Melville's Sleepless NightsAfter reading Elizabeth Hardwick's lyrical introspective 1979 novel, "Sleepless Nights", I turned to this book to learn how Hardwick viewed one of my favorite authors. Born in Kentucky, Elizabeth Hardwick (1916-2007) was a co-founder of the New York Review of Books and a critic and essayist who had written about Melville's "Bartleby". She also endured a long difficult marriage to the American poet Robert Lowell.It is tempting to see a connection between the reclusive,

It has often been observed that what we as readers take away from a book is largely dependent of what we bring to it, in the way of preconception, attitude, and belief. Bearing this in mind, I will confess that I approached Elizabeth Hardwick's biography of Herman Melville as a poor substitute for the massive two-volume work produced by Hershel Parker on the same subject - a book whose tremendous size and scope suggested nothing so much as a mountain that I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to climb...

There's a little more that could be said about the life, and a lot more that could be said about the work (Hardwick freely admits to skipping over Mardi, Pierre, Clarel, some of the short stories and all the poetry that isn't Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War), but otherwise this is fantastic; a genuine sympathy and admiration for how Melville persisted in writing despite everything he suffered, respect for the ambiguity and mystery that still hangs over so much of what we know about him, uns...

One of the Penguin Brief Lives, similar in brevity to Nathaniel Philbrick's Why Read Moby Dick? Hardwick outlines Melville's own early experiences at sea, examines his family life (such as it was) and his relations with other writers. She records his sad, long life (in spite of finally writing Billy Budd virtually on his death-bed), never well-known. His New York Times obituary recorded his first name as Henry. She also describes each of his early novels in some detail and wonders at "the fantas...

A review with, or in, digressions:Elizabeth Hardwick, who died a decade ago at 91, is having a literary revival. Her collected essays are due later this year; articles abound, and will abound. Sentences are offered for our delectation. Sarah Nicole Prickett gives us this observation of Bloomsbury: “Certain peripheral names scratch the mind.” Having written a dissertation chapter on Virginia Woolf while persisting in total indifference even to Leonard and Vanessa, to say nothing of Lytton and Dun...

I hadn't studied much of Melville, so this was my introduction to him. I feel like it's a fair take on the man, using his literature to explain so much about his very difficult life. Like Scott, I felt it was a little over-stylized, but then, so is Moby Dick!

I just can't rate this book higher than a star for a number of reasons. It presents a surface reading of Melville's opus and an unsubstantive account of his life. The author does have a certain gift for language...I would call her style a little florid, a bit brusque, but not necessarily in a bad way. A sentence without a verb seems to be one of her favorite constructions. It doesn't flow easily but her style does cause you to think due to its complexity and unusual constructions.My main problem...

Brief, well-written, biography not intended to be comprehensive. More of a primer to introduce the curious to Melville's, weirdness, melancholy, and, yes, also his genius.

"Lizzie Melville, in a harmless but never-to-be-unnoted remark, wrote in a letter: 'Herman has taken to writing poetry. You need not tell anyone, for you k now how such things get around'."

A friend loaned me this short book, feeling I might like it. I hadn't told him that I wasn't at all interested in all those sea-themed books of Melville's, but in looking through it recently I noticed that the biographical sections, not focusing on the stories themselves, seemed readable. Glad I selected it, having skimmed through the lit-crit parts. Definitely recommended for Melville fans, and biography readers in general!(Footnote: he seems to have written a rather campy-sounding novel, Pierr...

Elizabeth Hardwick’s last book, wherein she shares her considerable enthusiasm for Melville. (Her four-page discussion of Bartleby is a revised version of her essay published in 1983.) Of course, in this short, highly readable book (this is in the Penguin Lives Series) you get neither a full biography nor a full critical review – which she’s the first to admit. Her purpose is to promote reading of Typee, Redburn, and The Confidence-Man in addition to the more popular works like Moby-Dick. I cert...

Enjoyable to read, though Melville's life seems like it should have been more interesting. I think the challenge for me is more the subject of the story rather than the effort by the author Hardwick. As compared to so many of the other literary lives I've read, Melville seems so passive and defeated by events throughout so much of his life, despite taking on some very interesting adventures early in life and writing our country's best literature ever - side note: Bartleby the Scrivener and espec...

A short, impressionistic survey of the author’s biography, works, and criticism about them. Hardwick confesses in her afterword to more emphasis on Melville’s most popular prose, Moby-Dick, Billy Budd and “Bartleby the Scrivener," admitting that “critics have found much of interest in,” what she terms, “the forbidding texts:” Mardi, Pierre, and Clarel. “In the matter of biography, I have given space to the obsessive relation with Hawthorne and to the ‘homoerotic’ refrain throughout the books. Th...

I'm realizing the fruitlessness of pursuing biographies of melville hoping to get to the bottom of something, now knowing that he burned all his letters, drafts, notes, etc., or had his family burn them. I appreciated how this angle looked to his autobiographical novels as a way of reading into his family and how it emphasized his tragic marriage. I wanted more on homoeroticism (always more!).

The prose is a bit rococo, but the material is worth hearing. Melville's life was even sadder than I had hither to believed: his son committed suicide; his other son died of TB. His marriage was difficult and he was violent at home. Artists are often lousy human beings; I'm still not sure why.

This short biography successfully integrates Herman Melville's life with his literary works. Following a couple of introductory chapters Hardwick identifies most of the remainder with specific novels or shorter works by the author. While its brevity prevents this biography from the "Penguin Lives" series from being comprehensive it still is worth reading for both the insights of Elizabeth Hardwick and her impeccable prose. With the inclusion of a thoughtful afterword and useful bibliographic sug...

A fascinating short study of the life and works of the mysterious writer, Herman Melville. As author Elizabeth Hardwick says at the end of a chapter, “But then, so much about Melville is ‘seems to be, may have been’, and ‘perhaps’”. Unfortunately for readers and scholars, Melville was apparently a serial burner of correspondence and other papers. What we know of him comes from his own work, replies to his correspondence saved by contemporaries such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the fact he had wel...

Lecture de la vie et de l'oeuvre de l'auteur de «Moby Dick». Cet essai bien écrit nous fait voir le parcours singulier de cet écrivain. Par contre, j'ai trouvé l'idée de savoir s'il y avait homosexualité refoulée dans sa vie, légèrement déplacé. «Qu'importe s'il avait été zoophile !" comme me l'a dit une amie.

Short and interesting, but almost too short. It's a good book for someone not familiar with Melville or his works. Hardwick admits in the afterward to giving both Pierre and Clarel short shrift... the absence of which hurts her attempt to discuss reoccurring themes and motifs in Melville's work. Much was made of the homoerotic elements in his work, beginning in Redburn; but rather than treat this critically, it reads more like gossip.

As I began reading this Melville biography I enjoyed Hardwick's lush prose and frequent quotation from Melville. The middle chapters brought the written works to the center and Hardwick began to try to balance the personal and the literary. She lost that balance and both became obscured. She is also fascinated by the homo-erotic in Melville, but seems unable to do more than point it out. It is as if she must trot out the idea in every chapter, awkwardly point the reader to it, and then go about