SOURCE: “Coherence and Ambivalence in Melville's Pierre,” in American Literature, Vol. XLVIII, No. 3, November, 1976, pp. 302-11.

In the following essay, Strickland asserts that, while Melville's handling of imagery in Pierre provides a kind of coherence for the work, the novel remains ultimately “inconsistent and incomplete.”

Readers familiar with the mastery of Moby Dick have often been perplexed by the mystery of Herman Melville's succeeding novel, Pierre. The mystery lies in the contrast between the artfully controlled style and structure of the earlier book, published in 1851, and the sophomoric fustian of Pierre, which appeared just one year later. Critics have attempted to explain this apparent regression in craftsmanship by noting in Pierre Melville's satiric purposes in the outbursts of juvenile overwriting, which reflect the hero's immaturity, and by detailing Melville's intentional parody of the style and substance of conventional romanticism.¹ But there is further evidence of authorial control in...