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Title: Herman Melville by Elizabeth Hardwick ISBN: 0-670-89158-4 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.4 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A writer of a whale, and vice versa
Comment: Next year I'm taking a trip to a famaliar yet vaguely forbidding American landmark. In other words, I'm planning to re-read "Moby Dick". To prepare myself for this metaphysical adventure, I wanted to read something that would refresh my memory regarding this novel and its author; and Viking Press offers Elizabeth Hardwick's "Herman Melville", published last summer as part of that house's Penquin Lives Series. It's an eclectic series, the subjects ranging from Joan of Arc to Elvis Presley. Ms Hardwick's contribution is not a biography per se (there are no plates and there is no index) but rather a set of essays combining Melville's personal experiences with the art he created. In fact, many of the chapter headings are titles of Melville's stories -- e.g., "Redburn" or "Billy Budd". Reading these chapters inspires one to take up the Meville the reader may have put aside "till later". The two longest chapters are devoted to "Moby Dick" and to Hawthorne, to whom the masterpiece is dedicated. Despite its brevity, (161 pages), Ms Hardwick's book follows Melville's life closely, from his voyages as a young man to his forty-four-year long marriage (which Ms Hardwick compares to Tolstoy's) and ending with his nineteen-year servitude at the New York Custom House. Heavy his marriage was (one of his sons committed suicide, the other became adrifter)...Ms Hardwick's succinct yet complex narrative is smoothlywritten, and she has a way with words (she calls "Moby Dick"a "gorgeous phantasmagoria".) But for a reader who just needs an outrigger against the mammoth "Moby Dick", Ms Hardwick's slim but strong volume offers appropriate support.
Rating: 4
Summary: Penetrating literary insight
Comment: I became interested in this book on the basis of two other works: Edna O'Brien's great Penguin Life of James Joyce, my favorite author; and Hardwick's excellent introduction to the Modern Library edition of Moby-Dick. It certainly lived up to the promise of the second, if not fully the first. As nearly every other reviewer has noted, it's not very thorough as a biography, focusing instead on the highlights of which any Melville fan is probably already aware; but then again the Penguin Lives series doesn't pretend to be extremely in-depth. As literary criticism, though, this book is great stuff. Here Hardwick decidedly avoids a formulaic or predictable approach, coming up with novel observations on Melville's work and turning as perceptive an eye on lesser works like Redburn and Typee as on the masterpiece -- indeed, it was this book which inspired me to read Redburn, which I've come to admire as a great entry in the Melvillean canon. Add to this Hardwick's voice, sometimes beautifully evocative, sometimes obscure, but always greater than your average nonfiction author's, and you've got a book definitely worth reading.
Rating: 3
Summary: Mediocre Biography
Comment: Having neither reading anything on or by Herman Melville, I found this book suitably interesting to whet my appitite for more; but overall, the narrative was not that great; Hardwick's writing is somewhat tedious and hampered by her apparent lack of expertise on the subject.
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Title: James Joyce: A Penguin Life (Penguin Lives) by Edna O'Brien ISBN: 0670882305 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: November, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) by Garry Wills ISBN: 0670886106 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Marcel Proust (Penguin Lives) by Edmund White ISBN: 0670880574 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: January, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicolson ISBN: 0670894435 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Simone Weil (Penguin Lives) by Francine Du Plessix Gray, Francis Du Plessix Gray ISBN: 0670899984 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 25 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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