Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | M | Melville Society Extracts

Wilson Heflon, Herman Melville's Whaling Years. Ed. Mary K. Bercaw Edwards and Thomas F. Heffernan.

Article Excerpt
Wilson Heflin, Herman Melville's Whaling Years. Ed. Mary K. Bercaw Edwards and Thomas F. Heffernan. Vanderbilt University Press, 2004. xxv, 332 pages.

Near the end of World War II, Wilson Heflin, a Navy Flight Instructor at Corpus Christi, Texas, was attending to some business in the belly of an airborne PBY amphibious aircraft. There was a jolt of turbulence, when he found himself suspended in air over the open bomb-bay doors, looking down at the earth beneath. Another jolt, and he safely made contact with the aircraft again, and lived to tell the tale.

This story may not be entirely true. It may not have taken place just at the end of the war, or it may not have taken place over Corpus Christi, or it may not have been a PBY. Good stories evolve from their factual origins. Perhaps that fact led Heflin to Melville--and to the factuality of Melville's own storytelling. Herman Melville's Whaling Years, first as a 1952 dissertation and now--finally--as a book, is the result of intense detective work now half a century old. Ironically, Heflin began his dissertation with the same quotation that now rings so tellingly at the head of his book: "if, at my death, my executors, or more properly, my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and glory to whaling." Wilson Heflin died nearly twenty years ago; his book, through the nearly unimaginable effort of his "executors," has finally reached print in a form worthy of the importance of Heflin's contribution to Melville biography.

It is likely that every prospective reader of Heflin's book is familiar with the work of...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!