In that last post, my very first attempt at a blog, I posted the piece I wrote about Melville and Hawthorne for the British newspaper, the Telegraph.  I've been thinking a lot about this relationship lately:  it mattered that Hawthorne was living a few miles away from Melville, and was the reader of his shoulder.  It was not for nothing that Melville dedicated the novel to Hawthorne.

I just finished writing an introduction to a new British edition of Moby-Dick, and this got me to reread the book for the umpteenth time.  I'm always amazed by its strangeness, its bizarre grab-bag of ideas and narrative, meditation, and quotation.  Melville was one of the first writers to see that a novel can digest a range of things.  It's what James called a "loose baggy monster" for good reasons.

My own novel about Melville, which just came out in Britain, is pretty loose and baggy.  I was trying to experiment in the even chapters with writing biographical narrative as fiction in the guise of nonfiction.  I was "telling" more than "showing."  This may or may not work, but it was interesting to play around with.  I liked writing as Lizzie, Mrs. Melville, in the odd chapter.  Very odd chapter, as Lizzie is a mixed up and wildly erratic person.  What I was trying to do was show her gradual acceptance of her husband and his artistic dream.

A few critics have disliked my use of famous Melville quotations, such as "I prefer not to."  That's such a famous line from "Bartleby," it was perhaps crazy to do what I did:  make it domestic.  But what I hoped to do was twofold:  make a little joke, and show that even great moments in fiction have a mundane origin.  I actually think it works.

Reviews are bizarre forms of writing:  so arbitrary.  There is very little need to argue a case or back up an opinion.  These are what they are:  brief takes, impressionistic, ephemeral.

I've had enough unsolicited responses from readers to know that some will like this book.  I suppose that is what matters.  Or I suppose what matters is that I believe in what I wrote, and will stand behind it.  Time, as always, will tell whether there is anything worth keeping in this book, or not.