Herman Melville

By: Elizabeth Hardwick

Narrated by: Karen White

A single novel, an eternal classic, established him as a founding father of American literature. Now, a century after his death, a new popular surge of interest in Herman Melville calls for Elizabeth Hardwick's rich analysis of "the whole of Melville's works, uneven as it is, and the challenging shape of his life . . . a story of the creative history of an extraordinary American genius."

Hardwick's superb critical interpretation and award-winning novelistic flair reveal a former whaleship deckhand whose voyages were the stuff of travel romances that seduced the public. Later, a self-described "thought-diver" into "the truth of the human heart," Melville harbored a bitterness that knew no bounds when that same public failed to embrace his masterwork, Moby-Dick. Invaluable for enthusiasts of American literature, Herman Melville is itself a masterpiece of critical commentary in the tradition of D. H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature.©2000 Elizabeth Hardwick; (P)2000 Books on Tape, Inc.

Felt like a Thesis

It has been a long time since I have read any Melville, so I can't tell if the author simply became so immersed in his prose that she lost track of ordinary language or if she intended this piece to be an homage of sorts to his style, but I found myself rolling my eyes over and over throughout this book. It felt very much like a cocktail conversation with a knowledgable but insecure and overcompensating grad student.