental to my health. I just need to make sure I will thoroughly enjoy the next book I pick up from my too
cluttered floor. As for ever becoming “well-read,” I think I’d rather read well.
“There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love, and like that colossal adventure it is an
experience of great social import. Even as the tranced swain, the booklover yearns to tell others of his bliss.”
Christopher Morley, “On Visiting Bookshops,” Pipefuls, Doubleday (1920).
I just finished Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and I must confess it did not induce any trancelike state in this
swain, but there was still much to recommend. Hammett’s prose too often clunks along like a car with a bad
transmission. Perhaps I expected the sparse, but graceful, staccato of noir film narration. Or perhaps the films of his
novels are better than his books. (Sometimes this does happen, e.g. Puzo’s Godfather is crap, Coppola’s is brilliant.)
Even the opening paragraph of the novel was awkward to me, describing Sam Spade’s face as a series of v-shapes,
“his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. . . The
v motif was picked up again by thickish brows . . . .” However, Hammett realizes all this v-ness with the arresting line,
“He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.” And you just have to like a book that describes the good guy as a
pleasantly blond satan. The awkwardness continues, especially when introducing the fat man, wonderfully named
Gutman, but bizarrely described as a collection of rising and falling “bulbs” with “pendant cones for arms and legs.”
Huh? My favorite bad line has to be, “His eyes burned yellowly.” Now, in 1929, “yellowly” may have been a perfectly
ordinary adverb, but I doubt it. The saving graces of the book are in the characters (and plot, especially if you haven’t
seen the movie, which is solidly faithful to the book). Spade lives up to the “pleasant satan” moniker. He’s a callous
thug with a Hobbesian distaste for humanity, a brilliant intellect, and a savage lover. Although I knew the story so well
from the film, I still found myself consistently surprised at the revelations of Spade’s character. And there are some
wonderful lines to counter the poor ones. Describing a man’s disappearance, Spade says, “He went like that . . . like a
fist when you open your hand.” And at a time when certain words couldn’t be printed, Hammett could be creative:
“The boy spoke two words, the first a short guttural verb, the second ‘you.’” All in all, The Maltese Falcon is a
strange trip, but worth it.
December 20, 2004
A Reader's Confessal
I recently heard such good things about the new Clint Eastwood movie, “Million Dollar Baby,” about an old boxing
trainer (Eastwood) who decides to teach a young girl (Hillary Swank) how to box. It is based upon the fictional boxing
stories of F.X. Toole, Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner, which I picked up a few years ago when I worked at
Harvest (but never got around to reading). Toole’s real name is Jerry Boyd and he was seventy years old in 2000 when
Rope Burns, his first book, was published. Toole was a colorful character himself, having worked as a bullfighter in
Spain in the 50s before returning to the States after being severely gored (three times). After kicking around several
blue-collar jobs, he decided to write and then, in his forties, he took up boxing, eventually becoming a trainer and cut
man. He died only two years after Rope Burns’ publication. (You can find a good interview he gave archived on the
Fresh Air website of NPR).
The first story, “The Monkey Look,” told from the point of view of a cut man, opens,
“I stop blood.
“I stop it between rounds for fighters so they can stay in the fight.
“Blood ruins some boys. It was that way with Sonny Liston, God rest his soul. Bad as he was, he’d see his own blood
and fall apart.”
What follows is a beautifully written account of how boxing people do what they do, how they move their feet, how they
breathe. Toole’s prose is full of great lines (“disappointed more times than an old priest,” “Watching him fight was like
watching chess with pain”) and vivid characters (one boxer rechristens himself “Dangerous Dillard Fightin Flippo Bam-
Bam Barch”). The only let down is the novella, “Rope Burns,” which finishes up the collection, about a white trainer and
a young black amateur boxer set during the L.A. riots that followed the Rodney King trial. In this story, Toole plays off
too many melodramatic cliches of a down-but-not-quite-out urban neighborhood, too much telegraphed tragedy. But
the first five stories are magnificent in detail and style, especially “Million $$$ Baby,” of which I’d love to quote from
the final paragraph, but it would give away too much of the plot. This story could be sappy, but Toole’s prose never
placates, never condescends. It is well worth finding a copy.
There’s a well written movie review on “Million Dollar Baby” at the NY Times. Rare to find a movie critic quoting
Yeats to describe a movie character:
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2004/12/15/movies/15baby.html