In November of 1856, closely preceding the publication of what would be his final novel, The Confidence-Man, Herman Melville went on a trip. He was thirty-seven years old. Financed by his father-in-law Lemuel Shaw with funds advanced from his wife’s inheritance, this trip took Melville through Europe, across the Mediterranean to Egypt, and finally, to the Holy Land in Palestine.
The primary reason for the trip was to improve Melville’s health. In the decade prior, Melville had destroyed his physical and mental well-being by tortuously devoting himself to the publication of several unsuccessful novels. He suffered from rheumatism, sciatica, and a series of nervous diseases, all likely caused or aggravated by long days bent over a desk in delirious excitement and anguish. His family worried about him, and, in all likelihood, thought him a bit strange.
The expectation for a literary man upon returning from such a trip would be to publish his experiences as a magazine article, in letters to a newspaper, or as a series of lectures, all with the intention of later publishing the material as a book. Melville’s uncle, Peter Gansevoort, wondered in a letter once why he never did this, as it seemed to be a project that “would not make a requisition on his imagination,” which, considering what happened when Melville made requisitions on his imagination, could only seem to him a good thing.
Melville, of course, did not do this. While he did give two lectures adjacently related to his travels, they were unpopular, likely due to purposeful choices on Melville’s part. Instead, he waited twenty years before repurposing the material of his travel journals into the least popular of forms, an 18,000-line epic poem called Clarel, a Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. This, too, proved unsuccessful.
In December of 1866, Melville got a job at the New York Customs Office, where he worked for 19 years. During this time, he published several books of poetry, including the above, none of which recouped the costs of publication. After retiring, he published two final collections, each of which had only 25 copies printed.
I tell you all this to let you know what type of person you are dealing with when you read this website, which is haunted by Herman Melville’s ghost.
As a possible reincarnation of Herman Melville myself, there is a lot I can learn from the experiences of his life. I have made a close study of his biography in an attempt to avoid unconsciously emulating it too exactly. While there are certain pitfalls that I can’t avoid, being the way I am — most importantly, tortuously devoting myself to the publication of unsuccessful novels — I believe there are methods by which I can mitigate the disastrous effects of these activities, as well as temper my expectations for what is possible in life.
A problem that Herman Melville ran into, being the first Herman Melville, was that he didn’t realize that Herman Melvilles do not achieve literary success or appreciation within their lifetimes. This was a major source of frustration and anguish in Melville’s life, and one that I can easily avoid. I understand that there is no hope for me, and have set my expectations accordingly. I will not be upset when my novels sell less than a hundred copies. I will not be upset if they are reviewed by a single person who uses the opportunity to question my sanity. In fact, I would consider it a mark of favour if such a thing were to happen.
This, already, is a major boon to my well-being, but, also a major hit to my motivation and devotion. The belief that he could be recognized and successful, despite the knowledge that he likely wouldn’t be, is what spurred Melville through those dark and lonesome days spent looming over his manuscript. The fury with which he penned Moby-Dick — and to an even greater extent, Pierre — directed toward his critics, his haters, and all those who chose simply to ignore him, is what gives those books their life and energy. He sacrificed everything he had in order to produce some of the weirdest and wildest masterpieces of American literature, and it damn near killed him.
With my foreknowledge, it seems impossible for me to devote myself so wholeheartedly and self-sacrificingly toward such a goal, and it’s likely that the work will suffer for it. But what is best: for the work to suffer, or for the creator to suffer? This is the question that determines my fate, and I fear that I have no choice — weak-willed as I am, armed with the knowledge of my predecessor as I am — but to opt for the former.
Melville, during his publishing years, was constantly looking for financial stability. He always had a hope that his next book would prove successful, even as his books became stranger and more antisocial. It can almost seem like self-sabotage at times. The success of his more simplistic early novels, such as Typee, which succeeded based on the public’s fervour for tales of adventure in distant lands, seemed to put Melville off catering to their fancies again at all. Whenever he tried to follow a trend, he would end up twisting it in some way, just enough to cause the average reader to drop the book in disgust or apathy.
At a certain point, it seems that to be recognized by these people who had rejected him so fiercely in the past would feel like a mark of failure rather than success. As much as he felt the pressure to earn money for his family, the resentment and bitterness buried deep in Melville’s soul made it impossible for him to play the literary game, to compromise his work to please either the critical establishment or the larger populace.
Eventually, Melville settled for the security of a menial job. We have little knowledge of what Melville got up to during these years, or what he thought of his work. Lewis Mumford, in his 1929 biography of the man, imagines the latter half of his life as a peaceful retreat from the tumult of his early years, a chance to take a more leisurely approach to life and literature.1 That he read greatly is known, and that he was able to compose his later works without the pressure of money or fame is easy to assume. That he maintained his mix of jolly, lively irreverence and bitter moroseness is clear both from the works themselves, from his correspondence, and from descriptions by his family.
It is from this latter half of Melville’s life that I can perhaps learn the most.
I am currently twenty-eight years old. (Believe it or not, I’m no longer twenty-seven, etc.) Last year, I published my first novel, Only in Dreams, and last week, I finished some sort of draft of my second novel, Knights, Snails, & Plastic Boogie.
For all of 2022 and most of 2023, I didn’t have any sort of job at all. Outside of errands and household chores, I devoted myself entirely to writing. During those eighteen jobless months, I published 30 essays on this website, produced 20 episodes of my podcast, Balckwell’s Books, and completed the aforementioned publishing of Only In Dreams. All told, not a bad eighteen months. Unfortunately, I also didn’t make any money.
There is a limit to how much time a working-aged man can spend on wholly unprofitable ventures in this world, before he starts to feel the burden of utter uselessness. At first, it is gratifying to live a life free from the pecuniary arts, but one cannot keep such things at bay for long. The distractions one set out to avoid return as pseudo-distractions, as the idea that one ought to be distracted. It’s easy to convince one’s self when starting out that, eventually, working hard and doing one’s best will somehow lead to financial security, but as my predecessor and I learned, this is not always the case, and especially when it comes to literary pursuits.
I made a half-step last year by getting myself a less-than-part-time job, but with a new world looming ahead of me, it seems high time that I withdraw to my customs office. Perhaps I can find a customs office that helps the world in some way, but I may have to settle for one that merely helps my pockets grow a little less light.
But this retreat need not be discouraging. It can be freeing in its own right. Like Melville composing his poems by weekday candlelight or the balmy Sunday sun: patiently, without a publisher to update or a public to appease — I too can set myself to my task without guilt, without false hope, and with the knowledge that my worldly needs are taken care of. There will be pasta in the pot; there will be potatoes in the pan; there will be pitas on the plate! With stomach full and with pockets lined, there will be nothing between me and the Real work that lies waiting in my study.
Related Essays:
- “One must imagine Herman happy.” ↩︎
Balckwell Rising! 
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