Norsworthy, Maher, Hime, and Sandberg on MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE
Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative is amazing,
and deliciously different from Hershel Parker’s string of non-retirement
works—intricately rooted in verifiable facts, precise and reliable as ever, but
juicier, braver, and better than anything he has done before now. This Inside
Narrative masterfully and entertainingly blends intellectual autobiography,
the untold and unexamined history of Melville scholarship, and instructive case
studies in the praxis of biography. Research hounds like me, thrilled by
Parker’s tales of the hunt, will delightedly follow him on the trail of
evidence and savor the joy of discovery. Academics across the disciplines will
be challenged by Parker’s insistent and cogently argued distinction between scholarship
and criticism. All readers who cherish truth-seeking and truth-saying will be
shocked then heartened by Parker’s exposés of bad scholarship, fake
scholarship, and the “mutual admiration society” of celebrity critics. As
intellectual autobiography Parker’s Inside Narrative is compelling and
revealing. In essence Parker demonstrates why his two-volume Melville biography
is matchless in scope, depth, accuracy, integrity, and humanity. As the
wonderfully intimate autobiography of the biographer and history of the
biography, Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative powerfully reveals
what you need to acquire, and what you have to give up, to be maestro.--Scott
Norsworthy-- Bibliographical Associate on The
Writings of Herman Melville and author of “Melville’s Notes from Thomas
Roscoe’s The German Novelists.”
Hershel
Parker's Melville Biography: An Inside
Narrative is the cap-stone to the vital contributions he has made to the
stony field of Herman Melville scholarship. The book infuses humor, irony, and
scholarly insight to the art of understanding Melville and his entire body of
work, along with a sobering survey of Melville scholarship from the past 100
hundred years (both its groundbreaking accomplishments and its more corrosive
counterparts).This book stands as a stoic testament to a field of research
flamed solely by zeal and Spartan tenacity. Parker's process arrives to the
truth of the matter in a field littered with the rambling surmises of New
Critics hoping to eradicate authorial insight in favor of critical skewerings. Parker
not only stands for the tried and true ways of literary tradition, but also
embraces the potential of the Internet and blogging to enable the potential of
new information as well as finding new ways to reach an audience that continues
to expand generation after generation. Herman
Melville: An Inside Narrative has reshaped my own aesthetic and technique toward
literary biography as well as brought new appreciation for Hershel Parker and
that ungraspable phantom, the spirit of Herman Melville, that fuels the entire
scope of his scholarly cosmos.-- Paul Maher--Author of Kerouac: His
Life and Work and Jack Kerouac's
American Journey: The Real-Life Odyssey of “On the Road.”
Melville Biography: An
Inside Narrative takes us on an extraordinary journey through the life and
mind of Hershel Parker, the world's greatest Melville scholar. Parker vividly retraces
his decades as workaday Champollion when he dug through libraries from New
Orleans to Hampstead Heath, sacrificing his eyes on newspaper microfilm and 19th-century
handwriting as he sussed out the details of the artistic development and financial
struggles of Herman Melville. From his harvest of hundreds of primary documents,
Parker then wove their revelations into his authoritative and compelling two-volume
biography (1996 and 2002).Parker’s life's work illustrates Beethoven's great
maxim, that genius is the art of taking pains. In Melville Biography Parker frankly describes the uproar his serial
revelations about Melville's life created within the clubby little world of
self-anointed and self-important Melville critics, all strangers to the
archives. This new book will enthrall not just Melville fans, but all fans of
great literature. It is must reading for anyone who aspires to research a
credible, fact-based biography. It is also must reading for anyone who cares
about creating great art, for in its tales of triumph, conflict, and
suppression at long last overcome, can be found all that one puts at hazard in setting
out on such an unfashionable voyage. In Melville
Biography, Parker embodies the title of another book on life-writing, Biography as High Adventure.-- James
Hime, Edgar finalist for The Night of the
Dance, author of other Jeremiah Spur mysteries and the Kindle Book, Three Thousand Bridges.
Imagine our
gain if Richard Ellmann had reflected in a book on his lives of Yeats, Wilde,
and Joyce. Like Ellmann, Parker has devoted his career to biography, and now in
this Inside Narrative offers his
harvests of biographical research and thought. Never before has a literary biographer reflected as deeply and frankly
on the craft of life-writing and the fate of a documentary biography as Parker
does in this companion to his two-volume Herman Melville: A Biography. Lovers
of literary biography will rejoice at the revelations of Parker’s arduous
research, his stunning discoveries, his dazzling handling of mundane evidence,
and his hard-won theoretical convictions. Melville Biography: An Inside
Narrative is part autobiography and historiography of Melville biography;
part exposé of the follies of ahistorical writings on Melville by disciples of
the New Criticism and their archivophobic successors; and part a series of
exemplary demonstrations of a biographer at work, profiting from evolving
online and digital archival resources as well as his decades of traditional
archival research. Melville Biography leaves us knowing Herman Melville
more intimately than ever, points new researchers toward biographical riches on
Melville yet unexplored, offers practical guidance and heartfelt inspiration to
any life-writer, and enriches all lovers of literary biography. --Robert A. Sandberg
–Discoverer- transcriber of Melville’s
“House of the Tragic Poet,” design editor for The New Melville Log, co-editor of the final volume of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of The Writings of Herman Melville.
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