The Value of Herman Melville

"There are dozens of scholars today who write about Melville’s works with fierce insight and intelligence; Geoffrey Sanborn is one of the best of these, and a critic and scholar whose work I return to again and again. His most recent book does a marvelous job of addressing both new readers of Melville and his longtime scholars—it’s a terrific, accessible, and searingly smart introduction to how to read Melville and how to think about his “value” not as something transcendent, but negotiated by each wave of readers. Yes. As Sanborn writes in describing the novel’s voice, “What it wants above all else is to be in a meaningful relationship with you, and it will do almost anything—tell jokes, coin words, switch genres, change moods, share dreams, kill characters, hint at blasphemies, fly into rhapsodies, go spinning off into the ether of philosophical speculation—in order to make that happen.” It’s a superb point. In Moby-Dick Melville expostulates “God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught.” In reading Herman Melville’s works, the reader is invited at every stage to join in the collective work of drafting meaning, but always deferring completion. It’s an endlessly productive ferment."