Talk:Pierre; or, The Ambiguities

This entry suggests that pierre was the last "conventional" novel. But what about Israel Potter? I think the whole line should be reworked. OrangeYouGlad 04:08, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * After ten years this response will have little use, but you are right, and I have some other objections as well: Pierre itself is even less of a conventional novel than IP is, and the lead of an article on a novel should concentrate on that novel and is no place to describe the author's further literary career. If any contextualizing is necessary at all, which for this particular work seems indeed reasonable, it is the preceding career that led up to Pierre that should be touched upon rather than what happened after Pierre had already been written. MackyBeth (talk) 09:36, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Kraken Edition
It bears mentioning that there is a shorter "Kraken Edition" (restored in 1995), which is purported to be what Melville had originally intended to publish. Upon reviewing the manuscript, his publishers allegedly forced him to write some additional material; this was most likely the sub-plot regarding Pierre's failed attempt at becoming an author. It has been speculated that these additions were satirical about the publishing industry, in response to the harsh reviews of Moby Dick which were coming out while Melville was working on Pierre.

Here is a link which provides a little more details, if someone else wants to follow this up with factual references... http://bltnotjustasandwich.com/2012/05/11/maurice-sendak-and-melville-redux-pierre-vs-pierre/

It should also be pointed out that the 1995 Kraken Edition was published with 30 full-color illustrations by Maurice Sendak. --130.20.185.186 (talk) 05:43, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Point of View?
(deleted August 2008) "The book certainly dares more than almost any other above-ground work of the nineteenth century, and it challenges the reader in ways suggestive of post-modern literature." --When I wrote this as part of the original entry more than 3 years ago, I had in mind incest, atheism, homosexuality, nihilism (not to mention seduction, murder, and suicide, but those are less unusual); and as for precursors of post-modernism: the intense irony, the interpolated texts, the tortured syntax, the focus on the scene and origin of writing. I am not meaning to push a particular reading of the work, but rather to suggest that it has greater depth and importance than the "rural bowl of milk" that HM ironically termed it. What is gained by deleting this sentence? Is it the deleter's opposite point of view that the book doesn't attempt anything unusual and is a backward looking traditional romance? I believe both parts of the sentence are factual and can be proved.Proyster (talk) 06:49, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

External links modified
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Title
Why does the title of this article contain the obvious typo of having a colon in place of a semi-colon after "Pierre"? An image of the title page of the first edition, which shows the correct punctuation, is at the beginning of the piece. AnthroMimus (talk) 12:09, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Typo at creation in 2005, perhaps? In March 2007 an edit was made changing the semicolon to a colon at first mention in the lede, perhaps to be consistent with the title of the article. More important than the reason for this error is that the current title clearly is wrong and should be changed from colon to semi-colon. MackyBeth (talk) 16:43, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The lede also misspelled the title character's surname, which I corrected, but I do not know how to correct a title. AnthroMimus (talk) 20:29, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Good work! I checked with the Northwestern-Newberry edition, which has a nearly exhaustive listing of all textual problems, and the semi-colon is correct. The only way to changed a title is to move the article. If there is no grounds for controversy, any registered editor may do so (see WP:RM). I will do it.ch (talk) 01:08, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The page move seems to have worked with no problem, but there are many MANY articles which use the old punctuation. This is an annoyance rather than a major problem, since the links still lead to this article (through an automatically created redirect), but it would be good to get an administrator or someone with one of those powerful bots to change them in one swell foop rather than one by one.ch (talk) 01:29, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Start to B Class
Now that I look at it with new eyes, I believe that the article has undergone development and is at least "B" class: "The article is mostly complete and without major problems, but requires some further work to reach good article standards."

Although I have made edits to the article, I do not see on the WP:CLASSES page that this disqualifies me as a member of the Novels taskforce from changing the rating. At any rate, if I am wrong, I apologize. Please undo if you disagree.ch (talk) 01:40, 26 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Still looks halfway Start Class and C to me. If you check the body of the article against section 3 "Article body" of Manual_of_Style/Novels you'll see that "mostly complete" does not apply yet. C says the article is "substantial, but is still missing important content". For a novel, I wouldn't call a 13,000 bytes article substantial. For comparison, Melville articles recently upgraded to B are Benito Cereno (45,000 bytes) and The Piazza Tales (25,000). Good thing is, the Pierre article does not have unsourced sections as Start Class articles usually do, that's why I would rate it halfway Start and C. ch doubled the size of this article in 2014 which makes ch the main editor, and it can go to B pretty fast if someone makes an effort for some days or a week, because it takes more to get it from Start to C than from C to B. MackyBeth (talk) 07:17, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
 * On second thoughts, let B stand as an incentive to simply work on the article until it meets B-grade requirements.MackyBeth (talk) 17:03, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Location of Saddle Meadows
The article says that the fictional Saddle Meadows is located in upstate New York. Is there any textual support for that? (I couldn't find any.) I always thought it took place in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, where Mount Greylock (to whom the book is "dedicated") is located and Melville lived (in Pittsfield). Moreover, the name comes from the place Pierre's great-grandfather died fighting "Indians" after being unhorsed. I took it that this was during King Philip's War which reached as far west as Springfield, Mass. But maybe it was the French and Indian War (although that temporally conflicts with Pierre's grandfather's participation in the Revolution and were there any Indian attacks along the Hudson in that war?). And at least one blogger, who is dedicated to the writing of Melville, also believes it is in western Massachusetts, see: http://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2015/12/monument-mountain-ice-glen-and-pierres.html. AnthroMimus (talk) 06:10, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Incidentally, if you trust the Wikipedia article on Mount Greylock that mountain was originally known as "Saddle Back" and because of their shape as a "saddle" a lesser peak nearby is still known as "Saddle Ball." This is further evidence that Saddle Meadows is in western Massachusetts and not upstate New York. AnthroMimus (talk) 23:09, 26 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Your point seems to be correct, AnthroMimus. Melville biographer Hershel Parker writes that "Melville had transported his fictional aristocratic Glendinnings across the Hudson into a grand house in a mountainous American landscape, where Saddle Meadows is based on Greylock, also called Saddleback." (Page 58 of Parkers's Melville biography, Volume 2. See bibliography at Herman Melville for the full description of this book and a link to the online portion of it.) On page 87, Parker quotes from Pierre, book 25, chapter 4 ("No more now...ineffectual how. "), and adds: "In these magnificent pages the Berkshire topography plays the role"...) I found these passages because the Index of the biography includes Pierre with a breakdown of the entry that includes "Berkshire County setting" (page 991).


 * In 1949 an important scholarly edition of Pierre was published not yet used in the article: HM, P; or,The A. Edited by Henry A. Murray. New York: Hendricks House, Inc. (I have the 1962 reprinting.) This includes a 103-page "Introduction", and a section of "Explanatory Notes" on pages 429-504. So whatever later editions have to add and correct to this one, surely many of those later annotations derive from Murray's important work. On page 432 appears his note on "Saddle Meadows", which I quote here completely: "Mt. Greylock was originally called Mt. Saddleback or Saddle Mountain; hence Saddle Meadows as a name for Pitt's field (Pittsfield) in this novel. Oliver Wendell Holmes's place, across the road from Melville's Arrowhead, was called Canoe Meadows."


 * I think this information saddles, uh, settles the matter. Cheers MackyBeth (talk) 09:03, 28 May 2016 (UTC)


 * So should we change the text of the article, and if so how? As you point out Melville does have some aspects of the Hudson Valley in the novel. For instance, in the passage about his great-grandfather being unhorsed and fighting from his saddle on the ground the narrator refers to the house as "manorial." In I:iii the narrator says there was a Dutch manor to the north and refers to its owner as a patron (should this be patroon?) or "lord." And in III:i Pierre's mother tells Pierre that some day he will be lord of the manor. Moreover there are numerous references to tenants and a passing mention of a tenant uprising. All of this belongs in the Dutch landlord-tenant system of the late 17th century, not Massachusetts. Perhaps the best thing is simply to delete the identification of Saddle Meadows with upstate New York and use the quote from Parker you cite to the effect that Melville transported his recollection of his childhood in the Hudson Valley to the fictional Sadlle Meadows, located in the Berkshires, Massachusetts. Agree? AnthroMimus (talk) 17:50, 28 May 2016 (UTC)


 * BTW, MackyBeth, I have never understood what constitutes the grievous sin at Wikipedia of "original research." But this in't it, is it? (Incidentally, I just noticed the great Herschel Parker volumes sitting on one of my shelves. Although I recall reading it, I have no recollection of having acquired it. (Age is a noisome pestilence from which there is no deliverance,) AnthroMimus (talk) 18:13, 28 May 2016 (UTC)


 * To take up your last point first, any encyclopediae aims to set forth what is the consensus among specislists in any given field of knowledge. Looking up what is said in scholarly publications about the setting of Pierre is not original research but presenting your own inferences about the novel's setting is, no matter how obvious and uncontroversial those conclusions may be.


 * Then how to account for the setting. First of All, the Plot summary should summarize the work as straightforwardly as possible with zero interpretation. So if the actual setting in the real world is fictionalized, then the plot summary is not the place to identify it in the real world. For that, a section "Autobiographical elements" or :Historical setting" or whatever seems appropriate may be provided. Pierre is very much the sort of book for which readers of Wikipedia may expect such a section. More importantly, why was the setting fictionalized? If scholars agree that the historical scene appears only thinly disguised in a way obviously intended to be recognized by the 1852 reader, then it is something of a roman à clef. But if the disguise is meant to give the impression of a genuinely fictional location, it is a different matter. For now, I would say let's just remove the "upstate NY" phrase without a replacement, and keep an eye out for how this is treated in existence,  published summaries if we come across them. MackyBeth (talk) 19:54, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Sealts and Murray
Today I added some information about the books that influenced Pierre. All of the information credited to Murray (1949) was picked by checking what Sealts in 1988 found worth quoting or incorporating from Murray's work. What is and what is not outdated in an edition from 1949 can only be determined by looking at more recent scholarship, and to me it seems a reasonable assumption that what was still standing forty years later will probably still hold up.MackyBeth (talk) 16:55, 1 June 2016 (UTC)