Dayswork: a novel by Chris Bachelder & Jennifer Habel
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2023 ISBN 9781324065401
For many people, reading Moby-Dick is a life-changing event. It certainly was for me,and has been for Jennifer Habel, for her husband Chris Bachelder by default, and, as readers of this novel will find out, for many well-known authors such as Paul Auster and Ralph Ellison.
While I'm not as obsessed by the great white whale as Habel, I am always interested in books about Melville, so when I saw a review of Dayswork, I thought I'd track down a copy. I'm glad I did - this book luxuriates in information about Melville, and is a fascinating insight into obsession, what it takes to make a great work of art, as well as a bit of a meditation on the passage of the COVID pandemic.
The book is constructed in separate sentences or very occasionally a paragraph that wander through the life of Melville, the COVID confinement of Habel and Bachelder, responses to Melville across time, the relationship between Melville and the women in his life, the relationship between Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick, Melville's relationship with Hawthorne, Habel's search for Melvilleana, the stories of others who have devoted their lives to Melville, all the while probing questions of obsession, love, genius, and madness.
There are many mysteries in Melville's life and writings, and Dayswork is also a mystery. The book is quite clearly identified as a novel, both on the dustjacket and the title page. On the verso of the title page is the following statement - "Dayswork is a novel. Apart from the well-known actual people, historical events, and locales that figure in the narrative, characters and incidents are the products of the author's imaginations or are used ficticiously." What does this mean? Is it just the relationship and life of Habel and Bachelder that is fictional, or are some of the things they write about Melville made up? Frustratingly for me, I don't know enough to be sure, but do know enough to think that the Melville parts are factual. And who are the "well-known actual people"? Some scholars mentioned I have heard of, but many I haven't....if a sign of a good book is that reading it sends you on a journey through other works, then Dayswork is a marvel. And yet, the identification of the book as a novel is frustrating, as I found myself second-guessing everything I was reading...
Maybe one can state that this book then is an experiment in writing, and a different way of looking at Melville, and in particular Moby-Dick. I think on the whole it is a successful experiment, as I found myself quickly drawn in and dragged under by the narrative, and often found myself reading sections out loud to my wife, who is at the moment reading Moby-Dick for the first time. I'm driven to tracking down the references to scholarly articles and books that Habel mentions (frustratingly there is no bibliography... but then this is a novel after all...), to read Pierre for the first time, and Moby-Dick for the....I'm not sure how many times I've read it.
If, like me you consider Moby-Dick to be one of the great monuments of literature, you will be entranced by Dayswork, and even if you haven't read Melville, this book is a great insight into the life and mind of the man who wrote it.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
No comments:
Post a Comment