Can you tell from this how the north west wind is pushing the waves south?

Reckless or just Strong Windsurfer

I was afraid he would be dashed on the Rock.

Imaginative Caregiving for the Cancer Patient

That's the title of a New York TIMES article.

If you go to the hospital take along good nail clippers and an emery board. No one on the staff will have cut the patient's fingernails or toenails. The patients are always grateful. Flowers? Huh! nurses throw them out as soon as you leave.

Morro Rock--closer than usual--2 photos

2nd day of Kite Festival

Gary Davenport and the McGehee family motto: WHAT THE DEVIL ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO ME?

That was when Cousin Meriwether in 1876 was about to be buried alive. Why did so many critics try to bury me alive? Well, Gary Davenport did it because I did not believe in the Sacred sacrosanct WORD


Faith-Based Literary Theory, and Ivy League Professors Who Lie about Evidence



FAITH-BASED LITERARY THEORY AND HOW IVY LEAGUE REVIEWERS GET AWAY WITH LYING ABOUT AND SUPPRESSING ARCHIVAL EVIDENCE.

My 1984 book was "inimical to the higher values of literary culture that have survived, somehow, from the beginnings of literacy to our Age of Information."

From Gary Davenport in THE SEWANEE REVIEW (Summer 1985)—review of Hershel Parker’s FLAWED TEXTS AND VERBAL ICONS:

Parker properly avers that the view of a text as a verbal icon has persisted even into an age that rejects the New Criticism. This fact should not be surprising: a sense of textual reality is obviously far too universal to be identified with any particular critical movement. This notion endures because of the common realization that the idea of the text is absolutely necessary--even if it is only a necessary fiction--for the study of literature to make sense. Otherwise the object of study be­comes the vague heterogeneous "construct"--comprising all extant ver­sions and parts of a text, together with any stated or presumed "intent" of the author--that comes to occupy the consciousness of the researcher (one can no longer call him a reader). This situation would be highly flattering to the ego of the critic, who thus comes to have the same im­portance for the text that Bishop Berkeley thought God had for the universe. But we do not have to be Luddites to see this view as inimical to the higher values of literary culture that have survived, somehow, from the beginnings of literacy to our Age of Information. This view is pernicious not primarily because it puts literature in the custody of "professionals," but because of the reductive assumption that what lit­erature embodies is an intent which may be grasped through a study of data.

YOU SEE FROM THIS JUST HOW POWERFUL THE "NEW CRITICISM" HAD REMAINED INTO THE 1980S. IT IS STILL JUST AS POWERFUL AS EVER. Read Christophre Benfey's review of the final NN volume in THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS May 10, 2018. No matter if the manuscript evidence shows that Melville died with the manuscript of Billy Budd going two ways (at least 2 ways). No, a critic has to declare the thing perfectly finished and to devote most of a review of the 15 volume final volume to showing that BY GOLLY BY GUM HE CAN READ BILLY BUDD PERFECTLY AS NO ONE HAS EVER DONE BEFORE. A waste, of course, of time which ought to have been devoted to reviewing the book at hand.



You see what Davenport’s theory entails. Agree with Davenpoet and we have to read, say, PUDD’NHEAD WILSON as if it made perfect sense, even when we encounter passages written when Tom Driscoll acts as he does because when the words were written he was all white, even when we encounter passages which made sense when the Italian twins were conjoined but not when they are now not so described in foregoing passages. We have to believe in the verbal icon or chaos is come! Data is evil, and professional scholars who resort to data are to be suppressed, as Davenport suppressed me in 1985.

Jack Stillinger and the McGehee Family Motto: WHAT THE DEVIL ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO ME?

This was when Cousin Meriwether poked his head out of the glass top on his coffin and demanded of his grieving family what the devil they were trying to do with him. One of those who tried to bury me too soon was Jack Stillinger, my sin being that I thought good art was coherent.

"What the Devil Are You Trying to Do to Me?"

WHAT THE DEVIL ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO ME?
Cousin Meriwether McGehee and Me.
In 1876 my cousin Colonel V. (for Valentine) Meriwether McGehee, a veteran, a lawyer in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, died suddenly, only 35.

He was interred in a metallic case after the usual time. His funeral was about to take place on the second night of his supposed death. After near thirty hours the watchers over his remains were surprised and horrified by seeing the glass casing of the coffin broken open and the appearance of the corpse's head thrust through the aperture. The colonel spoke to ask, "What the Devil are you trying to do to me?" It is unnecessary to state that he was soon relieved from his uncomfortable situation, and at last accounts he was in a fair way of recovery, and is no doubt worth many dead men yet.

I don't know about genes but I do believe in family traits being passed down. Many is the time I have asked, "WHAT THE DEVIL ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO ME?

steady cold onshore wind--why the kites were happy

The wind will keep up a cloth that is put up to protect the neck.

Kites on the Beach by the Rock

This seems reasonable to me. What annoys me are the cousins who join DNA searches but want to stay anonymous.

A spokeswoman for FamilyTreeDNA.com, which operates YSearch.org, said the company wasn't contacted by law enforcement.
"While we take our customers' privacy and confidentiality extremely seriously, we support ethically and legally justified uses of groundbreaking advancements of scientific research in genetics and genealogy," company officials said in a statement.

Strong onshore wind holding up neck warmer

From the path down to the beach

This fellow was a mile south at the Rock by the time I got to the water.

Self-portrait after 2 of the 6 at the our monthly table died 3 weeks apart

7 to start with if you count me.

Peaceful noon

Friends returning

The Retired Men's Table Had 7 in March, 6 in April, and will have 5 at most in May

Shock earlier this month at death of one of us on the first of April, before the first Tuesday monthly meeting. The most thoughtful one upstairs got me a card for 6 of us to sign, for the widow. Then one of those who signed is in the Death Notices today. He had just made a special announcement about his anniversary at the meeting on the 10th. Everything was fine. Dead on the 20th. We say "shaken" by news. Yes, shaken.

Self-portrait--Washed Up on the Beach in Morro Bay

no one in sight in mudflats south or north

Elephant seal comes to Morro Bay

Mrs. Hill would not let Mr. Gilmer spit in the house.

George Rockingham Gilmer is on my mind for his account of my McGehee cousins in Georgia. Gilmer's brother is the subject of this note. "My brother was a voracious tobacco chewer. He found Mrs. Hill so much annoyed by the stains he put upon her floor, earth, and very clean steps, that he was compelled to go out of the house to spit. His visits became short and far between, though he and his liked their nice neighbor and her husband very much." NOW! Some people are just like that today, not allowing vaping in the house and not allowing cigarette smoking anywhere on the property. If a man has to go out of the house to spit, he is not in a very neighborly neighborhood.

Start of benign review of the final NN volume. I wish he had looked at what was in the volume.

But this is a chance for a reviewer to show what a great critic he or she is. Too bad, though, not to review the whole volume and to discuss textual decisions.

The Loved One

Christopher Benfey
May 10, 2018 Issue
Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Uncompleted Writings
by Herman Melville, edited by Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, Robert A. Sandberg, and G. Thomas Tanselle, with a historical note by Hershel Parker
Northwestern University Press/ Newberry Library, 998 pp., $115.00; $45.00 (paper)

Everett Collection

Terence Stamp in Peter Ustinov’s film adaptation of Billy Budd, 1962
When Herman Melville died at seventy-two, in September 1891, he had been out of public view for so long that The New York Times identified him as Henry Melville. An obituary writer expressed surprise that the author best known for Typee—his first novel, set in the South Seas, notorious for its Gauguin-like sexual exploits with native women—had not died much earlier. Melville had outlived his two sons: one killed himself with a gunshot to the head, the other survived shipwreck and other mishaps to die, a feckless wanderer, of tuberculosis.
Melville had outlived his reputation as well.

New Melville letter written a month after he was into writing The Whale, 30 March 1850

Graveyard and Otter

How to count the Pismo Clam population

They fill 3 gallon cans in the ocean and pour the water into holes they have dug on the beach and crowd around and put their toes in the bottom of the hole.

This Won't Happen Again--so here is a list of my 2017 publications

After this, a dwindling away to silence


“North Carolina Patriot Women Who Talked Back to the Tories,” Journal of the American Revolution (11 January 2017), 11 pages. On 22 October 2017, JAR said this article will be reprinted in Journal of the American Revolution, Annual Volume 2018.

“A ‘Heavenly Harvest’ of Vulnerable Women in North Carolina: Tory Troops as Sexual Predators,” Journal of the American Revolution (27 February 2017), 11 pages.

“The ‘Battle at McIntire’s Farm’: Joseph Graham as Historian of the Revolution,” Journal of the American Revolution (11 May 2017), 13 pages.

“Avenging Francis Bradley, the Mecklenburg Marksman: A Family Story,” Journal of the American Revolution (26 June 2017), 13 pages.

The final volume in the 15-volume Northwestern-Newberry Edition of The Writings of Herman Melville, BILLY BUDD, SAILOR and Other Uncompleted Writings. The volume is a team effort, edited by Hayford, Tanselle, Sandberg, and MacDougall. I am General Editor of the volume and author of the “Historical Note,” the story of Melville's working life after 1860, pp. 297-365. My first copy came 27 October 2017.

Moby-Dick, the third edition of the Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick, greatly revised from the 1967 and 2001 editions, containing several pieces (some new) by me. My first copy came 15 November 2017.

There is a back cover for the Gallimard Quarto MOBY-DICK!

Scoff-law with plover hunting dogs

Oklahoma Tracker determines that many invading feet have passed, most going the wrong way

Photos of the Quarto edition, out yesterday, here on the Pacific today

This is the book that is on the agregation exams

THE CONFIDENCE-MAN is the book selected for the French agregation exam, exterior and interior both

THIS IS BIG NEWS FOR THE EDITORS!

4 Books in the Last Few Months

Late Morning--Cool, very cool

Foreshadowing. G&T, a Giant G&T for Us All. First Missouri, Then The Nation

Full Length Self-Portrait before Coffee

Pride of Madeira still not fully opened

You never know when a turkey hen will stroll down the hill and into the street

For SALE: My copies, signed for me, of Eric Greitens's STRENGTH AND COMPASSION, THE WARRIOR'S HEART, THE HEART AND THE FIST, AND RESILIENCE

I JUST CAN'T BEAR TO FONDLE THEM ANY LONGER.

Perfect Morning

With Sendak 1991

The numbers are in for the French exam takers using the 2nd Norton Critical Edition of THE CONFIDENCE-MAN

Number of students registered for the 2018 “external” agrégation: 2,127
Number of students registered for the 2018 “internal” agrégation: 1,797 (many of whom also registered for the “external” aggregation, so the total number is nowhere near 4,000)
At the very least, as astonishing number of the brightest [mainly young] people in France, with the equivalent of a Master's Degree already, will be studying the 2nd Norton Critical Edition of THE CONFIDENCE-MAN. Among much else, they will get to read my "The Confidence Man's Masquerade," a piece I am particularly proud of. Dennis C. Marnon's "Old Major Melvill and 'this Worlds Goods'" is a small masterpiece. The section on the Unitarians breaks new ground. I'm happy.

Self-Portrait, almost Full Length

More good news from France! I am enjoying the new surprises, knowing they will dwindle away. Except, except, 2500 or so copies of the Norton THE CONFIDENCE-MAN will be in the hands and minds of some of the brightest people in France.

From France:
The good news keeps rolling in. The program for the “internal” agrégation program has just come out. It’s a smaller program for people who already have teaching jobs but who want to move up in the hierarchy. And the program also includes The Confidence-Man. A lot of these candidates attempt both the “internal” and “external” agrégation examination, so it doesn’t add that many actual additional students (and sales), but it should add some.


THIS IS THE 2ND NORTON CRITICAL EDITION OF HERMAN MELVILLE'S THE CONFIDENCE-MAN (2006), EDITED BY HERSHEL PARKER AND MARK NIEMEYER.

Spaced out tourists

MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE--Relishing the run of pleasant news, Day 2.

Same message--different new review:
It took more years than this for the 1984 FLAWED TEXTS AND VERBAL ICONS to get this sort of comment. The thing you have to do, I have found in the last weeks, is to stick around. If I had cashed in my meager chips after the final NN volume and the 3rd Norton Critical Edition of MOBY-DICK at the end of 2017, I would have missed the contract for the LOA volume, the Gallimard Quarto MOBY-DICK with my chronologie in it, the forthcoming JAR with a reprint (first "print") of "North Carolina Patriot Women Who Talked Back to the Tories," and the absolutely dumbfounding assignment of the Parker-Niemeyer 2nd Norton Critical Edition of THE CONFIDENCE-MAN to 2000 or 2500 of the brightest young Frenchmen and women (already with degrees like our Master's degree) as one of the five texts for the 2019 and 2020 aggregation exam. And Zeldock (below) is joined by another reader in a review of MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY dated 2 April 2018. The lesson is if you have done good work over a long period the chances are that somewhere sometime someone is going to acknowledge it. It is the surviving till then that is the challenge.

Here is the one Scalini and her friend liked best, posted two weeks ago:
5.0 out of 5 stars
written in an accessible but provocatively intelligent style that consistently shows the author to advantage against ...
By Roger A. Stritmatter on April 2, 2018
Format: Hardcover
This is an impressive book by a highly disciplined and insightful scholar of Herman Melville, written in an accessible but provocatively intelligent style that consistently shows the author to advantage against his many and well-endowed critics who got into the academy because they went to the right prep schools. In this book, the author who was once dismissed by the grand poohbahs of the academic establishment as "innocent of biography," shares some of his biography in this book. But what is impressive here is not so much the mettle of the biography of the working class, part-Cherokee, part-Choctaw Parker, got ahead in his scholarship by working hard, and often thinking more critically and more productively than those around him, but the quality of the scholarship that roves easily from biographical anecdote to literary insight or pop lecture on bibliographical method that is truly enlightening. If, like you me, you fancy yourself sometimes a Melville scholar, pick any topic you like from this book, and you are sure to learn something you didn't already know or possibly have your mind changed through the persuasive arrangement of evidence, carefully gleaned and painstakingly recorded from original examination of original documents, that is the hallmark of Hershel Parker's style.

If, on the other hand, you are new to the study of Melville, this book is a great, readable, insightful introduction to one of the most fascinating sagas in American literary studies.

My goodness--a couple of 2018 reviews for MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE, out January 2013.

It took more years than this for the 1984 FLAWED TEXTS AND VERBAL ICONS to get this sort of comment. The thing you have to do, I have found in the last weeks, is to stick around. If I had cashed in my meager chips after the final NN volume and the 3rd Norton Critical Edition of MOBY-DICK at the end of 2017, I would have missed the contract for the LOA volume, the Gallimard Quarto MOBY-DICK with my chronologie in it, the forthcoming JAR with a reprint (first "print") of "North Carolina Patriot Women Who Talked Back to the Tories," and the absolutely dumbfounding assignment of the Parker-Niemeyer 2nd Norton Critical Edition of THE CONFIDENCE-MAN to 2000 or 2500 of the brightest young Frenchmen and women (already with degrees like our Master's degree) as one of the five texts for the 2019 and 2020 aggregation exam. And Zeldock (below) is joined by another reader in a review of MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY dated 2 April 2018. The lesson is if you have done good work over a long period the chances are that somewhere sometime someone is going to acknowledge it. It is the surviving till then that is the challenge.

Top customer reviews

Zeldock
5.0 out of 5 stars
How the Sausage Gets Made
March 18, 2018
Format: Hardcover
|
Verified Purchase
I assume anyone reading this knows that Hershel Parker is the world's greatest living authority on Herman Melville and the author of, among many other things, a magisterial two-volume biography of Melville (1996, 2002). In "Melville Biography," Prof. Parker offers what could be considered a giant "afterword" to that biography. At the risk of oversimplification, it is partly a memoir about his life's work as a scholar, partly a response to his critics, partly a critique of other Melville biographies, and partly a demonstration of how examination, re-examination, and well-informed analysis of primary sources can improve understanding of Melville's (or any writer's) life.

To the average reader, most of "Melville Biography" will seem like a lot of inside baseball. But if you have even a modest acquaintance with some of the secondary literature on Melville, I think you'll find this volume fascinating. Although I'm by no means a scholar or widely read in Melvilliana, I could not put the book down. Many of Prof. Parker's colleagues may be irritated by his straightforwardness in identifying flaws in others' work, but for those of us with no investment in one side or another -- for those of us who simply want to better understand one of our favorite authors -- "Melville Biography" is a precious resource.

Have you known liars like this?

Comey quoted "On liars and lying": “I’ve seen many times over the years how liars get so good at lying, they lose the ability to distinguish between what’s true and what’s not. They surround themselves with other liars. The circle becomes closer and smaller, with those unwilling to surrender their moral compasses pushed out and those willing to tolerate deceit brought closer to the center of power. Perks and access are given to those willing to lie and tolerate lies. This creates a culture, which becomes an entire way of life. The easy, casual lies – those are a very dangerous thing. They open up the path to the bigger lies, in more important places, where the consequences aren’t so harmless.”

Ferocious cold wind--Wind on way north plastered the dicky t-shirt against ear and throat, not needing holding

ONE OTHER PERSON ON BEACH

The googles are for the sand.

A cartoon image: Greitens now waving it in front of his Republican colleagues' faces

And are they going to do what he wants so they can go back to carrying out Trump's agenda? I'll bet a lot of them just want to get out of the basement and gargle Listerine.

The Soulless Paul Ryan Makes It Very Hard For Me To Keep My Head In the Sand

So he has assurances that Mueller will not be fired? Oh, Ryan announces these assurances just in time to keep congress from passing anything saying Mueller should not be fired. Ryan says he won't. Why waste time voting on something that will not be needed? A man without a soul, as we saw very clearly in 2016.

A Grisly Reminder During Our Time when One Major Political Party is Becoming Openly Racist

Back to the Rock

The blues starting to come out at the same time

Empty--half way, a skunk in the dunes, looking for plover eggs