There is absolutely nothing new about the way the Big Lie becomes believed. Joseph Goebbels perfected it in the 1930s. Look now at my cousin Franklin Graham and other Evangelicals. I keep reflecting that I am so old I remember when Evangelicals were Christians!
In the American university system, I first saw the Big Lie triumphant in 1990 at the meeting of the Melville Society in Chicago when a satanic red-bearded stranger, hearing falsehoods said in the room, stood at the open door shouting in agreement, "THE FACTS DON'T MATTER"--and thereafter the facts did not matter. Look at John Bryant's two dozen biographical errors in his pages annotating a speech I gave in Pittsfield in 1991. After 1990 I never attended another Melville Society meeting in the United States. In 2002 reviewing the second volume of my biography Richard Brodhead and Andrew Delbanco said I invented the volume POEMS--I merely surmised that Melville finished it in 1860. Elizabeth Schultz pushed the same charge. Delbanco said I could not be trusted anywhere because I invented POEMS. As late as 2019 the man known to Harrison Hayford as "Chowderhead" pushed the same accusation in LEVIATHAN, saying that it was "fair-enough" that great critics had charged me with merely surmising the existence of the volume (even though documentary evidence includes Melville's 12 point memoranda on how he wants his brother to handle the publication and the fact that 2 publishers at least refused to publish it when it was offered to them). In LEVIATHAN (A Journal of Melville Studies) until now facts often have not mattered. The "Inaugural Volume" of poetry, the volume in which Melville turned to poetry? Oh, the 1866 BATTLE-PIECES, not POEMS. LEVIATHAN is under new editorship and I hope for better, much better. It is hard to be wholly confident: too many people writing on Melville still echo the satanic red-bearded stranger: THE FACTS DON'T MATTER.
In the American university system, I first saw the Big Lie triumphant in 1990 at the meeting of the Melville Society in Chicago when a satanic red-bearded stranger, hearing falsehoods said in the room, stood at the open door shouting in agreement, "THE FACTS DON'T MATTER"--and thereafter the facts did not matter. Look at John Bryant's two dozen biographical errors in his pages annotating a speech I gave in Pittsfield in 1991. After 1990 I never attended another Melville Society meeting in the United States. In 2002 reviewing the second volume of my biography Richard Brodhead and Andrew Delbanco said I invented the volume POEMS--I merely surmised that Melville finished it in 1860. Elizabeth Schultz pushed the same charge. Delbanco said I could not be trusted anywhere because I invented POEMS. As late as 2019 the man known to Harrison Hayford as "Chowderhead" pushed the same accusation in LEVIATHAN, saying that it was "fair-enough" that great critics had charged me with merely surmising the existence of the volume (even though documentary evidence includes Melville's 12 point memoranda on how he wants his brother to handle the publication and the fact that 2 publishers at least refused to publish it when it was offered to them). In LEVIATHAN (A Journal of Melville Studies) until now facts often have not mattered. The "Inaugural Volume" of poetry, the volume in which Melville turned to poetry? Oh, the 1866 BATTLE-PIECES, not POEMS. LEVIATHAN is under new editorship and I hope for better, much better. It is hard to be wholly confident: too many people writing on Melville still echo the satanic red-bearded stranger: THE FACTS DON'T MATTER.
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