Thursday, June 13, 1996
Noon
Caribou Coffee
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
We called on the knowledge of our resident Melville expert, Judy, to
explore the ambiguities of Pierre. We began by discussing Melville's
brother Gansevoort and considering the possible parallels between him and
the character of Glen in Pierre. Judy explained that Gansevoort represented
the family's hope more than Herman; it was he, in fact, who initially took
over their father's business after Allan Melvill's death in 1832. A lawyer
and political speaker before his death at age 30, Gansevoort belonged to
the Young America movement and advocated Western expansion. Judy also noted
that Melville's fiction and poetry was heavily rooted in his life; life
Pierre's father, for example, Melville's father was rumored to have had
an illegitimate child. Other autobiographical impulses can be seen in Melville's
treatments of self-destructive seekers in Moby-Dick and Clarel,
as well as in his characterizations of Captain Vere and Billy Budd.
Chris G. wanted to know about Melville's rumored break with Hawthorne, and
Judy argued that this break has been exaggerated. She pointed out that Hawthorne
left his home near Melville for reasons having nothing to do with Melville,
that the two writers continued to correspond, and that Hawthorne wrote warm
things about his friend after their apparent break.
On the subject of horologicals, chronometricals, and other matters of truth
and pragmatism, Mark suggested that both Hawthorne and Melville were ambivalent
about their searches for meaning. Although both celebrated such searches,
they also occasionally betrayed sympathies for characters not troubled by
the truth--Hawthorne's Inspector in the "Custom-House" essay,
Melville's Stubb in Moby-Dick, for example. Judy agreed with Mark
that, at least in Melville's case, the quest for meaning was a kind of curse
that the author found both attractive and damning.