Strike through the mask

Herman Melville was an intense and tortured writer, plagued by writing anxiety, emotional problems, and painful physical ailments. He produced his extraordinary body of work only with great anguish, and he appears to have inflicted great anguish on those around him. According to Elizabeth Renker, we learn much about Melville's fiction if we see how violent and frustrating the experience of writing was for him.

In Strike through the Mask Renker argues that Melville's frustrated engagement with the page - characterized by illegible handwriting, chronically bad spelling, and violent manipulations of text - is the most important source of his work's drama and power. She examines the impact on his writing of his struggles with writer's block and depression.

And she explores Melville's complex relationship with women, particularly his wife and sisters, on whom he depended to copy and correct his manuscripts. (Renker's evidence that Melville physically and emotionally abused his wife, Elizabeth Shaw Melville, has already generated attention and controversy).

Renker sees Melville's experience of writing reflected in his haunting and enduring theme of disturbing, impenetrable faces. Ahab's famous desire to "strike through the mask" of the dead, blind "pasteboard" wall echoes Melville's own relentless striking through and rewriting in his private battle with the blank page.