Olson, Charles (Melville, Herman)

Call Me Ishmael: A Study of Melville

San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1967. First Edition Thus. Softcover. “I take SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America, from Folsom cave to now. I spell it large because it comes large here. Large, and without mercy. It is geography at bottom, a hell of wide land from the beginning. That made the first American story (Parkman’s): exploration. Something else than a stretch of earth–seas on both sides, no barriers to contain as restless a thing as Western man was becoming in Columbus’ day. That made Melville’s story (part of it). PLUS a harshness we still perpetuate, a sun like a tomahawk, small earthquakes but big tornadoes and hurrikans, a river north and south in the middle of the land running out the blood.”--Charles Olson, pg. 11. Charles Olson (1910-1970) innovative poet & essayist (and our favorite maximus obscurantist), was not only one of the most influential poets of the last century, but also one of the finest in the tradition of American verse. Anyone familiar with contemporary poetry would agree with Robert Creeley (1926-2005) when he calls Olson "central to any description of literary 'climate' dated 1958." Olson's influence extends directly to Creeley, Robert Duncan (1919-1988), Denise Levertov (1923-1997), and Paul Blackburn (1926-1971), and, as Stephen Stepanchev notes, Olson's projective verse "has either influenced or coincided with other stirrings toward newness in American poetry." He himself owed a great deal to Ezra Pound (1885-1972), William Carlos Williams (1885-1963), Edward Dahlberg (1900-1977), and Herman Melville (1819-1891). Offered today is the endlessly interesting, and profoundly insightful 1947 work on Melville, Call Me Ishmael. This acknowledged classic of American literary criticism explores the influences—especially Shakespearean ones—on Melville's writing of Moby-Dick. One of the first Melvilleans to advance what has since become known as the "theory of the two Moby-Dicks," Olson argues that there were two versions of Moby-Dick, and that Melville's reading King Lear for the first time in between the first and second versions of the book had a profound impact on his conception of the saga: "the first book did not contain Ahab," writes Olson, and "it may not, except incidentally, have contained Moby-Dick." If literary critics and reviewers at the time responded with varying degrees of skepticism to the "theory of the two Moby-Dicks," it was the experimental style and organization of the book that generated the most controversy. From back cover: “Charles Olson, true poet of Gloucester, Mass., first published this barnacled study of Herman Melville almost twenty years ago, and it has since become recognized as a classic of American literary criticism, a fine whalebone key to the great American saga of the White Whale (and to the hunt for that America which still goes on).” With all points in Ralph T. Cook’s City Lights Books: A Descriptive Bibliography, No. 58, pg. 63. From the collection of scholar, poet and our dear friend Robin Eichele (b. 1941), noted Mimeograph Revolutionary & co-founder (with the late, great John Sinclair [1941-2024]) of the Detroit Artists’ Workshop. First softcover edition thus, presumed first printing though not explicated as such at copyright page. In Fine-Very fine condition with minor wear to fine edges, moderate smudging/scratching to front and back covers, various marginalia throughout interior, and moderate discoloration due to age-toning to exterior and throughout interior. Fine-Very Fine. [Item #8989]

Price: $40.00