Did you hear of the _______?

Did you hear of the _______? by Scott Norsworthy

A shared 5-gram in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" and Herman Melville's "The Lightning-Rod Man"

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Remaking OREGON, HO! in prose and dialogue

Remaking "Oregon, Ho!" in prose and dialogue by Scott Norsworthy

DRAGOONED: Writing, talking, and rewriting like Herman Melville in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (1851-1853). Number 9.

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Amigo Mio! #8 in my open investigation, DRAGOONED: Writing, talking, and rewriting like Herman Melville in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (1851-1853)

Amigo mio! by Scott Norsworthy

Didn't you desert me on the eve of a snowstorm?

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Related posts on Substack

• DRAGOONED #1: All I want is a good listener
  https://melvilliana.substack.com/p/all-i-want-is-a-good-listener

• DRAGOONED #2: Tokens of Ghostwriting
  https://melvilliana.substack.com/p/tokens-of-ghostwriting

• DRAGOONED #3: As a sailor might say
  https://melvilliana.substack.com/p/as-a-sailor-might-say

• DRAGOONED #4: Wolf howling, music and romance
  https://melvilliana.substack.com/p/wolf-howling-music-and-romance

• DRAGOONED #5: Home-feelings, philosophy, and the magic of feminine logic
  https://melvilliana.substack.com/p/home-feelings-philosophy-and-the

• DRAGOONED #6: Literature on the Little Arkansas
  https://melvilliana.substack.com/p/literature-on-the-little-arkansas

• DRAGOONED #7: After Supper
  https://melvilliana.substack.com/p/after-supper

• DRAGOONED #7a Grassy glades oh!
  https://melvilliana.substack.com/p/grassy-glades-oh

• DRAGOONED #8: Amigo Mio!
  https://melvilliana.substack.com/p/amigo-mio 

• DRAGOONED #9: Re-making Oregon, Ho! in prose and dialogue
  https://melvilliana.substack.com/p/remaking-oregon-ho-in-prose-and-dialogue

Grassy glades, oh!

Grassy glades, oh! by Scott Norsworthy

a shared trigram in MOBY-DICK and "Scenes Beyond the Western Border"

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After-supper dialogue with "I. F." = IMAGINARY FRIEND

After supper by Scott Norsworthy

DRAGOONED: Writing, talking, and rewriting like Herman Melville in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (1851-1853). Number 7.

Read on Substack

 

Literature on the Little Arkansas

Literature on the Little Arkansas by Scott Norsworthy

DRAGOONED: Writing, talking, and rewriting like Herman Melville in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (1851-1853). Number 6.

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The little white attic : Moby-Dick: “like a true child of fire, I breathe i...

The little white attic : Moby-Dick: “like a true child of fire, I breathe i...: 1/ Moby-Dick is full of symbolism. I must thank Tom of Wuthering Expectations for pointing out that Ishmael is identified with water, and ...

Home-feelings, philosophy, and the magic of feminine logic

 

Home-feelings, philosophy, and the magic of feminine logic on and off the prairie by Scott Norsworthy

DRAGOONED: Writing, talking, and rewriting like Herman Melville in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (1851-1853) Number 5.

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Wolf howling, music and romance

Wolf howling, music and romance by Scott Norsworthy

DRAGOONED: Writing, talking, and rewriting like Herman Melville in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (1851-1853). No. 4.

Read on Substack

 

"Melville the Scrivener" by Stanley Edgar Hyman

"Melville the Scrivener" by Stanley Edgar Hyman: By Stanley Edgar Hyman, Published on 05/08/17

ISRAEL POTTER reviewed in the New York TIMES

Bonhomme Richard and Serapis
via The New York Public Library Digital Collections

The book version of Herman Melville's Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile received an unusually long and lovely review in the New York Times on April 30, 1855, published there with other "Notices of New Books." Before now, only a snippet of this glowing notice was readily available to Melville fans and scholars, as briefly quoted by Jay Leyda in the good old Melville Log (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951) Volume 2, at page 501: 

"... Melville often, with a few words, selected with marvelous aptness, gives us a finer and more life-like description than most men create out of long chapters and thick books ..."

Leyda's short excerpt, dated April 30, 1855 in the Melville Log, derives from an otherwise unidentified newspaper clipping saved in Albany by Herman's cousin "Kate" and now in the Gansevoort-Lansing collection of the New York Public Library. Located I would guess in Catherine Gansevoort Lansing's "Scrapbook of clippings about Herman Melville and other literary men."

This long-lost item is not collected or mentioned in Herman Melville: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995; paperback 2009). Transcribed in full below from the New York Daily Times of April 30, 1855.

New York Daily Times - April 30, 1855
via genealogybank.com

ISRAEL POTTER—HIS FIFTY YEARS OF EXILE.

By Herman Melville. New-York: G. P. PUTNAM & CO.

Publishing a book of this sort in the successive numbers of a monthly, is like carrying to one a rose leaf by leaf—where fragrance in such small installments can scarcely be appreciated. These Chapters of Mr. POTTER's experience, written down by the facile pen of MELVILLE, were among the chief attractions of Putnam's Monthly during the last year, but we were by no means impressed so pleasantly with them while they were the fragments of a serial, as now that the severed petals are regathered upon their proper stem, and bound handsomely, as it were, in a fitting sepal. It is a book to begin reading at night, when work is done, and to finish the next night. The meditations on it during the intervening day are pleasant. and the night's dreams will wander over a new track.

Israel Potter was a Yankee boy, who loved too young and ran away from his father because the old gentleman headed him off from the intended marriage. He was a private, and an effective one, at Bunker's Hill; and afterwards, while on board a brigantine appointed to intercept supplies going to the British quarters in Boston, is captured and carried to England. Then follow crowds of incidents, escapes from the hulks and from guard-rooms, wanderings over the land, and driftings hither and thither, new arrests and new escapes. He gets into all sorts of positions in his desire to escape detection in the enemy's country. He is lackey to mean men, the confidant of great ones, and at one time private gardener to the King, whom he called "Mister," and respectfully addressed as "Sir." These interviews of his with famous men furnish opportunities for episodes that are the finest portions of the book. The narration of his imprisonment in the private room of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN in Paris, gives us some pages of wholesome and homsespun philosophy not unlike or unworthy of Poor RICHARD. Another scene introduces us to the famous author of the Diversions of Parley.

Another chapter shows us old ETHAN TICONDEROGA ALLEN, as he bore it to be manacled and insulted by cowardly captors. Israel, by the fortunes of war, was a long time under the command of that buccaneering hero and American Naval officer PAUL JONES, and was in the Bonhomme Richard when he fought the great battle with the Serapis. This deadly encounter is sketched briefly, and with few lines. But MELVILLE often, with a few words, selected with marvelous aptness, gives us a finer and more life-like description than most men create out of long chapters and thick books; as one with a single crayon who knows how to handle it, sketches a better portrait than many dainty painters make out of their collection of finest colors, and after very tedious sittings.

The author is so brief about the forty years that roll over and almost crush the inborn Yankee cheerfulness out of his hero, that we wonder whether he really lacked the MSS. that contained the outlines of his story while he was sinking from the damp basement to the mouldy cellar, and from that to the muddy sewer, or whether the engagement with the publisher was "for only so many pages," of which the heroic took the lion's share. Then it grieved us at first that the tired old man could not have found one friend at least in the Housatonic country to sit down and chat with as his sun was sinking. But we remember that out of the magazines and in the world, wanderers, after fifty years of exile, seldom find a warm hearth or a familiar face to cheer them. So we must take it out in grieving that it is so, or be reconciled to authors that so make it.

The New York Times was then edited by co-founder Henry J. Raymond.

Tokens of ghostwriting

Now on Substack, just in time for Halloween! 👻✍

Tokens of ghostwriting by Scott Norsworthy

Writing, talking, and rewriting like Herman Melville in "Scenes Beyond the Western Border" (1851-1853). Chapter 2.

Read on Substack

Diving and soaring

Photo by Prasad Chatterji

"And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces."  -- Moby-Dick, The Try-Works.

Nobby Dick

via The New York Public Library Digital Collections

Derived from nob meaning "nobleman" or other "superior sort of person," the adjective nobby means "stylish; elegant; swell" according to Webster.

An early announcement of Herman Melville's death in the Chicago Tribune mistakenly referred to him as the author of "Nobby Dick," prompting this sarcastic comment in the New York Sun:

New York Sun - October 5, 1891

The Chicago Tribune editorially informs its readers that the late HERMAN MELVILLE was the author of the charming and well-known romance, "Nobby Dick." This novelette, as we understand, has long enjoyed a deserved popularity in Chicago's highest literary circles. The announcement of the authorship of "Nobby Dick" will clear up what has been a perplexing mystery to thousands of cultivated minds.  --New York Sun, October 5, 1891

09 Oct 1891, Fri Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) Newspapers.com

In reply the Chicago editor blamed the youth of two employees, the printer and proofreader:

The error pointed out by our fastidious and carping contemporary was due to the fact that THE TRIBUNE's proofreader probably belongs to that unfortunate younger generation which has never reveled in the adventures of "Moby Dick and the White Whale," and consequently was satisfied to leave it "Nobby Dick," as the printer, also of the younger generation, insisted upon having it.  -- Chicago Tribune, October 9, 1891

Fictional insurrection reported on January 6, 1852

via The New York Public Library Digital Collections

To entertain readers and promote Herman Melville's latest book, many American newspapers in 1851-2 reprinted all or part of Moby-Dick chapter 61, Stubb Kills a Whale. The long review of Moby-Dick in the New York Daily Tribune (November 22, 1851) quoted chapter 61 in full under the subheading "KILLING A WHALE." Under the heading "Whale Killing," the same excerpt appeared in the New York Evening Post on November 29, 1851. 

The New York Evening Post version featured an editorial preface that (with minor variations) was regularly copied in subsequent newspaper reprintings, for example the one in the Troy Budget on December 6, 1851: 

"Mr. Herman Melville, in his new sea-story, describes a marvellous chase by a whaling monomaniac after the "Moby Dick," the fabulous leviathan of the sailors, during which he probably lets us into the realities of actual whaling as minutely and faithfully as any sea-author has ever done. We shall give a couple of passages, hoping they will put the reader on the look out for the book itself...."

Grand River Times - January 6, 1852
via GenealogyBank

In Grand Haven, Michigan the Grand River Times adopted the same editorial preface and title "Whale Killing" in reprinting chapter 61 of Moby-Dick. The excerpt with Melville's narrative of a deadly whale insurrection appeared in the Grand River Times on January 6, 1852, one hundred seventy years ago today.

Grand River Times - January 6, 1852

It was obvious now that the whale had at length become aware of his pursuers.-- All silence or cautiousness was, therefore, no longer of use. Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into play. And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered on his crew to the assault. 

Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his jeopardy, he was going "head out;" that part obliquely projecting from the mad yeast which he brewed.  

Obviously this excerpt does not describe the violent White Whale insurrection, which happens later. For the rest of the story, grab your favorite edition of Moby-Dick and read along....it's that time again! 

Pseudo-Melville and Fake-Fanon, Prophets of Woke Utopia

As a few shrewd commentators have pointed out, mostly to crickets, Frantz Fanon never gave the handy definition of cognitive dissonance that has been widely attributed to him since 2013 or so, in print as well as myriad texts and memes on social media. One of the weightier endorsements of Fake Fanon to date is this seemingly authoritative quotation in War on Terror and American Film by Dr Terence McSweeny:

Franz Fanon in Black Skin, White Mask (1967) stated,

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against this belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief. (Fanon 1967: 194). 

--Introduction, War on Terror and American Film: 9/11 Frames Per Second (Edinburgh University Press, 2014, 2016).

McSweeney cites a London edition of Fanon's 1952 book Peau noire, masques blancs, published by Pluto Press. Evidently this is the 1986 reissue of the Charles Lam Markmann translation, first published in 1967 by Grove Press. Another edition by Grove Press appeared in 2008, with a new translation from the French by Richard Philcox. 

Deployers of deep-fake Fanon ask us to believe that Frantz Fanon neatly defined the term cognitive dissonance five years before Leon Festinger first developed the idea in A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. 

https://archive.org/details/FestingerLeonATheoryOfCognitiveDissonance1968StanfordUniversityPress

The oft-quoted words on cognitive dissonance may indeed derive from an academic footnote or gloss on Fanon, but they are not Fanon's. Online, the earliest instance I have been able to find appears in a 2008 Huffpost article by Pam Atherton titled Why Some Smart Women Think Palin is a Good Choice. Trying to understand the basis of other people's delusions, Atherton consulted her therapist-friend who diagnosed the problem as cognitive dissonance. As reported by Atherton, Betti Hoeppner gave the now familiar definition with no trouble and no credit to Frantz Fanon:

In the course of our conversation she explained why. She told me that sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.   

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-some-smart-women-thin_b_137416

Terence McSweeney knows who wrote the book on this particular subject, literally, and says so. But somehow he can't help himself. The good Doctor footnotes Festinger, and forges ahead with Fanon anyhow. Evidently people can maintain invalid beliefs in spite of direct and unequivocal evidence to the contrary. Unostentatiously as possible, a certain genius named "Michael U." has identified the technical term for that kind of thing:

"... the continued belief that this quote is from Frantz Fanon is a prime example of cognitive dissonance."  

http://underthetree63.blogspot.com/2013/03/revisiting-frantz-farnon.html

To be sure, Black Skin, White Masks exhibits lots of cognitive dissonance, as observed by Constancio Nakuma without reference to the precise definition later attributed to Fanon. 

Nakuma, Constancio. “COGNITIVE DISSONANCE REDUCTION STRATEGIES BY BLACK INTELLECTUALS IN THE DIASPORA: A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC EXPLORATION OF NEGRITUDE AND AFROCENTRISM.” CLA Journal 43, no. 2 (1999): 167–180 at 169. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44323286.

Fanon recorded lived experiences of extreme psychic discomfort including the kind of pain experts would later call dissonance. Experts whom Fanon engaged with most intensely in 1952 were other psychoanalysts, for example Anna Freud on the ego as defence mechanism, Alfred Adler on Understanding human nature, and Octave Mannoni on the psychology of colonization. Scattered depictions of real-life racism in Black Skin, White Masks seem disturbing enough, but the worst monsters of racism Fanon wrestles with are essentially projections and fantasies. Reading Fanon today feels like being trapped inside the nightmare of a lunatic, where the soundtrack is an endless audio loop of only Doors songs. Even so, Fanon manages to break on through at the end, miraculously, in realizing 

"I am not a prisoner of history."

But how to account for the birth and surging popularity of Fake Fanon? In alphabetized book indexes and bibliographies the surname Festinger follows Fanon, immediately in some cases. Sometime after the turbulent 1960's and early 1970's, perhaps, on a quiet university campus in the blissful calm of a graduate student's library carrel, a sleepy research assistant may have mistakenly tracked a textbook paraphrase of cognitive dissonance to Fanon instead of the name just below Fanon. Otherwise it's hard to say exactly how or where the mistaken attribution first occurred. 

The rapid proliferation of pseudo-Fanon in the internet age resembles the worldwide re-assignment of Rev. Henry Melvill's fine image of moral accountability as a network of "sympathetic threads" and "fibres" to Herman Melville. As with pseudo-Melville, pseudo-Fanon peculiarly suits the advancement of leftist political agendas. In the service of politicians and academic activists, both pseudo-Melville and Fake-Fanon have been usefully employed as prophets of Woke utopia. 

In print, Hillary Clinton called on pseudo-Melville to establish the collectivist theme of her blockbuster 1996 book It Takes a Village. Reviewed most memorably by P. J. O'Rourke in It takes a village idiot. The Senator from New York again flaunted her false attribution to the "great American author Herman Melville" in a 2003 editorial for the Ithaca Journal, urging that communal education pursue "equity" along with "excellence." In case you were wondering, the phony Melville quote persists in the 10th anniversary edition of It Takes a Village.

We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.
HERMAN MELVILLE  

-- Hillary Rodham Clinton, It Takes a Village (Simon & Schuster, 2006). 

Hillary's husband blithely ascribed the "sympathetic fibers" quote to Herman Melville at the 1997 Memorial Service for Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers. Then-President Clinton misappropriated Melville for the purpose of honoring Shanker as a teacher and social justice advocate, while eliding Shanker's

"lifelong hatred of Soviet-style communism."  --Jack Schierenbeck, Class struggles: The UFT story 

Here in Minnesota, our once-beloved prairie moralist and Moby-Dick hater Garrison Keillor (before he got canned by MPR) loved to spout pseudo-Melville, as he did in Good Poems for Hard Times (Penguin Books, 2006). 

• https://books.google.com/books?id=9DteqBjjvLIC&pg=PT378&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

Minnesota middle-schoolers probably don't get to read Typee or Redburn, but twenty years ago some of them got spoon-fed pseudo-Melville as part of their indoctrination in utopian ideology and ethics.

16 May 2001, Wed St. Cloud Times (Saint Cloud, Minnesota) Newspapers.com

"At North Junior High, we try to remember what Herman Melville said: 'We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads.' Let us all commit to invest in a common future and not just in our private affluence." -- Patricia Welter, St. Cloud Times, May 16, 2001.

 Pat Welter later co-founded Partner For Student Success or PFSS, largely devoted to data collection and the promotion of Social-Emotional Learning and other dubious, usually harmful ideologies. 

https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames

Newspapers in Education - Pseudo-Melville enters the NIE program

Early in the present century, corporate media enlisted pseudo-Melville to help teachers promote the virtues of "diversity" and social "harmony" in a lesson on The Building Blocks of Character Education. Connecticut kids had to explain in writing why Herman Melville, in reality the type of guy who would just say NO! in Thunder, would agree with establishment dictates to "live in harmony." The stated focus of this particular activity, the fourth of ten in the series on character-building, was "Acceptance."

In a well-organized paragraph, discuss the following quote by Herman Melville: "We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results." Explain why Melville would agree that by learning about differences, we allow ourselves to appreciate diversity and begin to live in harmony by respecting the views of others. Stamford CT Daily Advocate - December 3, 2001 via genealogybank.com

For a more recent example of reality-denial in the service of radical activism, look at the celebration of pseudo-Melville by the Interaction Institute for Social Change. 

• https://interactioninstitute.org/why-linking-matters-network-effects-and-other-benefits/

IISC uses pseudo-Melville to promote Social Justice and Racial Equity, noble-sounding words that mask a totalitarian project of wrecking vital public services and institutions in order to control them, and people they normally benefit. As James Lindsay explains on New Discourses, the mundane aim of such projects is

a managed state of racial equity that will eventually produce a post-racial utopia in which “racial justice” finally exists. The revolution and administered (socialist, “equity”) state will be led by a Dictatorship of the Antiracists (DOA?), comprised of awakened (Woke) Critical Race Theorists with the right critical consciousness of race. 

-- Critical Race Theory's Dictatorship of the Antiracists.  

Pseudo-Melville and Fake-Fanon have been adopted as prophets in the new religion of Wokeness. The repurposed scriptures of these prophets serve to implant and cultivate the ethos of communitarian supermorality. For strong "reasons why a code of communitarian supermorality is unlikely to work," see the extended paraphrase of John Mackie by Richard A. Posner in The Problems of Jurisprudence (Harvard University Press, 1990) pages 416-418.  In practice, such utopian ideals require "high levels of coercion" to maintain, resulting in all kinds of wickedness and abuse. In education, the praxis of critical theory has methodically enabled the psychological and sexual abuse of children in schools run by Woke teachers and administrators, as shown by James Lindsay on New Discourses.

Along with American schools, groomers have also hijacked the "ETHICS" department at Boy Scouts of America. Fake-Fanon is this day being employed there in the worst conceivable way, as an approved text designed to create doubt about commonly understood standards of ethical behavior. 

https://troopleader.scouting.org/information-ethics/

Prominently introduced with "Troop Leader Resources," fake-Fanon specifically helps to teach kids "The Value of Ethical Controversies":

"there are two sides to most questions and that the gray area between right and wrong is sometimes difficult to define."

In some cases, the theory of cognitive dissonance according to Festinger required evaluating the factual basis of "core beliefs" in order to distinguish valid beliefs from invalid ones. Granted, that distinction has seemed less important to later analysts who tend to emphasize the supposed discomfort or dissonance produced by conflicting ideas, regardless of their empirical merit. Human psychology is complicated, after all. This aint the Boy Scouts. Wait, this IS the Boy Scouts. Here we are, almost in 2022, and Woke Troop Leaders at Boy Scouts of America can't tell right from wrong, or pretend they can't, and make a virtue of teaching ethical indeterminacy to other people's children. And their best authority for this exercise in moral relativism is Fake-Frantz-Fanon. Reality check: confusing kids with lessons about "gray areas between right and wrong" is a very bad practice, conducive to further abuse. 

More Fake-Fanon

Below are more examples of Fake-Fanon enlisted in Woke promotions of communitarian supermorality.  

• Janay Richmond, Director of Marketing and Membership for the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP):
  
  I can’t help but think about the work of Leon Festinger on cognitive dissonance and psychiatrist, philosopher and revolutionist Frantz Fanon’s famous statement referencing this theory:

"Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with information that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that does not fit in with the core belief."

We may not go about our daily lives thinking of the term “cognitive dissonance,” but we’ve all seen this theory materialized. We’ve seen presidential poll numbers that don’t change regardless of the policies some candidates bring forth. We’ve seen studies in newspapers or sometimes comical takes of the data on television proving that people will agree or disagree with the same policy based merely upon whose idea they believe it is. We can probably also think of instances of it in our own communities and within the work we do. For example, one of our nonprofit members recently talked to me about this theory and how cognitive dissonance is a major obstacle in their work for economic equity.

-- Keeping an Open Mind about the Education Reform Debate, September 23, 2015.

• Daisy Auger-Dominguez, "human capital executive" and Chief People Officer at VICE Media Group. 

"And in a tribute to my grandmother’s defiance of cultural norms, I have built a career reshaping workplace cultures through equity and inclusion." Fake-Fanon supplies an imposing epigraph for this 2017 Call for Courage in the Workplace by Daisy Auger-Dominguez.

https://www.daisyauger-dominguez.com/perspectives/2019/3/20/a-call-for-courage-in-the-workplace

"Daisy is an advisor to startups and social impact organizations, and serves on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood Federation of America as Vice-Chair, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation as Chair of the Governance Committee, St. Ann’s Warehouse, and on the advisory board of Facing History and Ourselves." https://www.daisyauger-dominguez.com/about-daisy

Will any prominent crusader for social justice ever disavow Fake-Fanon? Doubtful, considering the enduring popularity of pseudo-Melville. 

"ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibres connect you with your fellow-men...."
The Rev. Henry Melvill, 1855 sermon on Partaking in Other Men's Sins

That mistaken attribution persists--on high authority, since Hillary and Bill Clinton both put the words of Anglican preacher Henry Melvill in Herman Melville's mouth. The Truth is out there now, readily accessible for more than a decade thanks to Melvilliana and Google. For some reason though, many people are unable to discard their invalid belief that the author of Moby-Dick or The Whale prophesied the coming utopia of intricately networked Antiracists.

... they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.

What's that called again?

Related posts

• 2 + 2 = 4, Melville's anti-communist math
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2021/08/2-2-4-melvilles-anti-communist-math.html

• the finest thing Herman Melville never said
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2011/09/finest-thing-herman-melville-never-said.html

Calling card

 Herman Melville's calling card, this one left for his uncle Herman Gansevoort...

Calling card of Herman Melville via NYPL Digital Collections

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Calling card of Herman Melville" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1840 - 1859. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/65c170e0-4908-0137-b6a1-0733c8883f81

Can you make it rain harder?

"... it was like a scene from Moby-Dick."

--Bruce Rogers on Prince at the Halftime of Super Bowl XLI

Author of travel romances

From The World's Progress: a Dictionary of Dates (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1861):




NATION.          NAME AND PROFESSION                          BORN.          DIED.
Amer.      Melville, Herman, author of travel-romances . . . . . 1819 ----------

Declaration of Independence makes a difference

It rained on the Fourth of July in 1836, but the patriotic citizens of Albany, New York "celebrated with an ardor which nothing could dampen" (Albany Argus, July 8, 1836). Festivities back then included traditional readings of the Declaration of Independence. At the Methodist church on Pearl Street, William Hun Fondey recited the Declaration "in an appropriate and effective manner." At the Second Presbyterian church, Gansevoort Melville, age 20, showed off his oratorical prowess for the Albany Young Men's Association.

... The day was also observed by the Young Mens' Association in this city. The exercises were in the Second Presbyterian church. The Declaration of Independence was read, and well read, by Mr. G. MELVILLE. The oration which we learn was a production creditable as well to the author as to the choice of the Association, was pronounced by JOHN DAVIS, esq. The members were out in great numbers with their badges and banner, and of themselves formed a large procession, exclusive of its citizens, with whom the Association continues to be, as it deserves, a favorite as it is a flourishing and valuable institution. --Albany Argus, July 8, 1836; found at GenealogyBank

Writing in 1849, Gansevoort's brother Herman Melville imagined the literary freedom Shakespeare might have enjoyed as a great American truth-teller, asserting that "the Declaration of Independence makes a difference."

For I hold it a verity, that even Shakespeare, was not a frank man to the uttermost. And, indeed, who in this intolerant Universe is, or can be? But the Declaration of Independence makes a difference. --letter to Evert A. Duyckinck, March 3, 1849

Citation:

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "1846-1849" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed July 4, 2020. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/df49f430-16c2-0133-5bcc-58d385a7bbd0

This liberating power in the Declaration of Independence would somehow give Melville the creative freedom he needed to write Moby-Dick (1851).

President Trump in his important July 3rd 2020 speech at Mount Rushmore rightly honored the "founding ideals" proclaimed and symbolized by the Declaration of Independence.

We will proclaim the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, and we will never surrender the spirit and the courage and the cause of July 4th, 1776. 

Upon this ground, we will stand firm and unwavering. In the face of lies meant to divide us, demoralize us, and diminish us, we will show that the story of America unites us, inspires us, includes us all, and makes everyone free. 

We must demand that our children are taught once again to see America as did Reverend Martin Luther King, when he said that the Founders had signed “a promissory note” to every future generation. Dr. King saw that the mission of justice required us to fully embrace our founding ideals. Those ideals are so important to us — the founding ideals. He called on his fellow citizens not to rip down their heritage, but to live up to their heritage. (Applause.)

Above all, our children, from every community, must be taught that to be American is to inherit the spirit of the most adventurous and confident people ever to walk the face of the Earth. 

Americans are the people who pursued our Manifest Destiny across the ocean, into the uncharted wilderness, over the tallest mountains, and then into the skies and even into the stars. 

We are the country of Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Frederick Douglass. We are the land of Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill Cody. (Applause.) We are the nation that gave rise to the Wright Brothers, the Tuskegee Airmen — (applause) — Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Jesse Owens, George Patton — General George Patton — the great Louie Armstrong, Alan Shepard, Elvis Presley, and Mohammad Ali. (Applause.) And only America could have produced them all. (Applause.) No other place. 

-- Remarks by President Trump

<https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-south-dakotas-2020-mount-rushmore-fireworks-celebration-keystone-south-dakota/>

Somewhere Trump also exalted Mark Twain as the preeminent American story-teller. Wrongly there, as any real Melville aficionado can tell you. Nevertheless, the author of Israel Potter (originally presented in Putnam's magazine as A Fourth of July Story) would have felt the fitness of tributes to western legends like Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill Cody. According to Melville, "the Western spirit is, or will yet be (for not other is, or can be) the true American one."

Israel Potter, magazine version

Israel Potter, book version

"Though born in New England, he exhibited no trace of her character. He was frank, bluff, companionable as a Pagan, convivial, a Roman, hearty as a harvest. His spirit was essentially Western; and herein is his peculiar Americanism; for the Western spirit is, or will yet be (for no other is, or can be), the true American one."  --Ethan Allen as described in Herman Melville's Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1854-5)

Here's hoping the proposed National Garden of American Heroes will make room for a statue honoring the author of Moby-Dick and Israel Potter, The Confidence-Man and Clarel. Put him next to Buffalo Bill, or Louis Armstrong. 

via Library of Congress

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