Four of John Bryant’s Fantasy Narratives of his Intimacy and Equality with Harrison Hayford

John Bryant’s Fantasy Narratives of his Intimacy and Eqality with Harrison Hayfor

In the 2002 FLUID TEXT  John Bryant makes much of his intimacy with his highly respected equals: "while researching Melville, I would drift uptown to the Newberry Library to confer with Harrison Hayford, who from time to time would drift down from Northwestern to conduct the making of his magisterial edition of The Writings of Herman Melville." 

Bryant’s SUGGESTION in that passage: There were two great men. One great man would drift down from Northwestern University in Evanston, the other great man drift up from the University of Chicago, providentially meeting at the Newberry Library. Hayford was working on the Melville Edition, but he merely drifted down, not taking the lurching El, and at the Newberry rendezvoused with Bryant.  It seemed preordained--Equals equally drifting to a rendezvous.


The March 2003 LEVIATHAN: “Harry was always available for long phone calls about anything from family, scholarship, modern critics, and politics to, of course, Melville.

Bryant’s SUGGESTION in this passage: Hayford always had time “for long phone calls” about whatever was on Bryant’s mind.

        In fact, Hayford dreaded Bryant's intrusive telephone calls because, he lamented to Brian Higgins, to me, and others, Bryant never got right to the point but held him for a long initial circular maundering before he got to the purpose of the call, and even then what he brought up was more or less incoherent. As early as 1990, certainly by 1991, Hayford began calling John Bryant “Chowderhead” for his inability to understand arguments and implement solutions.

        My diary 5 July 1991.  Sendak telephoned me: Told him Brian H[iggins] says Harry now labels him Chowderhead.”

        Bryant’s inability to focus on a topic and his inability to understand the application of evidence is what made Hayford wave his hands around his head and say, “CHOWDERHEAD". I can testify that every time Bryant called me for advice about evidence in some contribution to MELVILLE SOCIETY EXTRACTS I became exasperated because he could not follow my explanation of what a line of evidence suggested. He never understood  just what helpful suggestions he might convey to the contributor. He seemed never to understand any argument from evidence. As you went through the steps in an argument, it was as if his mind had taken off on another topic altogether. He did not simply go off on tangents, if tangents start from a recognizable simple point on a curve, or maybe a complex area of a line. Bryant would simply go off, untethered, leaving you with the suggestions you had made or were still making. Maybe he was already planning to call someone else about a new topic. This pattern drove Harrison Hayford to distraction.”

My diary 5 July 1991.  Sendak telephoned me: “Told him Brian H[iggins] says Harry now labels him Chowderhead. 

Bryant in the June 2006 LEVIATHAN: “When I first met him, we both happened to live in the same metropolitan area: I was a graduate student on Chicago’s South Side; he, a world renowned Melville scholar and editor up north in Evanston. We agreed to meet half way, in 1973 at The Newberry Library, where he showed me the Library’s famous (now dispersed) Melville Room with its remarkable collection of materials including an equally famous (among Melvilleans) file cabinet of articles on all things Melville. He asked me questions about my dissertation and made me feel real, and his presence and nod gave me a crucial boost during a period of academic depression that drove many away from the profession.”


Bryant’s  SUGGESTION in this passage: Here Bryant acknowledges how different their statures were. They were unequals but they learned of each other somehow (who made the first move?) and agreed to meet halfway. After a personal guided tour of the Melville holdings, Hayford bestowed a blessing on him with “his presence and nod,” making him feel real, an equal then or at least to become an equal. When the God nods to you benignly it gives you a Crucial Boost to scholarly immortality?

The March 2003 LEVIATHAN: “We met at his house and in hotel rooms to look at photos of the “Art” manuscripts or my transcription of the Typee manuscript. Shoulder to shoulder we pored over these objects marveling at their impenetrability.”

Bryant’s SUGGESTION in this passage: First, the implication that there was a manuscript of Typee  in the 1983 Augusta Papers, not a dozen or so leaves. This is egregious self-aggrandizing. Second, the false implication of frequent working meetings at 1010 Elmwood Avenue and hotel rooms. Third, the implication that Hayford ever would have thought of any Melville manuscripts as being impenetrable. Hayford simply never saw any Melville manuscript as anything but something to be transcribed. By the late 1970s Hayford and Robert Ryan had done detailed study of “Art.” A scholar does not marvel at the impenetrability of even the most difficult documents. I remember quite well how gnarly Cousin Priscilla’s handwriting was, but she formed her letters regularly and I caught on so as to capture every word, and in the process learn the title of Melville’s 1853 book, THE ISLE OF THE CROSS. That’s what scholars do. Fourth, the implication that Bryant and Hayford  were Mighty Champions [who for prolonged periods struggled together] shoulder to shoulder.  They never worked over Melville manuscripts this way.

        Think how “shoulder to shoulder” is used. Think of accounts of Churchill and Roosevelt sitting shoulder to shoulder.  Just to remind everyone how that phrase is used by real champions I quote from the 90 year old Joseph McJunkin’s affidavit supporting the application of the widow of Joseph Ratchford for his Revolutionary War pension. McJunkin gives a good American usage of the phrase Bryant used so self-aggrandizingly. 

(The meticulous transcriber is Will Graves.) Ordinary soldiers can earn the right to say they “fought hand to hand & shoulder to shoulder together,” as much as Churchill could have said that, after Roosevelt’s death. Scholars can work together shoulder to shoulder as Churchill and Roosevelt did and as McJunkin and Ratchford did, but nothing like that happened when Hayford and Bryant looked at “Art” and at images of the dozen-plus leaves of the draft of Typee.