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Title: Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (The Northwestern-Newberry Edition of the Writings of Herman Melvile) by Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle ISBN: 0-8101-1591-3 Publisher: Northwestern University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)
Rating: 4
Summary: The least known and most humorous of Melville's works.
Comment: This book is at the same time the least and the most "Melvillian" of all Melville's corpus. Melville wrote in Moby-Dick that "two thirds of the world revolve in darkness." This idea certaily holds true for most of Melville's works, but not Israel Potter. In this uncharacteristically light-hearted and crisply written rewriting of American history, Melville gives an early literary version of Woody Allen's film Zelig. The character Israel Potter is that same sort of insignificant historical non-entity who just happens to get caught up in incredibly significant historical moments. In his various wanderings Israel meets and becomes politically involved with a trio of the most important American patriots--Ben Franklin, John Paul Jones, and Ethan Allen. It is through these encounters that Melville subtlely (and sometimes not so subtlely) realizes his critical agenda and those darker themes that dominate so much of his other work begin to show themselves. In his portrayal of Franklin, Melville takes a bash at what he sees as the exemplar of American "genius"--the same American genius that ignored and misunderstood his most significant works and forced him into obscurity and poverty in his lifetime. Melville sees Franklin as representative of all that is wrong with the American character--he is parsimonious, small-minded, hard-headed, and morally hypocritical. In the other two historical figures, John Paul Jones and Ethan Allen, Melville finds redemption. In them he sees represented more of that European idea of genius, the manly half-savage/half-civilized genius of Thomas Carlyle. Like Queequeg in Moby-Dick who is described as "George Washington canabalistically rendered," Jones and Allen are wildmen in a civilized society, raging against the world as they utter their outrageous and at times incomprehensible truth. A fun yet undenialbly thought-provoking read. Enjoy
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Title: Hope Leslie, Or, Early Times in the Massachusetts (Penguin Classics) by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Carolyn L. Karcher ISBN: 0140436766 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Confidence Man (Literary Classics (Prometheus Books)) by Herman Melville ISBN: 157392038X Publisher: Prometheus Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley (Schomburg Library of Nineteenth Century Black Women Writers) by Phillis Wheatley, John C. Shields ISBN: 0195060857 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1989 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Pierre, Or, the Ambiguities (Penguin Classics) by Herman Melville, William C. Spengemann ISBN: 0140434844 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Mardi and a Voyage Thither (Writings of Herman Melville) by Herman Melville, Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle ISBN: 0810116901 Publisher: Northwestern University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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