Explain thyself, Ishmael.

[Terrance]

 Preface, Typee

http://www.bookrags.com/books/typee/PART1.htm

And what about telling the truth? That's what the readers wanted.
Melville
is not quite as "Confident" as Mr. Poe, but Melville is not telling the
truth here. His third person Preface is a rather awkward attempt to
distance himself from his narrator. The novel is not a very good one,
but it tells us a lot about Melville's relationship with his readers. 
By the time we get to Moby-Dick, a novel Melville wrote to sell and
re-wrote to fail, 
we are moving toward silence and the black truth, Melville giving a
voice to the impersonal (that voice is not Ishmael--do Ishmael and Ahab
ever converse?). After M-D fails, we will indeed get the silence.
Melville will quit publishing his work.  Ironically, it is Bartleby, who
prefers not to write at all, who breaks the silence for Melville.