"The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating"--accepted by Nineteenth-Century Fiction 1961--published 1963

In August 1959 I resigned as telegrapher on the Kansas City Southern Railroad in Port Arthur, Texas. After getting the MA at Northwestern in the Summer of 1960, I took the Melville class of Harrison Hayford. He did not accept term papers. He wanted the paper written for the most likely journal to take it (following all their suggestions for style) and put in an envelope addressed to the journal with the correct amount of stamps on the envelope. If he liked it enough he could simply mail it. He may never have liked one well enough to mail straight off, but he liked my paper. He was the chairman of the Melville Society which that year was in Chicago. He asked me to read the paper there. In due course Nineteenth-Century Fiction published it. Harold Bloom republished it, as I have done more than once. It is well known in France, my 2nd Norton Critical Edition of THE CONFIDENCE-MAN having been assigned for all advanced graduate students taking the internal and external agregation [one g and an acute accent on the e] exam a few years ago. Giving the talk in December 1960 was the start of my career as a Melville scholar. What I brought to Northwestern was a knowledge of the Bible. I knew all about Original Sin, as Melville's mother did. The Yale authority on the novel knew the Bible but felt it in a sweeter Episcopalian way.