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Herman Melville\u2019s Pierre <\/em> (1852) was, to put it mildly, not warmly received by critics. One newspaper headlined its review with \u201cHERMAN MELVILLE CRAZY\u201d and another reviewer complained that Melville\u2019s fancy was diseased. Critics are divided over whether it is a grand failure or simply a failure. Updike caught the tone when he remarked that the novel \u201cruns a constant fever pitch\u201d and its characters are \u201cjerked to and fro by some unexplained rage of the author\u2019s.\u201d In his recent Melville biography, Andrew Delbanco describes it \u201cas a nineteenth-century preview of the camp sensibility that became pervasive more than a hundred years later in late twentieth-century culture,\u201d teeming as it is with hints of submerged sexual transgressiveness. <\/p>\n Pierre Glendinning is at the beginning of the novel living in creepy innocence with his widowed and domineering mother, with whom his relationship is more sibling than parental (he calls his mother by her first name, and calls her \u201csister\u201d). Through his mother\u2019s encouragement, he is engaged to Lucy Tartan, the \u201cpale\u201d and civilized woman of the story, but is haunted by the vision of a dark-eyed, savage beauty and has premonitions that his world will not remain as blissful as he thinks it. <\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t. While visiting a home for wayward girls, his name provokes a shriek from one of the girls, whom he recognizes as the girl of his visions. Shortly after, a mysterious man delivers a note from the girl, Isabel, who informs Pierre that she is his half-sister, the daughter of his father\u2019s French mistress. Pierre is entranced by Isabel, and her mysterious story, and is thrust into what he considers an irresolvable dilemma: To protect his father\u2019s pristine reputation, he must never let Isabel\u2019s existence be known, and yet to fulfill his Christian duty he must care for Isabel for the rest of her life. <\/p>\n Outraged and feeling duped by the world, he arrives at a solution: He will pretend that Isabel is his wife, so that they can live in the same house, go everywhere together, and Pierre can care for her without bringing shame to his father\u2019s name. He visits Lucy (all unbrac\u2019d) and renounces her, informs his mother that he is already married, and leaves with Isabel for New York, with another girl, Delly Ulver, who has been cast out of her family because of sexual misconduct. <\/p>\n When he\u2019s rejected by his cousin and boyhood pal, Glendinning (Glen) Stanly, Pierre goes to live with an artistic community known as the \u201cChurch of the Apostles,\u201d and makes a living as a writer. Pierre and Isabel are clearly in love, despite their assurances and the author\u2019s that there is \u201cno sex in our immaculateness.\u201d <\/p>\n At this point, the narrative picks up pace. Glen begins to court Lucy, Pierre\u2019s mother dies, and Lucy decides that, despite it all, she wants to be near Pierre and comes to live with him and Isabel in the city, presenting herself as Pierre\u2019s cousin. Glen and Lucy\u2019s brother, Fred, attempt to remove her, and are thwarted, which leads Glen to challenge Pierre to a duel. Pierre kills both Glen and Fred, and ends up in jail. There, during a visit from Isabel and Lucy, Isabel reveals that she is Pierre\u2019s sister, the shock of which kills Lucy instantly. Isabel smuggles poison into the cell, and Pierre and Isabel both commit suicide. <\/p>\n The book has some strong points. The portrait of New York City is unnerving, a genuine descent into hell, a description strengthened by repeated allusions to Dante\u2019s Inferno throughout the novel. Mrs. Glendinning\u2019s obsequious minister, Mr. Falsgrave, is wonderfully drawn, with his \u201cwhite-browed and white-handed, and napkined immaculateness.\u201d As Delbanco points out, Melville provides depth to the story by allusions to Dante, and to \u201cEnceladus, the mutilated Titan child of incest doomed to an eternity of \u2018writhing from out of the imprisoning earth\u2019 as he struggles heavenward while locked in dirt and stone.\u201d Melville gets his in his licks at American religious sects: \u201cAs befits his name, Pierre imagines himself the rock of a new church; he wants to \u2018gospelize the world anew,\u2019 to tear it down an rebuild it, cleanse it and repopulate it,\u201d now that the purity of his home has been exposed as a hypocritical lie. He is a Hamlet, who alone discerns the difference between \u201cis\u201d and \u201cseems,\u201d and laments that he was born to put the world right. He is ultimately no Dante: \u201cin rushing off toward his new heaven he sinks into a hell of his own making, and unlike Dante, who is guided into and out of hell by his master poet Virgil, Pierre will not emerge wiser and stronger. In fact, he will not emerge at all.\u201d <\/p>\n Yet, Delbanco is right that the book makes for uncomfortable reading. He compares it to \u201cthe discomfort one feels in the presence of a brillian friend who, in the grip of some new passion, has gone \u2018over the top.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Herman Melville\u2019s Pierre (1852) was, to put it mildly, not warmly received by critics. One newspaper headlined its review with \u201cHERMAN MELVILLE CRAZY\u201d and another reviewer complained that Melville\u2019s fancy was diseased. Critics are divided over whether it is a grand failure or simply a failure. Updike caught the tone when he remarked that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"yoast_head":"\n
Melville was never strong for plots (ask any disappointed high school student who wades through hundreds of pages of Moby Dick to meet the whale), and Pierre is full of improbabilities, extremities of passion, alternate courses of action that every reader but none of the characters considers. <\/p>\n