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"Dayswork tells the story of a woman who spends the endless days of the pandemic sorting fact from fiction in the life and work of Herman Melville. Obsessed by what his devotion to his art reveals about cost, worth, and debt, she delves into Melville's impulsive purchase of a Massachusetts farmhouse, his fevered revision of Moby-Dick there, his intense friendship with neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne, and his troubled and troubling marriage to Elizabeth Shaw. As the narrator's fascination grows and her research deepens, she examines Melville's effect on the imagination and lives of generations of biographers and writers, including Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell. Ultimately, her quarantine project is a midlife reckoning with her own marriage and ambition."--… (more)
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It was like a room with many doors, the doors leading to more rooms with more doors, and yet taking one back to where one started. The narrative segues into asides, sharing the stories of Melville admirers and biographers. One such tangent is about
Hardwick wrote that Melville was “given to violence in the household,” based on family stories and letters. After his death, his wife promoted his work and pressed for reissuing of the books, which fed a consequent “Melville Revival.”
We realize how elusive Melville is–can we really know him? Even his New York Times death notice called him “Hiram Melville,” and he was “Norman Melville” on a crew list.
His Moby Dick is extolled as an eloquent masterpiece, inspirational, life-changing. “How much that man makes you love him!” (Hart Crane) “Herman Melville is a god.” (Maurice Sendak) And by others, particularly high school students, as a big snooze.
The story is set during the pandemic, with a woman researching Melville and discussing her findings with her husband.
There is much about Melville’s love for Nathaniel Hawthorne, famed for his beauty, his visits documented by Sarah Peabody Hawthorne, who noted his linen was dirty, and their son Julian, who loved Melville.
Melville’s early novels sold well, but his long poem Clarel and Moby Dick were failures. He worked for nineteen years as a customs inspector.
The first Melville I read was a volume that included Typee and Omoo that I found on my father’s bookshelf when I was a teen. I read Moby Dick as a young woman–skipping the Cetacea and whaling chapters, and then finally read it in whole it in middle age when our son read it in high school. In between, I read Billy Bud and The Confidence Man and Bartleby the Scrivener.
I was charmed when the narrator describes reading an old paperback of Howard’s End–the exact edition I discovered and read and fell in love with. I recalled reading Lowell’s Life Studies and Day by Day and Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights, sad that my copies were sacrificed in one of my dozen moves. But I have Moby Dick still, and this has inspired me to revisit it, to see how I experience it in my senior years.
Thanks to the publisher for a free book.
Instead of being a straightforward biography, this narrative frames around the narrator's readings about the famous man while quarantined during the Covid 19 pandemic. Clearly, she is quite knowledgeable about her subject and what his colleagues, then and now, thought of him. However, the novel takes on a meandering structure that seems to reflect Melville's own eclectic personality and perseverance. For a person who enjoys spending time with a scholar who knows a lot about a particular subject but tends to ramble, reading this novel could be an enjoyable experience. However, for a reader looking for something a bit more analytical, it is disappointing.
Running through the book are the words of The Biographer, who wrote two weighty volumes about the man, who idolized him, defending him from all criticism. The counterpoint to the hagiography are the many accounts of Melville being abusive and of his disregard for his family's welfare. Just as in the narrator's account, there are issues she has with her husband and moments of closeness, of shared history and fond affection.
I was charmed by this book, despite its format.
One really doesn't need to have read Moby Dick to read this novel, although MD is both worthwhile and a lot of fun, but a basic knowledge of Melville's life might be useful.
*Book #141/340 I have read of the shortlisted Morning News Tournament of Books