John Bryant's Contempt for Biographical Accuracy series, p. 257 of MELVILLE'S EVERMOVING DAWN

This continues the   "one Aunt Mary is as good as another Aunt Mary" series.

I was personally humiliated by having erroneous footnotes attached to the transcription of what was said at the Biographers' Panel. Now, years later, I see John Bryant's errors as part of a general carelessness about factual accuracy in professors who were taught by New Critics or the children of the New Critics. I will write somewhere about the way practitioners of the New Historicism, in particular, seem to regard biographical names or places or events as decorative items that can be chosen among without doing basic checking. To say Gansevoort died while seeing Melville's first book through the press is to diminish his triumph: at great cost to himself, he succeeded--he held copies of the book. To say that the temperature in Moxon's office was low is to misunderstand the metaphor: Moxon's MANNER was icy, and Melville managed to thaw him a little. This sort of thing matters--to me. And to confuse one Aunt Mary with another is to show no VISUALIZING of the scene, the fault I have complained about as common in Brenda Wineapple's HAWTHORNE: A LIFE. What would the Dorchester aunt be doing in Pittsfield?


These were real living people. They deserve to be thought of that way, not as cardboard pop-ups you can safely shuffle at will. And when documents are available, they ought to be used. Maria Melville's letter and other documents account for hours and hours of 2-4 August 1850 so that the possibility that HM began reading the NH book then was very very slim. He was the host! VISUALIZE! It's strange how important visualizing comes to seem to me as I think on the common contempt for accuracy in biographical matters.