Fragments from a Writing Desk: May 2018

Thursday, May 31, 2018

Beach Lupine is very late because of drought--and without much smell

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Settlement? 11:30 am. Leave Del--MD--PA for the last time? Yes--9:45 pm in Somerset PA--on the western slope of the Alleganies. Rush to paint touch up using Ken R's sponge brush (a dollar he said)--couldn't reach everything--no stool--But good, & I used wisk broom in my walk-in closet. Really clean house, Ralph Orendorf said. Our praise of him. Rush to #7 by Ochiltree Rd. Then endless wait 1120 1220 120 220, 318 pm when we finally left--& a sort of legal kiting--Mortgage co waits till day's end to wire money so they collect interest. Mike Jenkins transfer agent is supposed to wire money to Bank of America on June 1, Monday. Hope he does. Ian Quimby and Maureen's mother in Molly's in that little area with Ralph Orendorf there. At last in a room. [In Ochiltree, waiting] I slept a few mins on a 15" wide table, hands in pockets so arms wouldn't fall. Hellish 35 miles or so on Routes 7 / 41 / 10 / to 76, Turnpike. Then had to turn off air conditioning because the Bronco was too labored. 2 violent thunder-storms--high winds, maybe hail--HAR thinks hail, also. Pulled off, absolutely blinded by rain, and my passenger door swung open--HAR! and I thought I was ahead of her. To Somerset Super 8 44$ good room clean, 2 beds. Walk out in light rain--everywhere, smokers, except McDonald's--horror of fat Middle America. Bed at 10--Looks as if we did it--I'm free, HAR's free. First day of Retirement, utterly exhausted.

[Our money for the PA house: 2 June 1998 in Cheyenne: "Ralph Orendorf: 900 bolts of lightning around Newark, Delaware. Computers were down everywhere and money could not be wired. A terrible storm, many thousands without power. In Salt Lake City HAR called--Money in California at last.]

So I have posted this week a list of publications in these 20 years. I am putting this up now at 7:45 after getting up before 6 to clean up from the cat and make coffee and read all through the piece I am going to send in a day or so to LEVIATHAN on the now complete THE WRITINGS OF HERMAN MELVILLE. Then back to the Library of America volume on Herman Melville's poetry.

Monday, May 28, 2018

I forgot something when I posted publications during retirement--the Hawkins Award

The R.R. Hawkins Award was created in 1976 to recognize outstanding scholarly works in all disciplines of the arts and sciences.

The PROSE Awards (Professional and Scholarly Excellence) are presented by the Association of American Publishers’ (AAP) Professional and Scholarly Publishing (PSP) Division.^[1] Presented since 1976, the awards annually recognize distinguished professional and scholarly books, reference works, journals, and electronic content. The awards are judged by peer publishers, academics, librarians, and medical professionals.

I got only runner up for the Pulitzer in 1997 but I got the top Hawkins award from the AAP and again in 2003 (for a 2002 book) I got the top Hawkins award.

Since I am tidying up today after 20 years of retirement (officially starting tomorrow the 29th) I am posting the list of publications again.

1997 Winner of the Hawkins award, the highest award in "Literature and Language" category in the Association of American Publishers' Professional / Scholarly Publishing Division Annual Awards in the 1996 Competition.

2003 Winner of the Hawkins award, the highest award in "Biography and Autobiography" (a new and more appropriate category) in the Association of American Publishers' Professional / Scholarly Publishing Division Annual Awards in the 2002 Competition.

10 December 2008 at opening ceremony of the CUNY Leon Levy Center for Biography on "Crafting an Eloquent Beginning" John T. Matteson read aloud the first paragraph of Herman Melville: A Biography, 1819-1851, saying “The opening paragraph should reflect the character of the subject, the way the music of a great aria fits the mood of the words being sung.”

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 5th Edition (1998). This is the most thoroughly revised edition yet. For it I wrote new author headnotes and selection headnotes and footnotes for Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Caroline Stansbury Kirkland, Fanny Fern, Louisa May Alcott, and Harriet Prescott Spofford. I wrote new footnotes for additional selections by Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and other authors already represented in earlier editions of NAAL. I also updated the bibliographies for the period and made many other changes.

"Herman Melville," in American National Biography, Vol. 15 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 [check date), pp. 277-283.

"Ahab's Wife Doesn't Belong on Same Shelf as Moby-Dick," San Francisco Chronicle (24 October 1999), 10.

The Norton Critical Edition of MOBY‑DICK, Second Edition, eds. Hershel Parker and Harrison Hayford (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), pp. xvii and 726.

"Melville's Reading and Moby-Dick: An Overview and a Bibliography," in The Norton Critical Edition of MOBY‑DICK, Second Edition (2001), 431-437.

"Before Moby-Dick: International Controversy over Melville," in The Norton Critical Edition of MOBY-DICK, Second Edition (2001), 465-470.

"Damned by Dollars: Moby-Dick and the Price of Genius," in The Norton Critical Edition of MOBY-DICK, Second Edition (2001), 713-726. Revised and reprinted in Living with a Writer, ed. Dale Salwak (London and New York: Palgrave/Macmillan and St. Martin's Press, 2004), 202-222. [first copy received 30 August 2004]

"Foreword," in the Sesquicentennial issue of the Northwestern-Newberry Moby-Dick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001), pp. xiii-xvi.

"Melville and Hawthorne in the Berkshires," in Aspects of Melville, ed. David Scribner (Pittsfield: Berkshire County Historical Society at Arrowhead, 2001), 21-27.

"The Masterpiece That Ended a Career: Melville's Moby-Dick," Sea Letter 61 (Winter 2001), 10-13.

Herman Melville: A Biography, 1851-1891 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). Xvii and 997. Winner in "Biography and Autobiography," Association of American Publishers' Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division Annual Award; listed as an "Outstanding Academic Title" in the January 2004 issue of Choice Magazine.

Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th Edition (2002). Contains only a few new authors with new headnotes but a greatly rewritten general introduction.

Robin Grey and Douglas Robillard in consultation with Hershel Parker, "Melville's Milton: The Marginalia in The Poetical Works of John Milton: A Transcription of Melville's Annotation in His Copy of Milton," Leviathan, 4 (March and October 2002), 117-204. Reprinted in Melville and Milton: An Edition and Analysis of Melville's Annotations on Milton, ed. Robin Grey (Pittsburgh: DuQuesne University Press, 2004), 115-203.

Editor and contributor, “Harrison Hayford (1916-2001): His Students Recollect,” Leviathan 5.11 (March 2003), 71-85.

"Foreword," in Harrison Hayford, Melville's Prisoners (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003), vii-xi.

"What Hawthorne Meant to Melville," Harrison Hayford, introduced by Hershel Parker, Hawthorne Revisited: Honoring the Bicentennial of the Author's Birth, eds. Gordon Hyatt and David Scribner (Lenox: Lenox Library Association, 2004), 75-82.

"Chronologie," in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, No. 433, Herman Melville, Oeuvres, 2 ("Redburn" and "Vareuse-Blanche"), ed. Philippe Jaworski, with Michel Imbert, Hershel Parker, and Joseph Urbas (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), xiii-xviii. (A new chronology for 1849-1850, the period of this volume.)

“Damned by Dollars,” revised, in Living with a Writer, Dale Salwak, ed. (Houndsmill, Basingstoke, Hampshire, 2004), 202-222. [which is publisher?]

With Mark Niemeyer, the Second Norton Critical Edition of The Confidence-Man (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006). This contains reprinted essays and (besides the Preface) three substantial new essays by Parker: "The Confidence Man's Masquerade," "Delusions of a 'Terrestrial Paradise,'" and "The Politics of Allegorizing Indian Hating."

"Chronologie," in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, No. 433, Herman Melville, Oeuvres, 3 ("Moby-Dick; Pierre ou les Ambiguités"]), ed. Philippe Jaworski, with Michel Imbert, Hershel Parker, and Joseph Urbas (Paris: Gallimard, 2006), xxxiii-xl. (A new chronology for 1850-1853, the period of this volume.)

Reading Melville's "Pierre; or, The Ambiguities", by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. [Actually out April 2007.]

"The Isle of the Cross and Poems: Lost Melville Books and the Indefinite Afterlife of Error," Nineteenth-Century Literature 62 (June 2007), 29-47.

Melville: The Making of the Poet (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2008); available late November 2007 but dated 2008.

"James B. Meriwether: An Encounter," Mississippi Quarterly, 59:3-4 (Summer-Fall 2006), 391-393. [An excerpt from Ornery People, written before Meriwether's death on 18 March 2007, my pdf received 18 March 2008.]

"Foreword," in Herman Melville's Clarel (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2008), xiii-xxvii. (copies available August 2008).

Published Poems, Vol. 11 in The Writings of Herman Melville, ed. Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle, and Alma MacDougall Reising (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2009); my paperback copy received 4 June 2009.

"Chronologie," in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Herman Melville, Oeuvres, 4 ("Bartleby le scribe; Billy Budd, marin; et autres romans), ed. Philippe Jaworski, with David Lapoujade and Hershel Parker (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), xxi-xlii. (A new chronology for 1852-1891, the period of this volume.) Received 4 March 2010.

"The 'New Scholarship': Textual Evidence and Its Implications for Criticism, Literary Theory, and Aesthetics," Studies in American Fiction, 9 (Autumn 1981), pp. 18l‑97. Reprinted in Ecdotica 6 (University of Bologna, 2009), in Anglo-American Scholarly Editing, 1980-2005 (Bulogna: University of Bulogna, 2010), 30-46. [copy received 5 June 2010]

Billy Budd: Lesen & Verstehen (Düsselforf: Düsseldorf University Press, 2010), translated by Ernst A. Chantelau. This is a German edition of my Reading “Billy Budd” (1990).

“The Talented Ripley Hitchcock,” American Literary Realism, 43 (Winter 2011), pp. 175-182. [Available on Muse 6 January 2011, paper copy soon afterwards]

The Powell Papers: A Confidence Man Amok Among the Anglo-American Literati (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2011), xiv, 345. Copy received 29 June 2011.

“Chronologie,” pp. 603-618, a condensed 1810-1891 version, in the Folio Classique edition of Melville’s Mardi, ed. Dominique Marçais, Mark Niemeyer, Joseph Urbas, préface nouvelle de Philippe Jaworski, Chronologie de Hershel Parker, traduction de Rose Celli, revue par Philippe Jaworski (Paris: Gallimard, 2011) Received 29 June 2011.

“The Unemployable Herman Melville: ‘Nothing Else To Do” But Sign on a Whaleship,” Historic Nantucket 62.2 (Spring 2012), 4-10.

“Walter E. Bezanson: A Memorial,” Leviathan 37 (Spring 2012), 37-42.

Melville Biography: An Inside Narrative (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2012).

“Melville as ‘The Modern Boccaccio’: The Fascinations of Fayaway,” introduction to Typee (Los Angeles: A Barnacle Book / Rare Bird Books, 2013), xv-xxix.

“The Tryon County Patriots of 1775 and their ‘Association,’” the webzine Journal of the American Revolution (14 August 2014), 11 pages. Reprinted in June 2015 in Journal of the American Revolution: Annual Volume 2015, eds. Todd Andrik, Don N. Hagist, Hugh T. Harrington (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2015), 63-72. Reprinted in an expanded version in the Gaston-Lincoln Genealogical Society’s Footprints in Time (December 2014), 154-174.

“Fanning Outfoxes Marion,” Journal of the American Revolution (8 October 2014), 9 pages. Reprinted in June 2015 in Journal of the American Revolution: Annual Volume 2015, eds. Todd Andrik, Don N. Hagist, Hugh T. Harrington (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2015), 350-356.

“John Butler’s ‘Want of Good Generalship,’” Journal of the American Revolution (22 January 2015), 10 pages.

“Fanning’s Bloody Sabbath as Traced by Alexander Gray,” Journal of the American Revolution (4 May 2015), 12 pages.

“The Memorial of David Fanning,” Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution (August 2015), 1-7.

“Absolving David Fanning—From Dreck to Rumph,” Journal of the American Revolution (24 November 2015), 10 pages.

“North Carolina Patriot Women Who Talked Back to the Tories,” Journal of the American Revolution (11 January 2017), 11 pages. Reprinted in Journal of the American Revolution, Annual Volume 2018 (Yardley: Westholme, 2018), 245-251. Copy received 24 May 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.

"Make-or-Break Reviews," in Herman Melville in Context, ed. Kevin Hayes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 285-295. My copies came 7 February 2018.

On 7 April 2018, news that the French Ministry of Education has put the Second Norton Critical Edition of The Confidence-Man, eds. Hershel Parker and Mark Niemeyer, on the official program for the highly competitive external agrégation examination for 2019 and 2020. On 15 April 2018, more good news, the announcement that our edition of The Confidence-Man will also be on the program for the internal examination.

Moby-Dick ou le Cachalot, ed. Philippe Jaworski (Paris: Gallimard, 2018), with my "Herman Melville: Vie et Oeuvre, 1819-1891," 35-92. Published on 19 April 2018; my copy arrived 20 April 2018. So my chronology is in the standard French edition of Moby-Dick.

Planned, participation in a section of Leviathan on the NN Edition.

Starting in April 2018, writing notes for the Library of America volume on Herman Melville: The Collected Poetry.

Current project: Ornery People: Who the Depression Okies Were. This will be a unique genealogical book because I bring to it all I have learned about historical research in a scholarly career spanning more than half a century. The idea behind it is that almost anyone whose family had been in eastern Oklahoma since the mid-19^th century can now, starting with the Internet, retrieve lost family stories and establish new historical memories in the context of successive episodes of American history.

In progress: The three-volume third edition of The New Melville Log, Hershel Parker and Jay Leyda, perhaps an electronic version of the entire 9,000 page archive. Until other projects are completed this functions as my private archive of archives, but I am still adding to the Log.

My Aunt "Blanket," the Royal Family, and the Aussie Hostler

All my life I called an aunt Blanket then was told that the reason was that she came out so dark (so Choctaw) that they all thought the thing to do was to wrap her in a blanket and drop her off at the Rez. Now they are saying some are worried about the color of any royal baby. Stuart Woods has Stone Barrington's son Peter looking just like his Barrington grandfather. Maybe James Hewitt is more worried than any in the royal family. I will do anything to avoid thinking about the real news. Actually, I am writing a short piece about THE WRITINGS OF HERMAN MELVILLE before I get back to the Library of America volume of HM's poetry. Enough!

Today's Heron

Sunday, May 27, 2018

It is very upsetting to hear that something could go wrong with Spam.

Not with Spam!

white dome

First Baking Day in a Long Time but from Now On I will be Back as Baker

So I had a quart of sourdough starter to spare, and used that, and 3 eggs, and a little honey, and some yeast and olive oil and Mazolla and flax (seeds) and the residue in a mixed nut jar after the nuts are out and wheat bran and wheat flour and cornmeal and bran and white flour and the result is fabulous.

Throngs

Fremontodendron--2 months late because of the drought

Blessed Retirement! 20 years since retiring, 29 May 1998, and heading the Bronco West

A few talks, mainly local, but these post-retirement publications.

"Herman Melville," in American National Biography, Vol. 15 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 277-283.