IT is difficult to separate Melville from his fictitious counterpart, the brooding narrator of Moby-Dick who begins that story with the evocative phrase, "Call me Ishmael". It is, as it were, Melville's own Declaration of Independence. He has taken another step away from the commonplace into that world of myth where the great writer lives by his own laws and can satisfy his "earnest desire to write those sort of books that are said to fail".
The quotation comes from a letter Melville wrote to his father-in-law, apologising that the failure of Mardi had compelled him to write his next two books solely for money. Melville might be excused for thinking of himself as an Ishmael, but as the first volume of Hershel Parker's new biography makes clear, thanks to a Balzacian richness of detail, he was part of an extensive web of familial and societal connections and proud of it.
Both his grandfathers had been heroes of the American Revolution, so he would have regarded himself as a member of a hereditary aristocracy, newly formed but none the less patrician. His father, Allan, had travelled in Europe, spoke French fluently, and, had a taste for elegance which he put to good use in his choice of expensive fabrics and haberdashery which he imported from France. Unfortunately, he had little business sense, lived by borrowing and eventually flitted to avoid his creditors and the threat of a debtor's prison. He died suddenly, and his widow, with eight children, survived by borrowing on the security of what would be left of his inheritance from his parents. Melville was only twelve at the time but he had to leave school and work as a clerk in a bank. He later worked in his elder brother's fur store, had a spell as a badly paid and less than successful schoolteacher, and sailed to England and back as a merchant seaman.
It was no love of adventure or of the sea that led him, at the age of twenty-one, to sign on a whaler bound for the Pacific. He couldn't find a job ashore. His elder brother, Gansevoort, was, beginning to make a future for himself in politics and the diplomatic service and was looked up to by Herman. Herman's wages as a whaler would never set up the family fortunes; he would be lucky to come home free from debt. As readers of Melville's first novel, Typee, will remember, he deserted the ship with another sailor in the South Seas and spent some time among the cannibals. He made his way home as an able seaman on a frigate of the United States.
It was on this return voyage that he discovered he had a gift for oral narration and his shipmates were always eager to hear of his adventures, in particular of the sexual behaviour he had witnessed, or perhaps taken part in, during his stay in an interracial Eden.
Once he was home, his family urged him to write a book about his experiences. It might not earn him a living, but might well advance his career. In the event it made him famous. Even though the book had been revised or toned down for publication, the incidents described earned Melville the status of a sexual icon, of an early example of the personality cult; and the controversy about the authenticity of Typee - was it fact as it claimed to be, or a pure fiction? - probably promoted its sales. The most damaging criticisms of the book came from the Protestant churches, not on the grounds of alleged immorality, but on account of Melville's hostile attitude towards the missionaries.
Omoo, a sequel to Typee, was also well received It confirmed Melville's professionalism as a writer and enabled him to marry.
Doubtless more sea stories were what the public would have welcomed, but Melville was determined to create great literature, nurtured by readings of the Bible and Shakespeare and Milton and other esteemed classics, and wrote Mardi. It opens as a South Sea story but deteriorates into a series of digressions, phrased in an elaborately ornate and wearisome style. Only in Moby-Dick did Melville succeed in wedding his literary tendencies to his narrative skills, aided by the fact that the white whale and Captain Ahab, its relentless pursuer, could easily be seen as powerful symbols of human aims and endeavours.
Hershel Parker notes Melville's enormous indebtedness not only to the classics but also to previous books about sailing, and hunting the whale, and the customs of the South Sea islanders; he distinguishes between the fact and fiction in the apparently autobiographical works; and most importantly, he recreates not only Melville's life, but also the life of those around him and of, contemporary American society. He has placed Melville in a peopled world and it is a measure of his success that the reader is eager to learn about the rest of Melville's life after Moby-Dick, with whose publication Volume 1 comes to a close.