Do I need a reason?
I started this blog to preserve my reading experience of this marvelous baffling book. Hopefully, I will come into contact with others that have been affected by the reading experience as well. "Nicholas" from Goodreads called Pierre a "pro to-modernist mindfuck unlike anything else in the 19th Century canon." How can I turn that away? I agree wholeheartedly. But this book is worth returning to and delving deeper, or peeling away another layer of onionskin to get at the enigmatic core of the novel, if there be one. Kraken's dive deeper!
For this reading foray, I am using the Northwestern Newberry edition along with Reading Melville's Pierre (Hershel Parker & Brian Higgins) as my supplementary material. I also will be rereading Henry Murray's introduction to the 1945 Hendrick's House edition of Pierre; or the Ambiguities (since it made such a profound impression on young Jack Kerouac in 1951). I think it's where Kerouac learned the word "multitudinous!" I kid.
I contacted Hershel Parker about my infatuation with Pierre. He writes back: "PIERRE will do that to you. In Melville's Biography I describe reading it over Xmas 1959 in absolute awe, however bewildered I was. It's like reading Absalom, Absalom! PIERRE does this to you."
Onward, ho!
I started this blog to preserve my reading experience of this marvelous baffling book. Hopefully, I will come into contact with others that have been affected by the reading experience as well. "Nicholas" from Goodreads called Pierre a "pro to-modernist mindfuck unlike anything else in the 19th Century canon." How can I turn that away? I agree wholeheartedly. But this book is worth returning to and delving deeper, or peeling away another layer of onionskin to get at the enigmatic core of the novel, if there be one. Kraken's dive deeper!
For this reading foray, I am using the Northwestern Newberry edition along with Reading Melville's Pierre (Hershel Parker & Brian Higgins) as my supplementary material. I also will be rereading Henry Murray's introduction to the 1945 Hendrick's House edition of Pierre; or the Ambiguities (since it made such a profound impression on young Jack Kerouac in 1951). I think it's where Kerouac learned the word "multitudinous!" I kid.
I contacted Hershel Parker about my infatuation with Pierre. He writes back: "PIERRE will do that to you. In Melville's Biography I describe reading it over Xmas 1959 in absolute awe, however bewildered I was. It's like reading Absalom, Absalom! PIERRE does this to you."
Onward, ho!
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