Biographer at work: one report from the trenches, 1992

Writing Melville biography in 1992.

“So-—moments of triumph, hours of focussing, moving, selecting, shaping. Thank God for the computor.”


Now, it’s possible some biographer at some time had absolutely nothing else to do but write the biography. I am assuming that other biographers beside me lamented over and over again the effects of interruptions, both unavoidable ones like death and classes and casual, thoughtless ones. 1992 was difficult. We moved from one state to another. We had 2 deaths in the immediate family (a mother and brother); my rotator cuff was ripped painfully in January but surgery was postponed all year to appease the insurance company; I worked on a major revision of THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE and made several research trips.

Most recurrent theme: The threat of interruptions and actual interruptions.

Professional activities:
Member of the National Endowment for the Humanities Publications Subvention panel, 29 May 1992

Author of the eulogy of Merton M. Sealts, Jr., and presenter of the Hubbell Medal to him at the American Literature Section luncheon, at the New York City MLA, December 28, 1992.

"Melville as Sex Symbol," given at a panel on Melville at the 3 April 1992 NEMLA meeting in Buffalo, New York.

Speeches:
"Extraordinary Twins: The New Critics and the New Historicists Read Pudd'nhead Wilson," given at the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Clemson, S. C., April 25, 1992.

"The Morewoods' Fancy-Dress Pic-nics at Melville Lake," given on August 8, 1992, before the Berkshire County Historical Society, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, at a fund-raiser for Melville's house, Arrowhead; the other speaker was the artist and Melville-lover, Maurice Sendak.

"Melville as Sex Symbol," repeated in a longer version at Nantucket, Massachusetts, in the Great Hall of the Athenaeum, October 13, 1992.

"'Poems by Herman Melville' (1860) and the Purpose of Melville's Reading on his Voyage around the Horn on the Meteor" delivered at "The American Renaissance and Historical Scholarship," an MLA session organized by David Reynolds for December 1992, NYC. (David S. Reynolds, Jerome Loving, Hershel Parker; Philip Gura respondant.)

Publications:
Critical Essays on Herman Melville's MOBY-DICK, eds. Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (New York: G. K. Hall, 1992), xiii and 570. For this collection Higgins and I wrote the long introduction, pp. 1-36, and I wrote a separate piece for a "New Essays" section at the end of the volume, to which John Wenke and David S. Reynolds also contributed.

"Moby-Dick and Domesticity," pp. 545-562, in Critical Essays on Herman Melville's MOBY-DICK, eds. Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (New York: G. K. Hall, 1992), pp. 545-562.

"Letter to the Editor," Analytical & Enumerative Bibliography (1992), New Series 6, nos. 3 & 4, 216-217, response to an earlier letter from Fredson Bowers. (Published October 1994 although dated 1992.)

Perhaps my way of working was unusual. I had spent whole years transcribing new Melville documents into an increasingly massive computer LOG and now was reading long stretches of months and years in order to see how to break the information into clear narrative units.

Sample diary entries on 1853-1854:

30 July 1992: Worked on July-Sept. 1853. 12 pages after 2 days. Put in Happy, Fiddler, Cock, & something about Bartleby. John Hoadley. Lizzie neglected. So—moments of triumph—hours of focussing, moving, selecting, shaping. Thank God for the computor.

31 July 1992: Terribly hot & humid. Worked on 1853 in night & finished it early after getting back up. Then faced the awkwardness of 1854 & at last decided on narrative plus sections on long term CHANGES set in motion— Extremely difficult to isolate, leaving HM & Augusta & Lizzie & Composition to be told as narrative. Did not write at all—worked at organizing.

2 August 1992: 1854 = HARD—but I am writing & it only gets better.

3 August 1992: Some progress on 1854, organizing thematically the section to go after the wedding in January—before the year as it relates to HM & Lizzie & poor Augusta.

11 August 1992 [after trip to Gansevoort and Pittsfield]: Putting stuff in LOG and putting little touches in biography—surprising how much I brought back—including the clipping on Hoadley that gave me my key to Kate. At a novelistic phase—keys to character—Hoadley’s low confidential whisper.

20 August 1992 on talk with Hayford on phone (before he had read any of my drafts): “then talk about how different it is because of [so much new] information and because I am not Leon.”

CONTEMPT FOR BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS SERIES--More of John Bryant's Embarrassing Errors in his notes on the 1991 Pittsfield Biography Panel

MELVILLE'S EVERMOVING DAWN was published late in 1997, six and a half years after the panel discussion Bryant provided the fns for, a year after the publication of the first volume of my biography of Melville.

I was humiliated by the errors associated with my comments on the panel and was irritated by Bryant's casual dismissal of my complaint!

To me it mattered that someone was a cousin or a step-cousin. It mattered that Melville said he had started TYPEE in NYC and not in Lansingburgh. Surely Bryant ought to have known about the label Melville affixed to the draft manuscript of TYPEE which he gave to Augusta, since he had published his "Little Henry" article as early as the September 1986 issue of EXTRACTS. The years of Malcolm's and Milie's birth mattered to me. Casually saying Uncle Peter was "invariably helpful in supporting his widowed sister and her family" was simply erroneous, as had been the earlier description by writers on Melville of Peter as Melville's favorite uncle. Peter's selfishness (or perceived selfishness) fills many of the early letters in the Augusta Papers. He could have educated Maria's children and Leonard's children. Timely expenditure of small sums could have altered the lives of those orphaned children. To call Catherine Lansing Elizabeth Shaw Melville's sister-in-law is very strange.

Accuracy mattered to me in 1997, and matters still. I simply don't understand the New Historical habit of treating biographical data as decorative--one Aunt Mary as good as another Aunt Mary, since what's aimed for is the historicist appearance of concern with context rather than the product of actual historical research into contexts.

CONTEMPT FOR BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS SERIES--Sample page 2 of Humiliating Errors in Notes by John Bryant in MELVILLE'S EVERMOVING DAWN (1997)

I loved Leon Howard but in the 1990s I would not have cited any page of his biography without correcting it. Leon's temperament required him to try to make Melville normal whenever he could, and any time the facts were not clear and there were two or more possible actions Leon would choose wrong, every time, every time, because he so wanted Melville to be reasonable. After the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of MOBY-DICK was published in 1988 and until the first volume of my biography was published in 1996 any responsible scholar would have used my account of the meeting of Melville and Hawthorne there, in the Historical Note. Possibly MELVILLE'S EVERMOVING DAWN was in press when my first volume came out, but if so the Historical Note ought to have been used. I had the great advantage of Maria Melville's detailed account of the comings and goings of the magical week as well as much other previously unknown information. To have Bryant citing Leon was humiliating indeed.


so

CONTEMPT FOR BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS SERIES--Sample page 1 of Humiliating Errors in Notes by John Bryant in MELVILLE'S EVERMOVING DAWN (1997)

As a participant in "Biographers on Biography" I was given a chance to correct a transcript of the forum, but not a chance to look over John Bryant's notes on the panel discussion. Here is a sample page of Bryant's notes and my comments. I felt humiliated by the errors, but the impression I got when I protested was that one Aunt Mary was as good as another. The impression I got, in fact, was that biographical details were decorations. I had by then devoted many years to a pursuit of accuracy and knew that every Melville story absolutely depended upon accuracy in transcriptions, in dating, in identification of the most minor associates. No, I was not happy when the book came on 27 September 1997, once I saw the notes on "Biographers on Biography."

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