On the left hand side is a page from the 2nd volume of my biography of Melville showing part of his 12-point memo to his brother Allan on the publication of POEMS. On the right side is Richard Brodhead's claim in the New York TIMES June 2002 that I made up POEMS--only I in my BLACK HOLE had ever heard of that volume that Melville wrote but that never got published. Brodhead went from Dean of Yale College to President of Duke University. Now after Kavanaugh I understand Ivy League White Male Privilege a lot better. You can get away with lying.
The lying about drinking (quite aside from lying about attempted rape) has brought back bad memories. I had 5 very unhappy years after Brodhead, Delbanco, and Elizabeth Schultz all lied about, saying I had made up what all real scholars had known since 1922 (POEMS) and 1960 (the 1853 book, although it was later that I found the title of it, THE ISLE OF THE CROSS). These were New Critics who had never done any work on Melville and knew they could get away with ignoring the evidence right there in the book they were paid to review. I did not sleep well until I began talking about the lies in 2007. Think how Professor Ford feels now.
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