<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Melville's Wrong Turn
Review: Ah, Pierre, you lusty Frenchman, where do you go wrong? Actually the main character Pierre is an American in the early 19th century who is well-off leading an easy life, until suddenly a mysterious woman crosses his path, who happens to be his sister, that he has rather strong feelings for, not to mention the creepy way he calls his mother sister in the early part of the book. Overly dramatic, it reads as if Melville made it up as he wrote, since so many crucial facts and events are suddenly mentioned with no foreshadowing or even hint of them. It does have a brief amusing chapter that attacks critics as people who praise medicore writers that risk nothing. Melville desperately wants Pierre to be like Shakespeare's Hamlet, butt alas, Pierre is much too flat and shallow for that. Aside from Melville Scholars, this novel isn't worth serious reading and skimming a few chapters would demonstrate it's many problems. Go for "Moby-Dick" or "Bartleby the Scrivner" for a real sense of Melville's writing.
Rating: 
Summary: America's Greatest Artist/Prophet
Review: I think of two points here than which nothing is more obvious.
1. This novel about a young man from high American society in the late 19th century who gradually discovers the spiritual corruption of his family, his society and of all ordinary human consciousness is a work of genius that remains more modern, more penetrating of frontiers, and more bold in form and content than any American novel before it or after it. It is in that small group of the most profound novels ever created. 2.America has never even begun to really absorb and integrate the genius of Melville, especially as it is manifested in this novel. Americans have so much time and opportunity to cultivate artistic sensitivity, but mostly they choose not to. Most 'educated' Americans have no familiarity with this novel. And this is not an accident. America has always been afraid of Melville, has rejected him, and turned him into a harmless museum-piece, a distinguished man of letters, but he is in reality America's horned black sheep, it's enfant terrible. Pierre is safely put away on dusty library shelves. But this book still burns with prophetic energy and one day the truth of its fire will burn through the walls that enclose it.
Stars? I would give this book enough stars too fill the sky.
"Enter this enchanted wood ye who dare."
Rating:
Summary: American Heartbreak
Review: Pierre has all the markings of an awful book--flat characters, overblown writing, shameless melodrama. So why is it such a masterpiece? Melville seems to have put all of himself into this work--his despair, his religious doubts, his understanding of human psychology--with an intensity that makes the usual standards of plot, style and character obsolete. The analysis of Pierre's mother as she turns on her husband/son and Melville's agonizing descriptions of the writing process were two of the book's highlights for me. The Beats loved Pierre--maybe they saw a model for their own art, where elegance takes a back seat to energy. The novel was a critical disaster at the time, but look where it ranks on amazon 150 years later. I hope Melville's somewhere watching.
<< 1 >>
| 
