/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13647851]

>The diplomat Maunsell Fields listened raptly for hours as Melville and Oliver Wendell Holmes discussed East India religions and mythologies “with the most amazing skill and brilliancy on both sides.” He declared, “I never chanced to hear better talking in my life.”

[Anonymous No.13648151]

>>13647851
based

[Anonymous No.13648176]

It's insane how so little recognition Melville gets. To this day, no one read his poetic masterpiece. Sure, people liked Typee when it came out, and Moby Dick is well liked today, but Melville wrote other things.

>LOA: Can you say something about Melville’s own expectations for Clarel, a poem considerably longer than Milton’s Paradise Lost?

>Parker: A writer who works over the proofs of a great book always gets excited. Surely others will realize what a triumph it is! No matter how many times he had been disappointed, he knew he had written a great poem and simply could not imagine it would not be recognized by at least a few readers as great. But Melville was realistic enough in his note to “dismiss the book—content beforehand with whatever future awaits it.” Nobody could have been content three years later when Putnam’s made him agree to dispose of the remaining 224 copies out of some 330 or so printed, paid for by Melville from a legacy for that purpose from his uncle, Peter Gansevoort. He did not even stash a dozen or so to hand out to people who might some day express interest in the volume.

[Anonymous No.13649394]

>The diplomat Maunsell Fields listened raptly for hours

More like Incel Fields, am I right fellas?

[Anonymous No.13649403]

Source?

[Anonymous No.13649406]

>>13648176
Not really. His prose is god tier and nobody can deny that but the idea that a guy who only wrote about fucking sailing (a boring activity in itself) and filled his books with mundane technical shit I think he deserved to go unrecognised in his life. It's sad, actually, he could have written such great books if he actually put his mind to crafting a good story, but all he has is prose, and while that's certainly a lot and I wouldn't deny his books are good, I wouldn't consider him a great.

[Anonymous No.13649414]

>>13649406
>he reads for the plot

[Anonymous No.13649420]

>>13649406
no one cares what you think, learn to read

[Anonymous No.13649435]

>>13649406
Go on, tell us about the True and Real greats.

[Anonymous No.13649436]

>>13649414
I don't read for the plot, I literally said his books are good even though all he has is prose. Plot is important too though.

[Anonymous No.13649438]

>>13648176
He has something of the same problem that Edith Wharton does. She's less popular than she deserves because her writing style by the 1910s-20s was out of style for all but the elderly. Modernism overshadowed her. Melville's rediscovery in the same period led to the same end with his poetry. Moby Dick for symbolism, bartleby shortly after for proto-existentialism (if you want to go that line), confidence man for fragmentation of perspective, etc. - most of his later work has something very much to the taste of artists and critics of that rediscovery time. His poetry did not. It was decidedly old-fashioned and no one's ever done enough work with it to change minds yet.

[Anonymous No.13649442]

>>13649435
Shakespeare
Tolstoy
Nabokov
Dostoy
etc

[Anonymous No.13649455]

>>13649442
>Nabokov
kek

[Anonymous No.13649466]

>>13649403

I saw it here:
https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1542-loa-celebrates-herman-melvilles-200th-birthday-with-his-_complete-poems_

[Anonymous No.13649470]

>>13649455
He's an example of a guy who's prose is stronger than his plot but unlike Melville his plot wasn't 0/10 so he wrote masterpieces

[Anonymous No.13649883]

reminder that most great writers are like this and if you can't extemporaneously blow people's minds with conversation you will never make it