Israel Potter [Paperback]

Herman Melville (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 2008

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

(in full Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile) Fictionalized story of an American who fought in the War of Independence and of his subsequent struggles for survival, by Herman Melville. Published serially in 1854-55 in Putnam's Monthly Magazine and in 1855 in book form, this short picaresque novel was based on a historical Israel Potter, whose autobiographical narrative Melville had read. Israel Potter lived a life of adventure, serving bravely as a regular soldier in the American Revolution. Later, he served under John Paul Jones in the new American navy and was a secret courier for Benjamin Franklin. In exile in Europe, Potter lived a poverty-stricken existence. Upon his return to the United States, his request for a pension was denied. He died forgotten and destitute. Melville turned Potter into a picaresque hero and embellished the facts of his life, satirizing his encounters with Franklin and adding a vignette about Ethan Allen. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Herman Melville (1819-1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet. Hennig Cohen is Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania and former editor of American Quarterly. He is recognized as a leading Melville scholar. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Book Jungle (May 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1605975974
• ISBN-13: 978-1605975979
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,082,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The least known and most humorous of Melville's works., June 11, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile, Volume Eight, Scholarly Edition (Melville) (Paperback)

This book is at the same time the least and the most "Melvillian" of all Melville's corpus. Melville wrote in Moby-Dick that "two thirds of the world revolve in darkness." This idea certaily holds true for most of Melville's works, but not Israel Potter. In this uncharacteristically light-hearted and crisply written rewriting of American history, Melville gives an early literary version of Woody Allen's film Zelig. The character Israel Potter is that same sort of insignificant historical non-entity who just happens to get caught up in incredibly significant historical moments. In his various wanderings Israel meets and becomes politically involved with a trio of the most important American patriots--Ben Franklin, John Paul Jones, and Ethan Allen. It is through these encounters that Melville subtlely (and sometimes not so subtlely) realizes his critical agenda and those darker themes that dominate so much of his other work begin to show themselves. In his portrayal of Franklin, Melville takes a bash at what he sees as the exemplar of American "genius"--the same American genius that ignored and misunderstood his most significant works and forced him into obscurity and poverty in his lifetime. Melville sees Franklin as representative of all that is wrong with the American character--he is parsimonious, small-minded, hard-headed, and morally hypocritical. In the other two historical figures, John Paul Jones and Ethan Allen, Melville finds redemption. In them he sees represented more of that European idea of genius, the manly half-savage/half-civilized genius of Thomas Carlyle. Like Queequeg in Moby-Dick who is described as "George Washington canabalistically rendered," Jones and Allen are wildmen in a civilized society, raging against the world as they utter their outrageous and at times incomprehensible truth. A fun yet undenialbly thought-provoking read. Enjoy

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Melville From the Hip, February 8, 2010

By 

David Chacko "author of The Byzantium Stone" (Variable) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

This edition of Melville's ISRAEL POTTER is one of the most accurate will will have in terms of text and also a good introduction to the lighthearted side of Herman Melville. His satirical portraits of Great Americans and their various hypocrises are central to the book, as the battle action of John Paul Jones is to adventure.

For those interested in a more modern interpretation of the Israel Potter legend, see GONE OVER by David Chacko and Alexander Kulcsar--one of the best books of 2009.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A charming (if over-the-top) spoof of Revolutionary heroics, July 24, 2006

By 

D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile, Volume Eight (Melville) (Paperback)

After the financial failure of "Moby-Dick" and the social scandal of "Pierre," Melville settled down to write a book that would please the public, his publisher, and (most important at this point in his life) his bank account. He promised George Putnam (his publisher) both "nothing of any sort to shock the fastidious" and "nothing weighty." In short, he wrote an adventure story.

But not just any adventure story. Melville drew on a little-known autobiography published 30 years earlier and called the "Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter," which recounted the extraordinary career of a veteran of the Battle of Bunker Hill who delivered secret wartime letters to Benjamin Franklin, who found himself stranded in Europe, and who ended up a pauper in London. (The original Northwestern-Newberry edition reprints a facsimile copy of this source, keyed to passages in Melville's text. More remarkably, this edition notes the recent discovery of an unrelated text by a British author who included a brief account of Potter's days as a nomadic street-trader in London, along with a portrait of the man himself.)

Yet Melville's book is not merely a biographical novel. Instead, he greatly embellishes Potter's account, incorporating a farcical portrait of Franklin and adding equally comic accounts of John Paul Jones, King George, Ethan Allen, and several other historical figures whom Potter never actually met. In Melville's hands, Franklin becomes a miserly, philandering "tanned Machiavelli in tents" and "not less a lady's man, than a man's man, a wise man, and an old man"; Allen is transformed into a larger-than-life Paul Bunyan figure; King George is a kindly dolt; and Jones turns into a tattooed, flirtatious, vainglorious rake. And poor Israel Potter himself is alternately drafted, imprisoned, released, and press-ganged.

The result is not only Melville's most accessible work but also an over-the-top spoof of the heroic amateurs running the Revolution and (more subtly) an acidic indictment of the abandonment of the early American dream. While it lacks the depth or the "weight" of his other late works, "Israel Potter" makes up for its shortcomings with charm and mirth.