This is what I wanted in 2002, with the second volume of my biography, when what I got was slander in the NATION, the NEW YORK TIMES, and the NEW REPUBLIC. This time, the NEW YORKER blog listed MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE as one of the Books to Watch Out for in January ("Parker writes with a rare combination of humor and passion that hooks the reader into this potentially arcane subject"), and Carl Rollyson has commented twice in The Biographer's Craft about his upcoming review in the NEW CRITERION. In his first comment he stressed that the book is not just about Melville but "the genre of biography," which is just want I wanted reviewers to say. Now, the Chronicle of Higher Education gave a page to it a few weeks ago which mainly consisted of accurate quotations from me but which was sabotaged by the second paragraph, a fantasy about the causes of my grievances in 2002. The Chronicle simply would not say that I had real grievances--that I had been falsely accused of making up books that Melville finished but that now are lost. Instead, it invented some disagreement with Brodhead over "editorial principles" and weirdly blurred Delbanco's behavior so that it seemed that everything I was later quoted as saying had no basis. The Chronicle, in short, was dishonest in interpolating a phony second paragraph instead of just stating my objections to the reviewers in 2002. Is it so important to protect Richard Brodhead and Andrew Delbanco from their own words?--that I alone in my "black hole" had heard of POEMS? that I had merely surmised the existence of 2 books and therefore could not be trusted anywhere in either volume?
So, the thugs will probably come, but for now Amazon has not been hacked. Let them come on, but please, let them use their real names, not hide behind pseudonyms like "flotsam," the first and most vicious commentator on the Chronicle article--which was a set up inviting such comments.
So, the thugs will probably come, but for now Amazon has not been hacked. Let them come on, but please, let them use their real names, not hide behind pseudonyms like "flotsam," the first and most vicious commentator on the Chronicle article--which was a set up inviting such comments.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars You Must Read This Book!,
January 23, 2013
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This review is from: Melville Biography: An Inside
Narrative (Hardcover)
Over the past 40 years a virus has invaded the cloistered
enclaves of academia. A virus called "theory" -- literary theory,
film theory, art theory, architectural theory, Semiotics, and New Criticism
to name just a few strains. Each version boils down to the same thing: a
secret language created by inbred academics permeated with multisyllabic
nonsense words, and tortured incomprehensible syntax that does not seek to
communicate meaning, but to obscure it to all but a chosen few. These
phantasmagoric theories do not teach students how to write a novel, a work of
nonfiction, or how to paint, or sculpt, or build a house. It is an astounding
fraud perpetrated on unsuspecting university students and the parents who
have to mortgage their homes to pay for this carnival midway malarkey.
In his groundbreaking new book, Melville Biography - An Inside Narrative, Hershel Parker goes to war against the theorists with an Old Testament wrath. I say, bravo! Parker brilliantly portrays how the rise of theory has degraded academic standards and slowly strangled the art of original research. The apostles of New Criticism argue that it is not important what Herman Melville intended when he wrote his masterworks; nor is it important what impact social events and commercial pressures had on his work. All that matters is the marvelous web of theories the New Critics can spin around his work. Parker calls this out for what it is: a rationalization for laziness, and a supreme act of narcissism. Behind Parker's rage is a passionate plea for academics not to cede the field of original research to journalists. He fervently hopes they will shake off the fever that has gripped them for almost half a century and embrace once again the fundamentals of scholarship. Anyone concerned about the state of our universities and the quality of our social discourse must read this outstanding book.
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Bravo! the four reviews of this book yours included are
some of the best reviews I’ve read on amazon
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Time Coming, January 22,
2013
By
This review is from: Melville Biography: An Inside
Narrative (Hardcover)
Parker's new book was on display at MLA in Boston earlier
this month (Jan 2013), so I bought one of the copies on the spot. Much
controversy surrounded Parker's earlier two-volume biography of Melville, and
I wanted to see how Parker would shape his public justification in this work.
The book accomplishes that, but in the larger context of Parker's own life of
scholarship and continuing discoveries in Melville Biography.
Parker could have published his central section, the exposure of bad scholarship and irresponsible reviewing, without going farther, but the presence of Parts I and III shows the process of scholarship and its fruits in a way that goes far beyond the structured arguments of Part II. Many years ago from Randall's DUKEDOM LARGE ENOUGH I recognized the joy of book collecting and the value of early editions to the scholar. Parker's book should stimulate an equal appreciation of the scholar's life and work at the same time he increases our appreciation of Melville's. MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE functions as both prologue and epilogue to Herman Melville: A Biography (Herman Melville: A Biography (Volume 1, 1819-1851), Herman Melville: A Biography (Volume 2, 1851-1891)), as Parker's Melville: The Making of the Poet expands his second volume of the big biography. Parker's work compares to that of the great Shakespeare scholars: E. K. Chambers, who in volume after volume established the modern understanding of Shakespeare and his theatre, S. Schoenbaum, who sorted out Shakespeare's lives, and Andrew Gurr, the modern Chambers. None of these had to deal with the resistance Parker did when presenting his profound research, including paradigm-shifting discoveries that were ignored or denied by his reviewers. Hereafter, as Melville said about a contemporary writer, "a grateful posterity will take the best care" of Hershel Parker.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and Beautifully Written!,
January 17, 2013
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This review is from: Melville Biography: An Inside
Narrative (Hardcover)
If you have any interest in Melville, Moby-Dick, literary
biography ... or beautiful, lucid prose, Professor Parker's magnificent new
book is for you. I can't recommend it highly enough. Imagine: A brilliant
scholar who can write! No wonder Parker understands Melville better than any
of the many Melvillians working today--he is a fellow writer. The book is
chock-full of so many illuminating and fascinating elements. Whether he is
explaining to us--always so clearly and entertainingly--what he knows of
Melville's hotel dinner with Hawthorne, at which HM presented one of the first
copies of Moby-Dick to its deidcatee, and how he knows it, or elucidating the
enormity of the cost HM (and his family) paid for his genius and it
manifestation on paper, Parker is always your favorite college
lecturer--wise, informed, enthused, reasoned, often funny, and empathetic. He
desires to tell you why he loves Melville and why you will, too. Parker also
knows the value of archival research--and the hours and miles logged during
the creation of his definitive two-volume life of HM are stunning. Mr. Parker
has the ability to convey the excitement of the true research scholar in the
moment of "the find," as in this passage: "There will always
be a few literary detectives who devote months or years to the pursuit of
documents in the confidence that at last they will sit at midnight in a
little bare motel room in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and turn through a big
shoebox full of what looks like only bills of lading until they spy a blue
folded paper, clearly a letter, a letter with the signature `Really Thine, H
Melville'..."
Melville, our greatest novelist, deserves Parker, our greatest biographer. My own opinion is that Parker was robbed of the Pulitzer for Herman Melville: A Biography. Is it too much to hope that the Pulitzer committee corrects its mistake by selecting Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative for next year's prize?
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Thanks. I think you prodded me over the edge. I have to
read this.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Joining the Chorus of Praise,
January 22, 2013
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This review is from: Melville Biography: An Inside
Narrative (Hardcover)
Heartily I join with Jack O'Connell in his chorus of
praise for Hershel Parker's marvelous new book Melville Biography: An Inside
Narrative. Much of what I would say about it to my friends he has already
elegantly enumerated in his review so I won't repeat his points here, with
all of which I agree. I would only add that if your subject is Melville, then
like the deep-diving writer himself, you have to want more More MORE from his
biographer and the only MORE biographer of Melville is Dr. Parker. That he
has been attacked by the lesser "researchers" in the field for the
archival-based detail-oriented biographic approach (isn't that the essence of
scholarship?)is baffling to me and I don't blame him a bit for fighting back
in this book with a vitriol equal to that which has been flung at him. (Who
can help thinking of Moby-Dick under attack by harpoons?) But what is new
here is a rare glimpse of the personal cost of scholarship, not only in
regard to inexcusable reviews but to eyes and vertebrae and lungs, day after
weary day bending over microfiche machines and difficult-to-decipher
documents, seeking out the gold nugget that will increase our understanding of
the details of Melville's life. (There is also an update on new information
regarding Melville which has been found since the 2-volume biography.) I am
especially pleased therefore in this book to learn something of the personal
life of this matchless Melville scholar himself. In fact, what is so special
about Dr. Parker's 2-volume biography about Melville is that it is all about
Melville, not about Parker, whereas in most of the New Criticism biographies
the subject of the biography too often is lost in the fog of the self-serving
viewpoint of the biographer whose main purpose is to prove some
academic/sociologic/sexual thesis. Not so with Dr. Parker who is all Melville
all the time. But at least now, with the Inside Narrative, we at last see
something of Hershel as well. I am personally delighted.
Robert Pratt Hastie
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Initial post:
Jan 25, 2013 8:26:04 AM PST
And as an aside...
As someone who followed the Duke lacrosse case closely, it was interesting to also discover within a portrait of Richard Brodhead, and to notice that his earlier attitudes and actions may have foreshadowed the path he was to take a few years later, when confronted with a crisis of another sort, when he was President of Duke University. In the lacrosse case, he seemed to exhibit a primary concern for public reaction (otherwise known as PR), to the extent that he appeared (at least to this observer) to be willing to sacrifice even innocent students for the sake of a university's image. For example, he stated, when interviewed near the case's end (Jan. 2007), "Why didn't I join with the defense team and file motions with them? Because it was essential that we not be seen as a partisan player in this..." --which is pious-sounding; but it a catch-all excuse which just as easily could have been uttered by a bystander at any lynching; and on reflection, seems ( when taken in connection with other examples of Brodhead's indifference or even outright hostility to his falsely-accused students) to suggest a kind of callousness on his part towards the unjustified suffering of others. (Perhaps he was in agreement with Duke's Board Chair, Robert K. Steel, who said it would be "best for Duke" if the falsely-accused went to trial, and even if they were convicted; and when asked to explain his failure to defend them, replied, "Sometimes individuals have to suffer for the good of the organization.") Towards the author of the Melville biographies, and even towards Melville himself, we seem to see a similar frame of mind exhibited: "Brodhead's false accusations against me must be in some way a consequence of his New Critical training and practice, I decided. In sober truth, if your training leads you to dehumanize Melville, to be blind to his agony, how can you not carry your training over to the way you treat real living people...? If you think that facts about authors are not real and authors are not real, then you may come to see living people outside your own private circle as unreal. Cut them and they do not bleed, or if they do bleed their suffering can never be of the significance of your own discomforts of the discomforts of your class...Some of the behavior of the Melville critics who refuse to look at documentary evidence is innate in their character, I assume, but some of their actions, I would think, must be a consequence of lifelong practice of a dehumanizing literary approach, the New Criticism. Their nature is subdued to what it works in, like the dyer's hand." (p. 173) Alas, the committee searching for a new president for Duke could not avail itself of the discussions about Brodhead's nature as presented in this volume; otherwise its considerations might have turned in another direction; and its ensuing disgrace (which forever tainted the university for its role in "Scottsboro II") might have been averted.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Inspired and inspirational,
January 26, 2013
By
This review is from: Melville Biography: An Inside
Narrative (Hardcover)
Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative is Hershel
Parker's answer to numerous requests for a one volume version of his
magisterial two volume biography of Herman Melville. Reasoning, plausibly,
that the moment a single volume appeared, no one would read the original,
Professor Parker gives us instead this splendid, wholly new book, which is
actually several books in one, among them a biography of a biography; an
autobiography of the biographer retracing all the many paths, places,
departures, travels, destinations, by ways, swings, and roundabouts, both
actual and virtual, by which writers get to know and become intimate with
their subject; an odyssey, at once intellectual, spiritual, and deeply
personal, of an esteemed literary critic and scholar engaging, grappling, and
struggling with some of the largest, most important and central issues of
scholarship and criticism of the past century. Parker, a brilliant thinker,
can match the most arcane theorists on their own turf, but his is no dry,
academic tome: written with verve, style, breathless energy, and unflagging
enthusiasm (in the best Emersonian sense of that word), this book is also a
stunning critique and stinging rebuke to half a century of critical theory
and practice, both inside the academy and outside it in the world of book
reviewing and commentary, beginning with the New Criticism and going through
structuralism, deconstructionism, postmodernism, to the New Historicism,
movements that seek to strip literature and the other arts of every human, social,
cultural, and historical context except that of the work itself as an
aesthetic object or structure. Arguing against so called "organic
unity"--which, as it grew out of the New Criticism, should really be
called "hermetically sealed unity"--Parker seeks to restore
criticism and scholarship to the study of that far more human and humane, to
say nothing of real, unity: that of the artist, his thoughts, his ideas, his
feelings, his beliefs, his circumstances, his life and times, and how he
transmuted these through the mysteries of talent, imagination, and genius
into timeless works of art. Passionate, combative, blazingly eloquent,
fearlessly frank and candid, and, yes, there's no sense using lesser words,
inspired and inspirational, not least in his celebration of the joys and
rewards of old fashioned--that is, patient, dogged, committed,
tireless--research, Parker here demonstrates once again that he is a peerless
Melvillian, a standard setting scholar, and a truly great critic.
--Paul Seydor, author of Peckinpah: The Western Films: A Reconsideration
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5.0 out of 5 stars Another great Melville bio,
March 11, 2013
By
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This review is from: Melville Biography: An Inside
Narrative (Hardcover)
Hershel Parker, the foremost Melville scholar, has
provided another great biography of Herman Melville to add to his definitive
two-volume set.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Dive right in!, February 11,
2013
By
This review is from: Melville Biography: An Inside
Narrative (Hardcover)
We are, all of us -- readers, writers, publishers,
critics, students, and everyone else -- creatures in time and space. I
suspect that Hershel Parker grasps the significance of this seemingly obvious
statement in uniquely important ways. This book manages to integrate
narratives of the biographer's work with narratives of our greatest American
writer's creative work, along with critical history and (indirectly) the
history of literature in the academy. My own POV: I'm a non-academic office
worker who graduated with a BA in literature in the '70s, and discovered
Melville only after college. I've tried making up for lost time since, and
early on found "Moby-Dick as Doubloon" (Hayford & Parker)
rewarding. Only after college did I appreciate the fact that English/American
Literature had not always been a core component of higher education
curricula, and that what I had learned, and the way I learned it, were in
some sense cultural products. This "inside narrative" is rewarding
on many levels: listen carefully to Parker in this book, and you can bring
light (and yes, heat!) to your reading experience. May even "rattle your
cage," as a good book should: but you'll know more about where the
author (and you) are coming from! Highly recommended.
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