I'm one of those people who have read MOBY DICK a few times, so I may be biased towards Herman Melville, but I found REDBURN an excellent read.

Though it is an argueable point; many believe that REDBURN is based on Melville's first voyage. This may not be interesting to you if you are an adherent of NEW CRITICISM, but for any Melville fan or scholar this book sheds some light on Melville's persona.

I noticed some elements of REDBURN that would later surface in MOBY DICK and PIERRE -- as more developed themes. This book starts out as pretty straight forward adventure narrative, but leave it to Herman, by the middle of the book he goes off into his preaching, sermonizing, and editorializing . . . but I like that about Melville.

This might sound strange coming from a Melvillian 'scholar,' but Herman Mellville was not a good writer . . . he is an interesting author though, but he makes mistakes, and he often takes his stories through such long and twisted circumloctions that it is no wonder that many modern readers are turned off by him. However, if you love Melville despite his flaws then you will love REDBURN, because it shows the progress that Melville was making towards THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL, MOBY-DICK.

Herman Melville did not much care for REDBURN when he wrote it. He wrote it quickly and for the money, and then he tried to distance himself from it. He felt MARDI, the novel he wrote just before REDBURN, was the better, but it was panned. On the other hand, REDBURN recieved good reiviews in its day much to Melville's suprise . . . I learned all this in the afterword of the Northwest-Newberry Edition. The detailed history of REDBURN included in that edition is pretty interesting reading in itself if you are a Mevillian, like me.

I apologize for any typos . . . but no spell-check.

This book is an important contribution to cultural-theoretical analysis of the web. It has an impressive list of contributors and a remarkably cutting edge account of new media. Crucial for anyone trying to think about the web today.

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.

This novel, which I believe to be the greatest ever written by an American, is far too complex and profound to be neatly summarized here. It relates the story of Pierre, a young man born into American high society in the late 19th century, who gradually discovers that his beloved family and society are in reality profoundly false and corrupt. The analysis of this corruption in the novel is centered in the fact that Pierre's deceased and revered father has an unacknowledged, abandoned daughter whose existence Pierre discovers. Pierre attempts to stand up against this corruption and from there the unbreakable threads unwind steadily into tragedy. This is no melodrama or romantic fantasy, it is tragedy as objective and profound as anything created by Aeschylus or Sophocles. It is more bold and profound than anything ever conceived by Melville's contemporary, Hawthorne. But it connects Hawthorne with the Greeks in a most unexpected way: Pierre, or The Ambiguities is the only novel I know of that could be called an authentic Christian trgedy. What I mean is that Melville presents Pierre to us deliberately in a light that recalls classical tragedy all the way back to its mythological roots. He compares Pierre with the rebel, earth-born, giant, Enceladus, brother of the Titans, who perished in his struggle against the transcendent tyranny of Zeus. But though a giant, Enceladus was a mortal who could not overcome corrupt divine power. And early in the novel, in the first chapter, long before we are introduced to the comparison with Enceladus, Melville tells the reader clearly, even while he so beautifully describes the beauty of Pierre and his fiancee, Lucy, that we are dealing with a story of tragic fate, of doomed mortality colliding with divinity: Nemo contra Deum nisi Deus ipse ( No one against the Gods unless a God himself.) But the God that Pierre collides with is not Zeus, but the inscrutable Christian God who seemingly inspires him. The amazing ambiguity here is that it is by trying to be a Christian that Pierre, a beautiful, but mere, mortal, is brought relentlessly to his destruction. Why? For what possible purpose?
One of the most impressive and profound elements of this story is Pierre's relationship with his fiancee, Lucy, and his discovered sister, Isabel. Both of these amazing females, though real individuals, seem to be countering reflections of Pierre's tormented soul, one bright and glorious, the other dark and mysterious, both essential and necessary. What is the answer? What resolution can there be? What is the nature of this mortal? And of this God whose only voice is silence?
If you have not read Pierre, then you have not experienced the deepest places that American ficion has ever gone. Melville was ostracized and virtually exiled for writing Pierre. It went too far, too deep. America has never forgiven him, has never given him his rightful place, but he was and remains America's greatest artist.

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."

This book is a quick read, essentially an application of Barber's Strong Democracy treatise to the idea of sustainable development. It defines sustainable development as the reorientation of the economic system to accommodate inherent natural limits on energy use, waste sinks, etc. The authors point out there may be many different paths humanity may choose into the future: increasing maldistribution of resources or increasing global equity; increasing loss of biodiversity or reduced destruction of the biosphere; a bleak and degrading future or a more promising one. They posit that a move towards a strong democratic structure, with wider and deeper participation in the political system, would be a crucial step towards a more promising future.

I found the book interesting, though a little light on examples: there's one chapter devoted to historical examples of strong(er) democracy. On the other hand, the book offers some ideas about how to get there from here, how to move incrementally towards stronger democracy. The author's proposal to create the democratic foundation for a sustainable future is the major focus of the book: it would be interesting to explore in greater detail those aspects of modern culture that mitigate against popular participation, and those that might be brought into play to support it. How does the increasing homogenization of world culture, and the concomitant consumerization of the world's people (and the corresponding influence of advertising), undermine democratic participation? What trends, like the coop movement or the expanding NGO movement, help develop political participation? How can we shift the direction of the increasingly international economy and it's political implications as illustrated by the WTO, for example? What are the implications of modern communication/computer technologies, both positive and negative, on the ideas outlined here?

"Local Politics" doesn't attempt anything so grandiose. It's presents interesting ideas regarding strong democracy. I think it will be more interesting to theorists than activists, but many people might find something to chew on here.

This book could eventually be one of the most important ever published within the environmental community if it encourages environmental activists to shift their approach from confrontation to "principled" negotiation. Environmental activists for most of the past thirty years have tended to confront their adversaries using "hard" negotiation as described in Getting To Yes by Fisher and Ury. This was the style implied by Herman Daly's early writings.

If "names" such as Robert Costanza and Herman Daly can shift their thinking away from confrontation and toward working with non-environmentalists as collective problem-solvers, there is no end to the possibilites. Interestingly, they endorse the process of public deliberation or what Benjamin Barber calls "strong" democracy. They are dsicovering, as many of us already know, that citizens engaged in deliberation naturally tend to gravitate toward "sustainable" concepts. Hence, if we can create forums for strong democracy in our communities, pro-environmental thinking will follow.

In this manner, public deliberation can foster "principled" negotiation where all of us look for win/win solutions and treat each other with respect. Or, we can continue to confront and litigate each other and/or wait for big brother to impose a resolution. Are we, as "ordinary" citizens, up to the challenge. Prugh et al imply we are. Those of us in the "front lines" of community development know we are. Happy reading!!

Herman Melville's style of detailed descriptions certainly comes though in this slim 210-page volume written in 1846. He describes life aboard ship, the geography of the island and the technical aspects of making clothing, tattooing and preparing food as well as many native ritual customs. This is all seen through the eyes of his lead character, Tom, called Tommo by the natives. The book put me right there with him, when, exhausted and starved, he and Toby, the other seaman he jumped ship with, find their way into the world of the Typees. The two sailors are treated well, but are kept virtual prisoners and there is apprehension throughout about the Typees' cannibal tendencies. In spite of that, there is also joy as Tommo views the simple and carefree life of the people he considers savages and contrasts it to life in the so-called "civilized world".

The Typees seem perennially happy and content. They spend a lot of time amusing themselves as food is plentiful and there is not much work to do. Their lives are idealized so much that I found myself raising a quizzical eyebrow at times. But the story was so good and so well written that I didn't let it get in my way of enjoying the book, which must have been received with similar delight when it was published as it not only painted a picture of a better world, it appealed to everyone's sense of adventure.

I loved the book, especially the social commentary. I found myself reading it quickly and at odd times during to day just to see what would happen on the next page. It sure was a good story and seems as fresh and meaningful today it when was published more than a century and a half ago.

Herman Melville's "Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life" tells the story of a white sailor who lives for a time among the Typees, a native people of a Pacific island. According to a "Note on the Text" in the Penguin Classics edition, this book first appeared in 1846 in no less than four different editions.

"Typee" is a marvelous story of cross-cultural contact. It is also a fascinating glimpse at a pre-industrial culture; Tom (known as "Tommo" to the Typees) describes in detail the food, dress, tattooing, physiology, musical instruments, architecture, warfare, religious practices, and social customs of the Typees. The book is full of vividly portrayed characters: the gentle beauty Fayaway, the "eccentric old warrior" Marheyo, the talkative "serving-man" Kory-Kory, and more.

Melville's prose style in "Typee" is irresistible: the writing is fresh, lively, and richly descriptive. There is a satirical thrust to much of the book. And there is a lot of humor; at many points I literally laughed out loud. Such scenes as the description of a wild pig's frustrated efforts to break open a coconut really showcase Melville's comic flair.

A major theme of "Typee" is that of the "noble savage" (Melville actually uses the term). The narrator often wonders whether Typee life is in some ways better than Western life, and is quite critical of the work of Christian missionaries among Pacific Island peoples. The book is richly ironic, as Melville's narrator reflects on the problematic nature of cross-cultural observation: "I saw everything, but could comprehend nothing" (from Chapter 24).

"Typee" is more than just a colorful travelogue or a philosophical reflection; it is also a genuinely exciting and suspenseful adventure story. Melville's story of a visitor to a strange alien world curiously anticipates a major theme of 20th century science fiction; thus a novel like Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" would make a fascinating companion text. Also recommended as a companion text: "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," another 19th century American classic which casts a critical light on Eurocentric Christianity.

In Chapter 17 of this book, the narrator conveys his feelings about the differences between Western civilization and other cultures: "The term 'savage' is, I conceive, often misapplied, and indeed when I consider the vices, cruelties, and enormities of every kind that spring up in the tainted atmosphere of a feverish civilization, I am inclined to think that so far as the relative wickedness of the parties is concerned, four or five Marquesan islanders sent to the United States as missionaries might be quite as useful as an equal number of Americans dispatched to the islands in a similar capacity." This portrayal of primitive cultures as being more civilized than Western society is part of a long tradition, beginning at least with Montaigne's essay "Of Cannibals." This and other similar statements by Melville in this work caused quite a tempest in Europe and the United States, but one which was a gentle breeze, compared to the current storm raging in academia regarding the origins and validity of the terms "civilized" and "primitive."

I am myself interested in the statement above for another reason. Some fifty years ago, a small group of inhabitants of the Marquesas Islands, in which this book is set, came across this romance. They had long before adopted Western ways, but these individuals decided to use Melville's work as a means to recreate the pastoral moment which the author had captured in this book. Such an effort was as feasible as would be an attempt to recreate the America portrayed in Norman Rockwell's paintings, but these islanders were convinced of the necessity and possibility of this act, and they reconstructed, with admirable accuracy, a past that had never existed. They gave up their new houses, their churches, their Western foods, for a lifestyle closer to that portrayed in this work, a large part of which consists of quasi-anthropological description of rituals, feasts, customs and dress. Naming children after characters in the book became common, though only in those regions in which the Melvilles, as they were called, were predominant, just as there are still a few adults named Rainbow and Sunflower in the U.S., a legacy of the hippie movement. And in keeping with the full spirit of Melville's portrait of the Marquesans, and inspired by the passage I cited above, several families did indeed move to the United States in order to proselytize their lifestyle to the Westerners whose ways these Marquesans had rejected.

It is well known that their efforts failed, for the most part, both here and in their home country, but it was a happy accident that my interest in Melville led me to meet Fayaway, one of the descendants of that tribe of emigrants to the United States, and that she and I would soon after wed. As a result, I have become indoctrinated into the remnants of this culture; without either of us being true adherents to the religion, we observe its customs, much as agnostics celebrate Christmas. Our favorite part of the entire set of customs is to replay the Ritual of the Canoe from Chapter 18, as gently erotic now as when it was written, first in Hobomok Lake in Phoenicia, New York, and more recently in Malibu Lake, California. The puritanical fussbudgets in both neighborhoods were appropriately scandalized.

As a result of my marriage to the living incarnation of the female protagonist of the romance, I am well familiar with this work, and must say that it is more nearly perfect, in its own way, than is Melville's masterpiece _Moby Dick_. It embodies many of the same themes as that larger work, and reveals, because of its imperfections, a deep glimpse into the author's mind and his longing for that tropical paradise where he sought Arcadia and found a nymph fit to his fancy. Rarely have adolescent male fantasies been given such a beautifully complex form, and if, as many have noted, the anthropological tangents detract from the narrative, it is helpful to recall that Melville was attempting create a fiction that looked like an authentic travel narrative, and that in any case those tangents can become of themselves interesting diversions, and commentary on the greater narrative. They even inspired a small group of South Pacific Islanders to fly from their homes and settle in the wilderness of the United States, in an effort to save us from our wicked ways.

I feel quite strange presuming to give a numerical rating to a book by one of American literature's greatest authors.

It's important for readers to realize that White-Jacket is not what would, in the modern day, be considered a novel. There is essentially no plot structure. It's a melange of events, descriptive passages and polemic, narrated by the eponymous White-Jacket, whom I suspect of being Melville himself. At times the book is entertainingly humorous - as when the narrator tries to get rid of his famous jacket. And much of the description of life aboard a man-of-war is fascinating -- the book would make a helpful companion for people reading modern novels such as O'Brian's series. (And, of course, White-Jacket probably was one of the sources used by O'Brian and other aquatic novelists.) The polemic -- Melville's rants against flogging and his pacifist pleas -- I found tiresome, as I always find polemic, regardless of its aims.

If you find yourself in a position where the individuals in authority over you are, in the actual state of affairs, your moral inferiors, then on this level alone you will be able to appreciate this book.

Fascinating, entertaining account of life on a man-of-war. Hilarious in parts; always subversive. Melville's mock glorification of the U.S. Navy and its officers is brilliant.

The publication of this solution manual partially redeems theflawed third edition of the classic health physics textbook (Cember,"Introduction to Health Physics," 1996).

The methods of the solution manual are generally sound with usually adequate explanations and occasional suggestions of alternative methods. Problem 6.5 arrives at the same answer by using "basic principles" and by using the "specific gamma ray emission constant" (also referred to in the textbook as the "specific gamma ray constant" and the "source strength"). Alternative solutions are also given for Problem 6.22.

The solution manual corrects many of the textbook's typographical errors in the text, the chapter problems, and their solutions. However, a spot check reveals the solution manual contains its own errors and has its own deficiencies, though these errors and deficiencies are fewer and less egregious than the textbook.

The solution to Problem 5.4 ignores the last question of the problem ("What further studies could be done on the smear sample to help verify the identification of the contaminant?"), thus missing the opportunity to instruct the student on, say, the use of half-life measurements to identify radioisotopes. The solution to Problem 6.5 assumes the "small vial" can be treated as a point source and misses the opportunity to answer a common question from students and some professionals: "How small must a source be to be considered a point source?" The solution to Problem 5.13 identifies only the low-energy solution and fails to note that, since the attenuation coefficient for lead increases for gamma ray energies above approximately 3 MeV as depicted in Figure 5.12 of the textbook, there is a high-energy solution at approximately 11 MeV.

A list of references with complete citations would be more helpful to readers than ambiguous abbreviations. The citation, "RHH (1970)," at pages 165 and 277 refers, presumably, to the Radiological Health Handbook (Bureau of Radiological Health 1970). Other incomplete citations which may not be familiar to inexperienced readers are "the 'Barn Book', 1955" (page 236) and "NRHH" (page 263). At pages 57 and 305, the citation is merely "CRC," presumably referring to a CRC Press publication, though it is not clear which one. Even publications of major radiation protection organizations are cited merely by number, e.g., "NM/MIRD Pamphlet No. 11" (page 198), "NCRP49" (page 247), "NCRP Report 102" (page 250), and "ICRP 2" (page 291). The source, at page 280, for the solubility class of barium and, at page 379, for the effective half life of Strontium-90 is cited merely as "ICRP." At page 237 is the cryptic citation "Attix."

Half-life data is incorrect or outdated. The solution to Problem 4.10 contains the term "benzo(a)pyrene atoms", though the correct term "benzo(a)pyrene molecules" is used elsewhere in the same problem. The solution to Problem 5.7 solves for the kinetic energy of the Compton electron by using the so-called "inverse natural logarithm" instead of simply using the exponential. The solution manual insists on micro-microfarad instead of picofarad. Other examples abound.

The typesetting and editing of the solution manual is sloppy with several instances of misaligned text, mis-sized type, and occasional typographical, grammatical, and other errors. None of the tables and figures are numbered and few are titled; those that are titled have titles such as "Activity" (page 97), "Linear Graph" (page 367), "Linear Probability Paper" (p. 368), "Log Probability Paper" (page 368). Axes of graphs are often labeled with nothing more than abbreviations of units (e.g., at pages 64, 65, 118, 119, and 350). Symbols on graphs are often barely visible. Finally, though arguably a matter of preference, the solution manual contains, as does the textbook, an unnecessary proliferation of the multiplication sign, "×", which gives it a grade-schoolish flavor.

This reviewer cannot recommend the solution manual for an introductory course in health physics. The solution manual might be useful to an experienced reader preparing for the health physics certification examination, but only if the reader views it critically and is willing to independently verify the methods and data used.

The Health Physics Solutions Manual is a must-have for anyone studying health physics and anyone considered a health physicist, especially those attempting ABHP certification.

Problems are not only solved, but several steps are shown in the solution process. This allows you to check your work, step-by-step.

All references are current and cited (ANSI Z136.1-1996 is used, making the Solutions Manual more up-to-date than the original text). Graphs are shown for those problems that ask for them.

If you own, or are going to buy "Introduction to Health Physics", you better buy "Health Physics Solutions Manual" to accompany it. The price for both of them combined is still less than for similar texts WITHOUT solutions manuals.

I have a list of known errors for those that are interested.

This book is at the same time the least and the most "Melvillian" of all Melville's corpus. Melville wrote in Moby-Dick that "two thirds of the world revolve in darkness." This idea certaily holds true for most of Melville's works, but not Israel Potter. In this uncharacteristically light-hearted and crisply written rewriting of American history, Melville gives an early literary version of Woody Allen's film Zelig. The character Israel Potter is that same sort of insignificant historical non-entity who just happens to get caught up in incredibly significant historical moments. In his various wanderings Israel meets and becomes politically involved with a trio of the most important American patriots--Ben Franklin, John Paul Jones, and Ethan Allen. It is through these encounters that Melville subtlely (and sometimes not so subtlely) realizes his critical agenda and those darker themes that dominate so much of his other work begin to show themselves. In his portrayal of Franklin, Melville takes a bash at what he sees as the exemplar of American "genius"--the same American genius that ignored and misunderstood his most significant works and forced him into obscurity and poverty in his lifetime. Melville sees Franklin as representative of all that is wrong with the American character--he is parsimonious, small-minded, hard-headed, and morally hypocritical. In the other two historical figures, John Paul Jones and Ethan Allen, Melville finds redemption. In them he sees represented more of that European idea of genius, the manly half-savage/half-civilized genius of Thomas Carlyle. Like Queequeg in Moby-Dick who is described as "George Washington canabalistically rendered," Jones and Allen are wildmen in a civilized society, raging against the world as they utter their outrageous and at times incomprehensible truth. A fun yet undenialbly thought-provoking read. Enjoy

I do not mean to offend anyone, but Moby Dick is a disappointment. Having read several reviews on the text, I believed it was one of the greatest of American Literary works. When I began, the tale proved to be accepatable and I found its insights profound indeed. However, the story quickly became tedious and boring (it seemed that Melville could not come up with any new material, so expanded on the mental processes of Ishmael). I wondered how readers could rate a story which had little (if any) plot and moved extremely slowly, as a great novel. True, literature is seldom interesting, and authors like Dickens and George Eliot are hardly better than Melville, but nevertheless, I believe that a literary text should at least be able to engage the reader and make him/her interested enough in it to finish it, so that the message can be fully comprehended. I did not finish Moby Dick and perhaps never will. I do not recommend it to readers. However, to give Melville credit, Moby Dick is an accurate portrayl of the American spirit in that context and thus, in that sense, does hold that mirror up to nature, as literature often does.

I first read Moby Dick; or The Whale over thirty years ago and I didn't understand it. I thought I was reading a sea adventure, like Westward Ho! or Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym. In fact, it did start out like an adventure story but after twenty chapters or so, things began to get strange. I knew I was in deep water. It was rough, it seemed disjointed, there were lengthy passages that seemed like interruptions to the story, the language was odd and difficult, and often it was just downright bizarre. I plodded through it, some of it I liked, but I believe I was glad when it ended. I knew I was missing something and I understood that it was in me! It wasn't the book; it was manifestly a great book, but I hadn't the knowledge of literature or experience to understand it.

I read it again a few years later. I don't remember what I thought of it. The third time I read it, it was hilarious; parts of it made me laugh out loud! I was amazed at all the puns Melville used, and the crazy characters, and quirky dialog. The fourth or fifth reading, it was finally that adventure story I wanted in the first place. I've read Moby Dick more times than I've counted, more often than any other book. At some point I began to get the symbolism. Somewhere along the line I could see the structure. It's been funny, awesome, exciting, weird, religious, overwhelming and inspiring. It's made my hair stand on end...

Now, when I get near the end I slow down. I go back and reread the chapters about killing the whale, and cutting him up, and boiling him down. Or about the right whale's head versus the sperm whale's. I want to get to The Chase but I want to put it off. I draw Queequeg with his tattoos in the oval of a dollar bill. I take a flask with Starbuck and a Decanter with Flask. Listen to The Symphony and smell The Try-Works. Stubb's Supper on The Cabin Table is a noble dish, but what is a Gam? Heads or Tails, it's a Leg and Arm. I get my Bible and read about Rachel and Jonah. Ahab would Delight in that; he's a wonderful old man. For a Doubloon he'd play King Lear! What if Shakespeare wrote The Tragedy of The Whale? Would Fedallah blind Ishmael with a harpoon, or would The Pequod weave flowers in The Virgin's hair?

Now I know. To say you understand Moby Dick is a lie. It is not a plain thing, but one of the knottiest of all. No one understands it. The best you can hope to do is come to terms with it. Grapple with it. Read it and read it and study the literature around it. Melville didn't understand it. He set out to write another didactic adventure/travelogue with some satire thrown in. He needed another success like Typee or Omoo. He needed some money. He wrote for five or six months and had it nearly finished. And then things began to get strange. A fire deep inside fret his mind like some cosmic boil and came to a head bursting words on the page like splashes of burning metal. He worked with the point of red-hot harpoon and spent a year forging his curious adventure into a bloody ride to hell and back. "...what in the world is equal to it?"

Moby Dick is a masterpiece of literature, the great American novel. Nothing else Melville wrote is even in the water with it, but Steinbeck can't touch it, and no giant's shoulders would let Faulkner wade near it. Melville, The pale Usher, warned the timid: "...don't you read it, ...it is by no means the sort of book for you. ...It is... of the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hausers. A Polar wind blows through it, & birds of prey hover over it. Warn all gentle fastidious people from so much as peeping into the book..." But I say if you've never read it, read it now. If you've read it before, read it again. Think Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Goethe, and The Bible. If you understand it, think again.

It's always dangerous to label a book as a "masterpiece": that word seems to scare away most readers and distances everyone from the substance of the book itself. Still, I'm going to say that this is the Greatest American Novel because I really think that it is--after having read it myself.

Honestly, Moby Dick IS long and looping, shooting off in random digressions as Ishmael waxes philosophical or explains a whale's anatomy or gives the ingredients for Nantucket clam chowder--and that's exactly what I love about it. This is not a neat novel: Melville refused to conform to anyone else's conventions. There is so much in Moby Dick that you can enjoy it on so many completely different levels: you can read it as a Biblical-Shakespearean-level epic tragedy, as a canonical part of 19th Century philosophy, as a gothic whaling adventure story, or almost anything else. Look at all the lowbrow humor. And I'm sorry, but Ishmael is simply one of the most likable and engaging narrators of all time.

A lot of academics love Moby Dick because academics tend to have good taste in literature. But the book itself takes you about as far from academia as any book written--as Ishmael himself says, "A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." Take that advice and forget what others say about it, and just experience Moby Dick for yourself.

Set aboard a Mississippi side-wheel steamer in the 1850s, Melville's novel charts the progress of the American character at a time when the old frontier was giving way, albeit slowly, to a new, urban frontier.

"The Confidence-Man" works at so many different levels that it is no wonder Melville's readers weren't quite sure what to make of his ninth novel. It is a call-and-response of idealism suborned for the purposes of sheer humbuggery, material theft and moral sophistry.

I think readers would do well to always keep the word "confidence" in mind as they read the novel; it recurs time and again in different contexts throughout the book. Melville's purpose is to highlight the rift between what things seem to be and what they truly are. It is eerily existential in tone and readers familiar with Kierkegaard and Camus will be delighted by Melville's keen appreciation for the absurdity of the human condition.

The wretched reception of "The Confidence-Man" undermined what little was left of Melville's own self-confidence as a writer whose work could support his family. In one sense, this was a grievous shame, because Melville lived for nearly four more decades and, presumably, could have spent that time producing more great literature had his contemporaries simply recognized the intellectual genius of his work.

In another sense, though, "The Confidence-Man" is a fitting send-off to a literary career hobbled by critical inattention and plain bad luck. Melville's America is not an America where dreams come true (note how China Aster is destroyed by his) and where confidence -- optimism -- is rewarded or even warranted. Yet, it is an America recognizably closer to the one we live in than those crafted by Melville's contemporaries -- Emerson, Thoreau, Irving.

"The Confidence-Man" is a very complex novel of ideas. This particular edition is very useful because it provides fairly thorough annotation throughout the book. I would highly recommend it for use in a graduate course on American intellectual history, particularly juxtaposed against Emerson and Tocqueville's analyses of American society and culture.

Quite an Original

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
I am specifically reviewing the Northwestern University Press edition of Melville's "The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade."

There is a Norton Critical Edition of this novel edited by Hershel Parker, but it doesn't seem to be offered by Amazon.com. It is offered at at W.W. Norton's website... The Hendricks House edition edited by Elizabeth Foster is another good edition, but it seems to be out of print at the moment.

On November 12, 1856 Herman Melville and Nathanial Hawthorne took a walk among the sandhills near Liverpool, England. They smoked cigars, and Hawthorne wrote about a week later that Melville spoke of Providence and futurity, and he, Melville, had pretty much made up his mind to be annilated.

"The Confidence-Man" is the last novel that Melville published during his lifetime. I agree with Newton Arvin, who called "The Confidence-Man" "one of the most infidel books ever written by an American; one of the most completely nihilistic, morally and metaphysically."

About 150 years after the book was first published, and about fifty since the book was first taken seriously by literary critics, The Confidence-Man is not a settled matter. In fact there remains excessive discord among readers and critics about the worth of this novel. Some compare it to Swift's "Tale of the Tub," others will tell you that this book is static and formless.

The idea is simple enough. On April 1 a devil in the guise of a deaf mute goes aboard a Mississippi river steamboat, and begs for charity. In rapid succession he transforms himself into a crippled Black man, a man with the weed, the man in the grey coat , the gentleman with the big book, the man with the plate and finally the Cosmopolitan. In these different guises he gulls and diddles people. He asks for trust. He is not always successful, but he can take solace in his failures. The reason for the devil's failures is the cyniscim, mistrust and mysandry of his marks. It is their human failings that accounts for his failures. And that's not so bad for the devil.

Melville's control of his material was never greater. I recommend the Northwestern Newberry edition because it contains draft fragments of chapter 14. You can see how carefullly Melville wrote this novel. The blandness of the prose is deliberate. If you read the surviving drafts you will see how Melville purposedly silenced and muted his message. Perhaps Melville was too successful for even close readers get lost sometimes.

At the end there is an increase of seriousness. An old man closes his Bible and asks for a life preserver. The Cosmopolitan hands the old man a chamberpot which appears to be full, and calls it a life preserver. The Cosmopolitan then extinguishes the lamp, and then leads the other into the darkness.

With "The Confidence-Man," Melville offered a final novelistic expression of his hopes, doubts, and frustrations about the American nation on the verge of Civil War in the late 1850's.

Many critics and reviewers take a negative point of view on this novel, saying that the narrative instability and episodic nature of the novel represents Melville's anger with the increasingly poor reception of his later novels, including the brilliant "Moby-Dick".

Over the course of the novel's first half, we are presented with a string of characters who spout the virtues of charity and trust, all supposedly different manifestations of one Confidence-Man. The confidence-man engages passengers of the riverboat Fidele from St. Louis to New Orleans in philosophical, literary, personal, and business-related conversations. This is the heart of the novel, even in the second half, where only one confidence-man appears. As in Cervantes' "Don Quixote," you are able to tease out more about the ambiguous purposes of the novel through speeches rather than actions.

At points amusing, horrifying, and sad, "The Confidence-Man" is difficult, if not impossible to categorize in any simple fashion. An extremely worthwhile read, especially if you read it as a prophetic work of the American Civil War and try to figure out for yourself if Melville thought things would turn out alright, or if the US was due for an apocalyptic judgment.