Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times

Aaron Sachs

Princeton University Press, Jun 7, 2022 - History - 472 pages

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography

A double portrait of two of America’s most influential writers that reveals the surprising connections between them—and their uncanny relevance to our age of crisis

Up from the Depths tells the interconnected stories of two of the most important writers in American history—the novelist and poet Herman Melville (1819–1891) and one of his earliest biographers, the literary critic and historian Lewis Mumford (1895–1990). Deftly cutting back and forth between the writers, Aaron Sachs reveals the surprising resonances between their lives, work, and troubled times—and their uncanny relevance in our own age of crisis.

The author of Moby-Dick was largely forgotten for several decades after his death, but Mumford helped spearhead Melville’s revival in the aftermath of World War I and the 1918–1919 flu pandemic, when American culture needed a forebear with a suitably dark vision. As Mumford’s career took off and he wrote books responding to the machine age, urban decay, world war, and environmental degradation, it was looking back to Melville’s confrontation with crises such as industrialization, slavery, and the Civil War that helped Mumford to see his own era clearly. Mumford remained obsessed with Melville, ultimately helping to canonize him as America’s greatest tragedian. But largely forgotten today is one of Mumford’s key insights—that Melville’s darkness was balanced by an inspiring determination to endure.

Amid today’s foreboding over global warming, racism, technology, pandemics, and other crises, Melville and Mumford remind us that we’ve been in this struggle for a long time. To rediscover these writers today is to rediscover how history can offer hope in dark times.

Contents

• Loomings 192729: 1
• The Whiteness of the Page 185665: 7
• Bitter Morning 191819: 14
• Fragments of War and Peace 186567: 20
• Reconstruction 193031: 29
• The Golden Day 184650: 37
• Retrospective 195682: 45
• A Bosom Friend 185051: 52
• Amor Threatening 193035: 62
• Cetology 185152: 71
• Neotechnics 193234: 80
• The Ambiguities 1852: 90
• Spiritual Freedom 193538: 99
• The Happy Failure 185355: 108
• Reconnaissance 18991925: 117
• Disenchantment 185355: 126
• Counterpoint 1938: 136
• Redburn 183955: 144
• Radburn 192339: 154
• Revolutions 184855: 166
• Misgivings and Preparatives 193839: 177
• The Piazza 185657: 186
• Faith 194043: 195
• The Metaphysics of IndianHating 185657: 206
• The Darkness of the Present Day 1944: 217
• More Gloom and the Light of That Gloom 185676: 228
• Survival 194447: 240
• The Warmth and Chill of Wedded Life and Death 187691: 252
• Chronometricals and Horologicals 194451: 264
• The LifeBuoy 1891 192429: 278
• Mans Role in Changing the Face of the Earth 195162: 291
• Revival 191962: 302
• Call Me Jonah 196282: 315
• Lizzie 18911906: 330
• Sophia 198297: 341
• Rediscovery 2019: 352
• Acknowledgments: 361
• Notes: 371
• Illustration Credits: 433
• Index: 435

About the author

Aaron Sachs is professor of history and American studies at Cornell University. He is the author of The Humboldt Current: Nineteenth-Century Exploration and the Roots of American Environmentalism and Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times
• Author: Aaron Sachs
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2022
• ISBN: 0691236941, 9780691236940
• Length: 472 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Literary Figures; History / United States / General; Literary Criticism / Comparative Literature