Melville's Quarral with Fiction (Nina Baym)

[Terrance]

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/baym/essays/melville_quarrel.htm

Melville's Quarrel with Fiction
    by Nina Baym


I think it can be shown that none of Melville's longer works
    are wholly or even mainly fictive, except in that broadest sense in
which
    everything formulated into words is a fiction. But it is just this
sense that
    everything formulated into words is a fiction that led Melville, in
his later
    works, to despair of literature's being able to tell a truth.
Indeed, I believe
    that Melville had no great respect for fiction, that he equated it
with
    popular literature and his own literary infancy, and that in the
works that
    most aspire to truth he expresses a range of attitudes toward
fiction that go
    from impatience with its demands to a clear sense that fiction and
truth
    telling are opposed activities.