Avast there me hearties, I spy a boring book!
I have always been a fan of Melville, and I have defended the length of Moby Dick and intervening chapters on the art of: harpoon making, ship building, rope coiling, and seating arrangements in a whaling-boat against the barbs of the bored. But MY GOD! PIERRE IS SO UNHOLY BORING! I have never encountered a book about whose characters I care so little, can identify with so poorly, and have a malignant hatred for. This book is 363 pages of 180 proof distilled literary torture.
Who the hell marries his sister in order to salvage an ideal of his father (this ideal already having been shattered when he found out about the events that lead to his having to marry his sister)? Who would keep from his mother his father's infamy by making her only son into someone she deems dead to her; ESPECIALLY WHEN THE INFAMY WAS BEFORE SHE MARRIED HIM? I mean, seriously folks, this wandering adultery was perfectly acceptable in bachelor men (just not in women) in the 19th century. In fact, a woman was supposed to waste away under the weight of her infamy while the guys didn’t have to worry at all (oooh and we get a perfect example of wasting away under the burden of infamy in Della or Nellie or whatever the fuck that stupid girl’s name is – her baby dies, her parents disown her, and the adulterer ignores her). This, in fact, sounds a lot like one of the after-school specials that I had to watch in health class in high-school about the girl who got pregnant as a teenager (done with shamefully sculpted 80’s hair). I distinctly remember a scene where she runs away from home, ends up living on a mattress with her boyfriend in some rundown shack of a motel, carts her baby around and has a mad screaming fit on her fetid mattress when she finds out that she can’t go to the prom. These movies always had innocuous titles like “Mary’s Mistake” or “A Serious Situation”. It’s moments like these that make me look back on high school as a brief brainwashing process punctuated many moments of incredible oddness. Thank god for friends and gossip, or we would all have turned out completely insane.
I'm hoping that it is simply the lag of 150 or so years that makes this book less scandalous and more ridiculous, or I may have to rethink my position on Melville. He should have stuck to the ocean.
Who the hell marries his sister in order to salvage an ideal of his father (this ideal already having been shattered when he found out about the events that lead to his having to marry his sister)? Who would keep from his mother his father's infamy by making her only son into someone she deems dead to her; ESPECIALLY WHEN THE INFAMY WAS BEFORE SHE MARRIED HIM? I mean, seriously folks, this wandering adultery was perfectly acceptable in bachelor men (just not in women) in the 19th century. In fact, a woman was supposed to waste away under the weight of her infamy while the guys didn’t have to worry at all (oooh and we get a perfect example of wasting away under the burden of infamy in Della or Nellie or whatever the fuck that stupid girl’s name is – her baby dies, her parents disown her, and the adulterer ignores her). This, in fact, sounds a lot like one of the after-school specials that I had to watch in health class in high-school about the girl who got pregnant as a teenager (done with shamefully sculpted 80’s hair). I distinctly remember a scene where she runs away from home, ends up living on a mattress with her boyfriend in some rundown shack of a motel, carts her baby around and has a mad screaming fit on her fetid mattress when she finds out that she can’t go to the prom. These movies always had innocuous titles like “Mary’s Mistake” or “A Serious Situation”. It’s moments like these that make me look back on high school as a brief brainwashing process punctuated many moments of incredible oddness. Thank god for friends and gossip, or we would all have turned out completely insane.
I'm hoping that it is simply the lag of 150 or so years that makes this book less scandalous and more ridiculous, or I may have to rethink my position on Melville. He should have stuck to the ocean.
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