Herman Melville*, reasonable man

Quo' he, only without such errors as my transcription will have introduced:

To some, it may raise a degree of surprise that one so full of confidence, as the merchant has throughout shown himself, up to the moment of his late sudden impulsiveness, should, in that instance, have betrayed such a depth of discontent. He may be thought inconsistent, and even so he is. But for this, is the author to be blamed? True, it may be urged that there is nothing a writer of fiction should more carefully see to, as there is nothing a sensible reader will more carefully look for, than that, in the depiction of any character, its consistency should be preserved. But this, though at first blush, seeming reasonable enough, may, upon a closer view, prove not so much so. For how does it couple with another requirement—equally insisted upon, perhaps—that while to all fiction is allowed some play of invention, yet, fiction based on fact should never be contradictory to it; and is it not a fact, that, in real life, a consistent character is a rara avis? … If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters as nature herself has. (The Confidence Man, pp 94–5 of the Dalkey Archive edition)

* there is a note attached to the chapter heading: "The first of three chapters (the other are 33 and 44 [this is 14, lest you think a system lurks here] in an authorial voice (but not to be construed as nonfictional or unmasked) about the nature of fiction).". I clearly transgress its warning in titling the post as I have—anyway, I have done so if one insists on reading the title as having anything to do with the post, an unfortunate tendency of the naïve reader against which I've warned in the past—but then, it's not as if any argument is brought forth against so construing the voice of the chapter. Nothing prevents Melville from speaking in propria persona at occasion in his works, except perhaps the obstinacy of critics who prescind from any such identification; in an environment rich in such critics, no textually-embedded protestations regarding a passage's actually representing the opinion of the author could be dispositive, because of course an author who was speaking in another's voice could have that other voice them as well.

But if we're going to go that far, there's no reason I can see to take the voice of ch. 14 as "authorial"; it could be critical or commentatorial, for all that: an interlude in which an unnamed extra party assesses the book thus far. True, ch14 does begin "As the last chapter was begun with a reminder looking forwards, so the present must consist of one glancing backwards", suggesting that he who made ch13—made ch14, but this suggestion need not carry the day: we simply postulate that the critic gets a few chapters to himself, and here he chooses to begin his first chapter with a reference to the preceding.

I haven't read up to ch14, I just opened to that page in the bookstore.

Comments

[Irene]

Narrative voices/commentary during this period are an interesting subject, indeed. We were just talking about that in my Women's Lit course last night.