INKLINGS: A Headlong Plunge into an Authors Mind

Fabled Powers

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Lest we should seem to imply that the masquerade is dramatic in form, it is as well to describe its construction. It is a strangely diversified narration of events taking place during the voyage of a Mississippi river boat, a cosmopolitan philanthropist, the apostle of a doctrine, being the centre and inspiration of the whole. The charm of the book is owing to its originality and to its constant flow of descriptions, character-stretching and dialogue, deeply toned and skillfully contrasted.

Literary Gazette W e notice this book at length for much the same reason as Dr. Livingston describes his travels in Monomotapa, holding that its perusal has constituted a feat which few will attempt, and fewer still accomplish. Those who, remembering the nature of the author's former performances, take it up in the expectation of encountering a wild and stirring fiction, will be tolerably sure to lay it down ere long with an uncomfortable sensation of dizziness in the head, and yet some such introduction under false presences seems to afford it its only chance of being taken up at all.

For who will meddle with a book professing to inculcate philosophical truths through the medium of nonsensical people talking nonsense--the best definition of its scope and character that a somewhat prolonged consideration has enabled us to suggest. A novel it is not, unless a novel means forty five conversations held on board a steamer, conducted by personages who might pass for the errata of creation, and so far resembling the Dialogues of Plato as to be undoubted Greek to ordinary men. Looking at the substance of these colloquies, they cannot be pronounced altogether valueless; looking only at the form, they might well be esteemed the compositions of a March hare with a literary turn of mind.

It is not till a lengthened perusal--a perusal more lengthened than many readers will be willing to accord--has familiarized us with the quaintness of the style, and until long domestication with the incomprehensible interlocutors has infected us with something of their own eccentricity, that our faculties, like the eyes of prisoners accustomed to the dark, become sufficiently acute to discern the golden grains which the author has made it his business to hide away from us.

It is due to Mr. Melville to say, that he is by no means unconscious of his own absurdities, which, in one of his comparatively lucid intervals, he attempts to justify and defend: How unreal all this is! Who did ever dress or act like your cosmopolitan? And who, it might be resumed, did ever dress or act like harlequin? This is ingenious, but it begs the question. We do, as Mr. Melville says, desire to see nature "unfettered, exhilarated," in fiction [but] we do not want to see her "transformed.

But we demand that, in so doing, he should observe certain ill-defined but sufficiently understood rules of probability. His fictitious creatures must be such as Nature might herself have made, supposing their being to have entered into her design. We must have fitness of organs, symmetry of proportions, no impossibilities, no monstrosities. As to harlequin, we think it very possible indeed that his coat may be too parti-coloured, and his capers too fantastic, and conceive, moreover, that Mr. Melville's present production supplies an unanswerable proof of the truth of both positions.

We should be sorry, in saying this, to be confounded with the cold unimaginative critics, who could see nothing but extravagance in some of our author's earlier fictions--in the first volume of 'Mardi,' that archipelago of lovely descriptions is led in glittering reaches of vivid nautical narrative--the conception of 'The Whale,' ghostly and grand as the great grey sweep of the ridged and rolling sea.

But these wild beauties were introduced to us with a congruity of outward accompaniment lacking here. The isles of 'Mardi' were in Polynesia, not off the United States. Captain Ahab did not chase Moby Dick in a Mississippi steamboat. If the language was extraordinary, the speakers were extraordinary too. If we had extravaganzas like the following outpouring on the subject of port wine, at least they were not put into the mouths of Yankee cabin passengers: After a few minutes' down-cast musing, he lifted his eyes and said: But if wine be false, while men are true, whither shall fly convivial geniality?

To think of sincerely genial souls drinking each other's health at unawares in perfidious and murderous drugs! The best of it is, that this belauded beverage is all the time what one of the speakers afterwards calls "elixir of logwood. This is not much better than Tilburina in white satin, yet such passages form the staple of the book.

It is, of course, very possible that there may be method in all this madness, and that the author may have a plan, which must needs be a very deep one indeed. Certainly we can obtain no inkling of it. It may be that he has chosen to act the part of a mediaeval jester, conveying weighty truths under a semblance antic and ludicrous; if so, we can only recommend him for the future not to jingle his bells so loud.

There is no catching the accents of wisdom amid all this clattering exuberance of folly. Those who wish to teach should not begin by assuming a mask so grotesque as to keep listeners on the laugh, or frighten them away. Melville really does mean to teach anything is, we are aware, a matter of considerable uncertainty. To describe his book, one had need to be a H"llen-Breughel; to understand its purport, one should be something of a Sphinx. It may be a bona fide eulogy on the blessedness of reposing "confidence"--but we are not at all confident of this.

Perhaps it is a hoax on the public--an emulation of Barnum. Perhaps the mild man in mourning, who goes about requesting everybody to put confidence in him, is an emblem of Mr. Melville himself, imploring toleration for three hundred and fifty-three pages of rambling, on the speculation of there being something to the purpose in the three hundred and fifty-fourth; which, by the way, there is not, unless the oracular announcement that "something further may follow of this masquerade," is to be regarded in that light. We are not denying that this tangled web of obscurity is shot with many a gleam of shrewd and subtle thought--that this caldron, so thick and slab with nonsense, often bursts into the bright, brief bubbles of fancy and wit.

The greater the pity to see these good things so thrown away. The following scene, in the first chapter, for example, seems to us sufficiently graphic to raise expectations very indifferently justified by the sequel It will be seen that Mr. Melville can still write powerfully when it pleases him. Even when most wayward, he yet gives evidence of much latent genius, which, however, like latent heat, is of little use either to him or to us.

We should wish to meet him again in his legitimate department, as the prose-poet of the ocean; if, however, he will persist in indoctrinating us with his views concerning the vrai , we trust he will at least condescend to pay, for the future, some slight attention to the vraisemblable. He has ruined this book, as he did 'Pierre,' by a strained effort after excessive originality.

When will he discover that-- "Standing on the head makes not Either for ease or dignity?

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The Spectator [London] T he precise design of Mr. Satire on many American smartnesses, and on the gullibility of mankind which enables those smartnesses to succeed, is indeed an evident object of the author. He stops short of any continuous pungent effect; because his plan is not distinctly felt, and the framework is very inartistical; also because the execution is upon the whole flat, at least to an English reader, who does not appreciate what appear to be local allusions. A Mississippi steam-boat is the scene of the piece; and the passengers are the actors, or rather the talkers.

There is a misanthropist, looking like a dismissed official soured against the government and humanity, whose pleasure it is to regard the dark side of things and to infuse distrust into the compassionate mind.

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There is the President and Transfer Agent of the "Black Rapids Coal Company," who does a little business on board, by dint of some secret accomplices and his own pleasant plausibility and affected reluctance. A herb-doctor is a prominent person, who gets rid of his medicine by immutable patience and his dexterity in playing upon the fears and hopes of the sick.

The "Confidence-Man" is the character most continually before the reader. He is collecting subscriptions for a "Widow and Orphan Asylum recently founded among the Seminoles," and he succeeds greatly in fleecing the passengers by his quiet impudence and his insinuating fluency; the persons who effectually resist being middle-aged or elderly well-to-do gentlemen, who cut short his advances: Besides the defective plan and the general flatness of execution, there seems too great a success on the part of the rogues, from the great gullibility of the gulls.

If implicit reliance could be placed on the fiction as a genuine sketch of American society, it might be said that poverty there as elsewhere goes to the wall, and that the freedom of the constitution does not extend to social intercourse unless where the arms and physical strength of some border man compel the fears of the genteel to grudgingly overcome their reluctance for the time. This reliance we cannot give. The spirit of the satire seems drawn from the European writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with some of Mr.

Melville's own Old World observations superadded. It sometimes becomes a question how much belongs to the New World, how much to the Old, and how much to exaggerated representation, impressing a received truth in the form of fiction. The power of wealth, connexion, and respectability, to overbear right, while poor and friendless innocence suffers, may be illustrated in the following story of a begging cripple, told to the herb-doctor; or it may instance the unscrupulous invention of vagrant impostors; but it can scarcely be taken as a true picture of justice towards the poor at New York.

But, in the t Confidence Man there is no attempt at a novel, or a romance, for MELVILLE has not the slightest qualifications for a novelist, and therefore he appears to much better advantage here than in his attempts at story books. It is, in short, a Rabelaisian piece of patch- -work without any of the Rabelaisian indecency. And here it may be well to remark v that one of the distinguishing traits of the Young American literature is its perfect decency.

You can read any of these books aloud to your grandmother or your daughter, which is more than can be done by d the majority of British books. Some of the local descriptions in the Confidence Man are as striking and picturesque as the best things in Typee , and the oddities of thought, felicities of expression, the wit, humor, and rollicking inspirations are as abundant and original as in any of the productions of this most remarkable writer.

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The volume has an end, but there is no conclusion to the book; the last chapter might have been the first, and the author in- timates that there is more of the same sort to come. Philadelphia Evening Bulletin A n eccentric, somewhat amusing and of course a rather more than somewhat indifferently digested novel. Like all of Melville's works, it contains material for suggesting thought to intelligent minds--and like all his works, too, its artistic or mechanical execution is wretched.

Yet with all this it is curious, spirited, and well worth reading. Critic [London] H erman Melville, hitherto known to us as one of the brightest and most poetical word-painters of places, here adventures into quite a new field, and treats us, under the form of a fiction, to an analytical inquiry into a few social shams.

The machinery of the story, or drama, as it may perhaps be more accurately called, is simple enough; it is in the filling-up that the skill and ability are apparent. Louis to New Orleans, laden with its many-headed changing freight of human beings. Among these moves a philosopher, whose theory, or to use an Americanism notion, it is that there is not enough confidence in the world--not enough, that is to say, of the real sterling metals but, on the contrary, a great deal of paint and varnish and gilding, which looks so like it as to deceive the foolish and unwary.

Accordingly he devotes his time during that voyage in sustaining a series of disguises under the cover of which he enacts a variety of scenes, and holds long disquisitions with various interlocutors, all which have for their object the impression of his principle, that confidence, and not distrust, is the foundation of happy human intercourse. All this seems simple enough in the telling, and very likely to be prosy. That prosiness is the last crime of which Herman Melville can be accused, will be admitted by all who are familiar with "Omoo," "Typee," "Mardi," "White Jacket," and "Moby Dick. We are not quite sure whether we have cracked it ourselves--whether there is not another meaning hidden in the depths of the subject other than that which lies near the surface.

There is a dry vein of sarcastic humour running throughout which makes us suspect this.

And besides, is there not a contradiction apparent in the principles of The Confidence Man himself, when he seeks to build his theory of Catholic charity upon a foundation of suspicion? Moreover, there are some parts of the story in which we feel half inclined to doubt whether this apostle of geniality is not, after all, an arch-imposter of the deepest dye; as for example, when he takes the twenty dollars from the miser upon a promise to treble them for him. Does the miser ever see the colour of his money again? Certainly the reader of the book never does.

And then, under what strange and trying disguises does The Confidence Man offer his ministrations. Who would ever think of putting confidence in a vendor of nostrums, even though he should talk such excellent wisdom as this? Better still is his reasoning with the grim cynic whom experience had brought to the sweeping conclusion that "all boys are rascals. You deny that a youth Augustine for an ostler. The contingency of having a St. Augustine for an ostler may be rather remote, but there is something in this which those Pharisees who frown mercilessly upon the follies of youth may profit by.

Taking another aspect of this book, who does not perceive a touch of the finest humour in the application of the touchstone whereby the Confidence Man proves the hollowness of his genial friend "the Mississippi Operator. Cadmus glided into the snake. New York Day Book W e remember the quaint, curious story of "Typee," and how puzzled and interested we were over its pages. We do not think Mr. Melville has greatly improved, or else we have lost an interest in his rather queer way of telling a story.

The present one, however, is a clever delineation of western characteristics, and will please many readers. Without being really a great or philosophical novelist, Mr. London Examiner M r. Herman Melville, a clever American author, whose Marquesas Island story no reader can have forgotten, has published a fanciful work which he calls a "Masquerade," entitled the Confidence Man , consisting not so much of a single narrative as of a connected series of dialogues, quaintly playing upon the character of that confidence of man in man which is or ought to be the basis of all dealing.

It is not altogether what it ought to be, hints Mr.

The Woman in Cabin 10

Melville by his satire. We are only ready with a blind trust in the man who has raised mists of self-interest before our eyes. We have not much confidence in any man who wants to borrow money with his honour as security. New York Atlas W e do not think this book will add anything to the reputation of the author of "Typee. Here and there are passages, and whole pages, even, worthy of Melville, when he seems to wake from his drowsiness, and be himself; but as regards the general character of the book, we should say it was a remarkably lazy one.

We do not wish to infer that the book is not worth attention; but we are sorry that the author has expended so much labor to so little purpose, when we have a right to expect from him better things. It looks too much like a job of book making, instead of a work of love stimulated by the best faculties of the intellect. Troy [NY] Budget I t is an unfortunate thing, sometimes, to do too well at the start. The tune pitched too high, labors all the way through. A brilliant first appearance, not seldom prefaces a fail- ure or a partial success.

Herman Melville has never given the world the peer of "Typee. It has many points of interest, is readable, sketchy and in many places original. It is not a novel. It wants the connection, the regular plot and great part of the machinery that is found in the regular novel. Intoxication is, among other things, the destruction of the timekeeper, a release into the duration state. It is impossible to live pleasurably without living wisely, well, and justly, and impossible to live wisely, well, and justly without living pleasurably. As soon as he knows it, he must cultivate it! A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses.

All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed—and the supreme scientist.

It is almost as if any transcendence, or dialectical leapfrogging action, requires some friction of opposites; that the momentum that leads to the making of beauty is prompted by an injurious spur. That reaching for the very sources that he ascribed specifically to the poet was passed along as legacy.

In a world gone urban and global, gone modern , it fell increasingly to the novelist to pick up where the lyric catalogs of Walt Whitman left off—to try to bring the new magnitude of things into language. This ambition is manifest at the level of conception, and shows up in telltale ways in the prose itself the novel is the ideal petri dish. Faulkner is a superb example. His sentences, such as this one from the beginning of Absalom, Absalom! There would be the dim coffin-smelling gloom sweet and oversweet with the twice-bloomed wisteria against the outer wall by the savage quiet September sun impacted distilled and hyperdistilled, into which came now and then the loud cloudy flutter of the sparrows like a flat limber stick whipped by an idle boy, and the rank smell of female old flesh long embattled in virginity while the wan haggard face watched him above the faint triangle of lace at wrists and throat from the too tall chair in which she resembled a crucified child; and the voice not ceasing but vanishing into and then out of the long intervals like a stream, a trickle running from patch to patch of dried sand, and the ghost mused with shadowy docility as if it were the voice which he haunted where a more fortunate one would have had a house.

This is intoxicated prose, or else the designation is meaningless. We note, along with the reaching, self-surpassing cadence, which does not seem to accept the idea of limit, of stopping, the adoration of sounds and repetitions; the making of analogies. The language pushes with steady lyric force against the restraining norms of syntax, and its purpose is not mainly designatory or explanatory or anything that represents the order of reason. Faulkner has summoned his considerable resources of diction and a headlong rhythmic sensibility to create an experience at once sensory, emotionally suggestive, and dense with intimation.

Faulkner was the first to express on a grand scale the vast repressed loss and bitterness of the post—Civil War South; similarly Joyce addressed the beginnings of the modern industrial metropolis and the emergence of what would be the massively influential science of psychology in Ulysses. The writer is driven by a need not only to deploy the traditional narrative resources but to somehow create the new climate that his vision requires. Both are novels that synthesize and mimic new cultural intuitions paranoia in the face of global systems, say and aim as much to present a new felt reality as to tell a story.

But is it ongoing? What of this primary opposition survives translation into our era? The public face of the literary—of the artistic in general—has changed a good bit in the last two decades. The idea of the created work has lost some of its old romantic luster; it has been to a considerable extent displaced by the idea of the product. That change has been driven largely by transformations at the level of publishing and marketing—which is to say by economic forces—as well as by the rapid digital assimilation of text.

The independent and self-generated creations of the writer have been subsumed by systems of great algorithmic complexity; Dionysus is caught in the gauntlet of Apollonian circuitries. Small wonder that things in the literary sphere feel a good deal more slippery and ephemeral than they used to. What has happened to the old Emersonian idealism?

How are writers today regarded and how do they regard themselves in the light of his somewhat grand—or grandiose—conceptions? Are they working differently, pursuing careers differently, even seeing themselves differently? I would answer yes to all three. The world has changed utterly.

And these days the work itself is ever more likely to have its primary life as a file that can be summoned instantly to any screen. Depiction of the manufacturing and use of narcotics, Punjab, India, c. On the literary front, things in the decade plus since Wallace published Infinite Jest have been quiet. Few works of maximalist synthesis have captured the reading audience. Both are linguistically tamer, and more structurally conventional and marketplace-driven than The Corrections and Middlesex , the big novels that preceded them. The question has to be asked: Bear in mind, too, that work of vast and demanding synthesis has never been a marketplace staple.

Still, to one who tracks the leading literary indicators, the change is palpable—and possibly alarming. Is literary reading itself, as is often claimed, in a state of jeopardy? If so, or even if that is the perception, how does it affect our writers? How many are willing work in open defiance of what they see the market to be? Some will—praise them—but only some. His was the power which has always stood in spirit counter to order, part of the core expressive dynamic of all our arts.

But now I wonder: Westaway , and The Turn of the Key ; all of her books have sold over three million copies worldwide. She is married with two small children. Visit her at RuthWare. A fog-enshrouded cruise ship, a twisty puzzle of a murder mystery reminiscent of Agatha Christie, and unrelenting suspense. Batten down the hatches and prepare to read it in one sitting! Agatha Christie for the WhatsApp generation. A tense, twisty delight that powers along at a heart rattling pace. Ware draws you in deep and holds you tight until the very end. At once up-to-the-minute and timeless, it blends classic suspense writing with twenty-first-century twists and turns.

A book to keep you reading late into the night and leave your mind and pulse racing long after the final page. The cast of characters, their conversations, and the luxurious but confining setting all echo classic Agatha Christie; in fact, the structure of the mystery itself is an old one: But Lo is no wallflower; she is a strong and determined modern heroine who refuses to doubt the evidence of her own instincts. The intense final chapters just might induce heart palpitations.

This is the perfect summer read for those seeking a shadowy counter to the sunshine. Ware puts her own stamp on the genre The Woman in Cabin 10 is good: Get our latest book recommendations, author news, and sweepstakes right to your inbox. By clicking 'Sign me up' I acknowledge that I have read and agree to the privacy policy and terms of use , and the transfer of my personal data to the United States, where the privacy laws may be different than those in my country of residence.

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Price may vary by retailer. A Different Drummer Books. Le James McGill University. The University of Manitoba Bookstore. University of British Columbia. University of Western Ontario. University of Winnipeg Bookstore. I must have forgotten to shut the kitchen door last night.

Punishment for coming home drunk.

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