The C.L.R. James Institute: Book Announcement: "Hunting Captain Ahab" by Clare Spark

The C.L.R. James Institute presents:

Hunting Captain Ahab:
Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival

Clare L. Spark

The Kent State University Press
May 2001, Hardcover - 744 pages; ISBN: 0873386744

Since the “Melville Revival” of the 1920s, Moby-Dick has become an undisputed classic of world literature, yet there is no agreement on what it means: was the author an ultraconservative, a centrist, or a left-wing radical? Or are these categories too static to describe an unresolved ambivalence or ambiguity that continues to characterize politics in this and other industrial democracies?

In the recent canon wars, wherein the literature created by “dead white males” has been challenged by non-whites and feminists, Moby-Dick is often cited as chief offender, with Melville described as an abusive husband and father. For some post60s anti-capitalist critics, Melville has become a symbol for an “essentially” imperialist, capitalist, patriarchal, ecocidal America, and his hero Captain Ahab “an anticipation” of twentieth-century totalitarian dictators. Such readings have displaced earlier interpretations, some of which viewed Melville as a radical democrat and anti-racist, and Ahab as a nineteenth-century reformer (radical puritan, Chartist, abolitionist, left Romantic artist, Promethean). Other (more conservative) readings interpreted Ahab as tragic hero, symbol of indomitable humanity, yet doomed to failure in either the search for truth or for amelioration of the human condition. Spark considers Ahab as both abolitionist (e.g., Charles Sumner) and modern artist (Melville himself), with the proviso that Ahab and Ishmael (the narrator) are sometimes at odds, sometimes confusingly blended.

Spark’s archival research in the papers of the leading Melville critics has led to discoveries that could transform Melville scholarship and modify the teaching of the politics of American literature:

a. Three of the key Melville critics, Henry Murray (a leader in academic psychology and personnel assessment for the OSS), Charles Olson (“father” of cultural pluralism and postmodernism), and Jay Leyda (photographer, film historian, and Stalinist), were skilled propagandists allied with the Roosevelt administration.

b. Their political and ideological commitments strongly influenced their renditions of Melville’s life and art, and they suppressed biographical materials that conflicted with their political allegiances.

c. The result was a witch-hunt directed against both “crazy” Melville and his monomaniacal character Captain Ahab, both autodidacts and images of The People. The repressed materials include Melville’s annotations to Milton’s Paradise Lost (suggesting that Melville identified with Milton’s Satan, and, like Milton himself in Melville’s reading, was a masked materialist eluding censors); family letters that would have scotched the rumors that Melville was a wife-beater; and a family letter that suggested Melville had a real-life natural half-sister corresponding to the character Isabel in his quasi-autobiographical novel Pierre. The latter is important because the New Dealers, in both their social democratic propaganda, and in their attempt to maintain civilian morale as world war loomed, were rehabilitating and idealizing the good fathers while circumscribing dissent. Melville’s “Hebraic” ethical universalism and constant interrogation of illegitimate authority (for instance the apparent exposure of his own father’s abandonment of an illegitimate daughter) was a threat to their objectives. Though a Protestant and generally a freethinker, Melville was frequently characterized by conservative critics as a Jew, the archetypal confidence-man, only pretending to be a principled moralist. During the post-war phase of the Melville Revival, it was necessary to reconstruct Melville as a "moderate man," preacher of "virtuous expediency"--precisely the figure who was the target of his most trenchant satire. This shift responded to the perceived need for a centrist ruling coalition that could unite elements of both the pre-war Left and Right (much as liberal Catholics had already done). Accordingly, leading Melvilleans decisively separated the author from Ahab's empiricism/romantic individualism and identified him with aristocratic Captain Vere (the character in "Billy Budd").

The story of the Melville Revival is intertwined with the history of ongoing anti-modern control of the humanities curriculum. Many of the scholars and critics who were supporting Mussolini and even Hitler during the mid-1930s, entered the literary establishment during and after the war. Definitions of “fascism” were adjusted accordingly. For some "moderates," Hitler was switched from anti-bourgeois, neoclassical defender of "community," to home-wrecking romantic/the autodidact as assassin. Ahab readings also shifted in a similar trajectory, beginning in the late 1930s.

Hunting Captain Ahab constitutes a major reassessment of Melville and his critical reception in America. Thanks to Clare Spark's in-depth archival research, the political dimensions are at last fully brought to light. The world of Melville scholarship will never be the same. (Roy Porter, author Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World)

Hunting Captain Ahab is a delicious concoction, an irresistible melange of Hannah Arendt, Kermit Vanderbilt, Kitty Kelley, Ronald Radosh-Joyce Milton, and A. S. Byatt. Usual and unusual suspects are tracked down, strip-searched, grilled and served up. FBI files, private filing cabinets, and great library archives are ransacked for our astonished delight. Who would have though that so many startling family comments on Melville remained unseen? Who would have thought those secretive, conspiratorial academics would have preserved so many incriminating papers? Anyone who writes on Melville must buy this plump plum pudding of a book, this vast long-considered trifle, this huge fruit-cake of certifiably weird fellow-travelling Melvilleans. Lord, I wish I had known some of them in the flesh. (Hershel Parker, Melville biographer and co-editor Northwestern-Newberry complete works of Herman Melville)

Clare Spark provides us with an intricate and exhaustive view of the politics of literature and of literary reputation. Without succumbing to simplistic "right-left" dichotomies, she demonstrates, through an analysis of the Melville Revival, how our literary icons are made and endlessly remade in the service of ideological, as well as esthetic, agendas. She depicts the long, struggle between the obsessions of sundry Melville scholars and the titanic obsessions of Melville himself (always, of course, at war with each other) with a singular originality of vision. "Hunting Captain Ahab", faithfully echoing Melville in its plenitude and bold intellectual counterpoint, will give contemporary Melville enthusiasts dozens, if not hundreds, of new themes to ponder and deliberate. (Norman J. Levitt, Rutgers University, author Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Science)

Salutations Clare Spark,

Erin Holman gave me your e-mail address because I wanted to tell you what a phenomenal book you have in Hunting Captain Ahab. I am the proofreader working for The Kent State University Press who is having the distinct pleasure of reading your book. As a freelancer, I see a variety of presentations. Your work offers the most readable, provocative, and informative book I have read for work or interest in many a day! An exciting addition to the world, indeed. Thank you.

Take care,
Toni Mortimer

From amazon.com reviews:
The Joy of Melville, January 22, 2002
Reviewer: Malcolm Magee from Lansing, MI USA

The reader will find reading Clare Spark's book on Melville an event to be remembered. While some in the literary establishment may balk at the conclusions those not vested in the outcome will find this book a joy to read. It is written in a manner that is enlightening to both novices and seasoned lovers of Melville. The book is sweeping in its detail, meticulous in its research and beautiful in its language.

"Hunting Captain Ahab" is of course about Melville, it is also about institutional power. This work poses a challenge to the literary establishment which they must either try to answer or ignore. Spark's extensive archival research provides us with a glimpse into the politics of literature and literary criticism. While other scholars have projected themselves or their political agendas upon Melville, Spark's Melville emerges as a fully human, complex and uncategorizable person. Melville scholarship with its varied, vested and complex agendas is also exposed. No agenda remains unchallenged.

Eventually someone will recategorize Melville, new agendas will replace the old, but until then this moving and beautifully written work will stand as a monument to freedom of thought in the pursuit of truth. I highly recommend this book.

The Pequod Project

Jim Murray, Director (make inquiries here)
Ralph Dumain, Librarian/Archivist & Webmaster

Uploaded 24 May 2001, revised 2 June 2001, 12 June 2001, 10 May 2002