history and or story?

Eexcuse this long post - it is about both readings

Both Renker and Naslund bring forth the other, domestic aspect so lacking in MD. Renker asserts: "Herman's process of writing was intimately predicated upon his domestic relations as to be inextricable" (59). She bases her claim both on historical evidence and on M's literary work. Naslund's "Ahab's wife" creates a fictional domestic life for M's fictional protagonist by making his wife the hero of a first person narration of her life, including her marriage to Ahab. Having read them together, made me think about story/history.

Renker - Did Herman Melville beat his wife? What was his domestic life like? Who cares?

Well, the Melville Society cares, to the point of blinding itself to quite substantial evidence.  Scholars and biographers researching this subject cared deeply. Melville's domestic life was difficult for him. He made the women and children, who filled this home, suffer. A causal relationship can be easily inferred, connecting H M's drinking, feats of aggression, his demands concerning the copying and proofing of his writing, to the mental and physical problems suffered by his wife, children and sisters. H M himself tormented with his writing. As his career declined, so did his health. This is interesting information from a sociological-historical point of view. But, what can it add to our reading of H M works?

1. We can think of Ahab as the tyrannical abusive side of H M's personality. Maybe this is why he isn't parodied. It doesn't add much, but it does add something, if we allow ourselves to associate Ahab with Herman. This may give more color to Ahab's tormenting frustration and rage.
2. Renker's approach is stronger, because she analyzes H M's poems and novels showing he had a very material, immediate connection between the paper and his work. There is a metonomy linking the blank page and the faces of women; and a connection between the production of paper and the production of literature. These are imbued with strong feelings: writing as seeding, striking the pen on the pages and striking another as an act of aggression, or striking out women from his novels. Stubbing, striking through a text by criticizing it.  Paper acts as a material site of blockage, "frustrating the author's desire to penetrate and to transcend material conditions" (67). It is interesting and adds force to Ahab's character and description of acts of aggression throughout MD. But, again, it leans on our imagination because otherwise there is no need for us to know that H M beat his wife. Renker's analysis of H M's poems, novels and essays is enough to make the point.

So, the question still stands.

Naslund – For a moment I got confused. After reading about H M's domestic life, reading these chapters from the novel, made me for a moment believe Ahab was a real life character, all mixed up in that of H M's life. And as in a documentary research, it seemed as if more and more details about these people's lives could be found out and made into a film or a book. Naslund uses chapter headings very similar to those of M's M D. She portrays the same details of the ship, and wharf; the same chowder, the crazy Elijah and his prophecy to Q and Ishmael. If I ask for more, and get it, will it be a documentary film or will it be fiction? The moment of confusion was short. But it made the rest of the reading very pleasurable.

In MD the narrator keeps shifting between types of narrative. Some resemble a dramatic enactment, illustrating the events described in a documentary film. At other times, it is as if we read a transcription of a ball game broadcast. Again and again the question of the narrator's credibility is raised by establishing and mocking it, and by directly addressing the issue of truth and fiction. "Spin your tale" asks Ahab of his fellow captain, another M D victim. "Spin you tale" – I need the exact facts.