My teacher says I'm breaking books at an eighth grade level: book thread

[dieblucasdie]

I ain't know shit about the body of criticism behind Melville (or, really, early American lit in general), so I can't speak to RL's actual question, but here is where I predictably chime in to rep Benito Cereno, because, seriously, it is the best.

[Captain]

but here is where I predictably chime in to rep Benito Cereno, because, seriously, it is the best.

All this talk has me remembering I have to read Billy Budd already. Yeesh. As it is, I picked up a cheap copy of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. So far... I guess I like it better than the Corrections. So that's good. I'm having a hard time placing the time/era that things take place. This is particularly true right now when we're learning the story of the mother figure. The feel of the language seems like it could have happened yesterday and there are no tell-tale events to benchmark a time period. It's really throwing me out of the narrative.

[Greg Nog]

Oh man, he nestles it right at the beginning of the Iraq War as explicitly as he can, later in the book.

God damn it that book made me so angry

[Seed Lore]

Oh, man, that book (Freedom) makes me so angry, also! The worst thing is that when I encounter folks who didn't find the tome enraging, I don't know how to explain why I was/am so mad about it. Like, I'm still in the sputtering-vitriol-heat-of-the-moment with it or something and it doesn't even deserve that much of my attention so I'm even more pissed thing.
Love Melville, though I've only read Moby D, Bartleby, and Billy B.

[RavingLunatic]

I'm tellin' you guys: Redburn is the real deal.

I believe that's the next one he wrote after Mardi, so I'll probably just plow on and pick up that one now that it has received the LPTJ nod of approval. Actually, I don't have to pick up anything as I got the three slipcased Library of America volumes that I'm pretty sure include his complete oeuvre.

I'm not an expert on Melville by any means, but I really like David Reynolds' Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. It links Melville--esp. the early work IIRC, though it's been about a decade--to the working-class dime-novel pulp "sensation" fiction of authors like George Thompson and George Lippard (who are both pretty amazing). Possibly not quite exactly what you're asking for, but highly recommended.

That's kind of funny because I remember a scene in Moby Dick where Stubbs makes fun of Flask for reading low-brow literature, I'm sure of the dime-novel pulp variety you describe. How exactly does Reynolds connect Melville to them? Melville seems about as far from that sort of fiction as you can be in most of his work. I can maybe see the connection to the first half of Typee, which was pretty gripping.

I love Melville.....Anyway, one idea: the Northwestern University Press editions I have of Mardi and Israel Potter have useful bibliographies, which is probably a good place to start.

Cool to hear all this Melville love on the board. I may try to get that Northwestern U version of Mardi through inter-library loan if I can. What's sad is that the Melville.org bibliography only has one little wimpy article on Mardi in its bibliography. This surprises me as it seems like the sort of novel there should be reams and reams of criticism on. The section I'm on right now is awesome. Lots of allegorical critiques of knowledge and truth and religion and all that good stuff. There's a little story about nine blind men and an enormous banyan tree that's just delightful.

The philosopher Babbalanja is basically Melville's mouthpiece on these sorts of things I think. There's also a boy-pilgrim character that appears that I think might represent the Transcendentalists. At least he seems to me to talk like Thoreau, which is the only transcendentalist I know much about. At one the boy-pilgrim says to a blind official guide to a holy island, "Though I act counter to thy counsels, oh Pani, I but follow the divine instinct in me." To which Babbalanja replies, "Poor youth! How earnestly he struggles in his bonds. But though rejecting a guide, still he clings to that legend of the Peak." I wonder if this is Melville critiquing the transcendentalists, expressing admiration for their bold rejection of much accepted religious authority but admonishing them for not making the break full enough, for retaining an over-optimistic, mystical, irrational element of much contemporary religion. I really don't know enough about transcendentalism or Melville's view on transcendentalism to say anything with confidence though. I feel like I read or heard somewhere that Melville was pretty critical of transcendentalism, but I'm not even sure about that.

[hannah]

The bibliography is quite brief, alas, though you might be interested in the essay, on the historical reception of Mardi, it accompanies, as it makes some mention of how critics responded to the Transcendentalist element of the novel.

Just did a cursory search in the UChicago library catalog for the early works, here is some of what came up:

A concordance to Herman Melville's Mardi, and a voyage thither / edited by Larry Edward Wegener.
Melville's Mardi : a chartless voyage / by Merrell R. Davis.
That lonely game : Melville, Mardi, and the almanac / Maxine Moore ; with a foreward by Hennig Cohen.
Critical essays on Herman Melville's Typee / Milton R. Stern.
Melville unfolding : sexuality, politics, and the versions of Typee : a fluid-text analysis, with an edition of the Typee manuscript / John Bryant.
Herman Melville / edited with an introduction by Harold Bloom.
Melville's muse : literary creation & the forms of philosophical fiction / John Wenke.
 Marquesan encounters : Melville and the meaning of civilization / T. Walter Herbert, Jr.

[hannah]

p.s. I started reading Mardi last night. thanks, Ryan!

[RavingLunatic]

Awesome. Thanks so much for that list there, Hannah. I've got to return a few books to the library today, so I'm gonna put in some ILL requests for a few of those.

[Greg Nog]

Hey, Neal Stephenson fans: I think I might read either The Diamond Age or The Baroque Cycle -- which one's better?

[mixed cats]

I liked them both quite a bit. The Diamond Age is like, oh, 2500 pages shorter, of that makes a difference.

[Greg Nog]

Yeah, that's definitely a draw, though if everyone's like "NOOOO BAROQUE CYCLE IS WAY BETTER" I'll take the plunge.

[dieblucasdie]

Also one is sci-fi and the other is historical fiction! The Baroque Cycle is absolutely worth the investment, though. The first third of the first book is a bit of a slog, so be warned. Have you read any Stephenson before? Diamond Age would be a good introduction, but if you've already read Cryptonomicon or Snow Crash, you're probably better off diving into Baroque Cycle.

[Greg Nog]

You're TOO LATE, blucas; I just downloaded The Diamond Age a few minutes ago. 

The only Stephenson I'd read previously was Snow Crash, which I thought was fun enough, but whose ending felt kind of incomplete to me.

[Thermofusion]

If you like Umberto Eco you'd probably like the Baroque Cycle. I devoured those things when they came out.

[elpollodiablo]

I kinda lost interest halfway through Quicksilver.

[slow west vultures]

finishing up "The Given Day" by dennis lehane.  had no i, dea how good the book was going to be, but i felt a little let down by the last section.  i'd have more to say if i wasn't uh . . . dying.  that book was about my only source of enjoyment or distraction for the past three bad months.  so now i'm more into reading books as my only way to look forward to anything.
i'm thinking of reading some joseph o'connor - 'redemption falls' to keep up my historical fiction escapism. anybody read him before?

[Thermofusion]

How about that Cloud Atlas trailer folks?

[YojimboMonkey]

It's long as shit. But I guess they had to make it long to fit an entire Explosions In The Sky song into it.


I dunno man. Tom Hanks. *shudders*

[Thermofusion]

I'm pleasantly surprised. I mean I thought it shared the same baseline un-adaptable-ness as any other intricate pomo novel but it looks like they've crammed a lot of plot points in there, somehow. Also dystopian future Korea looks cool as fuck.

[Greg Nog]

I'm far more excited about it than I thought I was going to be!

[YojimboMonkey]

I dunno man a lot of it played like a late 90s Robin Williams weeper. The Korea stuff did look pretty cool though.

[Nick Ink]

Mrs Ink tells me that the Korean actress in it is very good, if that helps.

I think I'm going to try to re-read it before I watch that though. I had trouble following/remembering all the stories last time, and it definitely seems like a book worth a second read. I was really impressed with his last book - The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet - was that popular here?

[Nick Ink]

I dunno man a lot of it played like a late 90s Robin Williams weeper.

This reminds me of when my wife talked me into going to the cinema in Seoul to see 'Adams Patchy'. A painful memory that I had hitherto buried.

[Greg Nog]

The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet - was that popular here?

I haven't read it!

I'm just about at the end of The Diamond Age, and am thinking about re-reading either To The Lighthouse or The Iliad.

[fishjim]

Given your biceps and overall warrior-like physique, G'Nog, I'd go with the Iliad.