Linguistically, stylistically, and character-wise, it's pound for pound the most generous helping of literary genius I think I've ever read. It's also, though, tremendously long and difficult to go through, like a root canal.
For this reason, among others, upon publication contemporary critics almost universally panned it.
"Mr. Melville is evidently trying to ascertain how far the public will consent to be imposed upon," wrote one critic for the New York United States Magazine and Democratic Review.
"Mr. Melville has to thank himself only if his horrors and his heroics are flung aside by the general reader, as so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature — since he seems not so much unable to learn as disdainful of learning the craft of an artist," wrote another, Henry F. Chorley.
All this and more they wrote in response to what has come to be known as the greatest American novel ever written. Melville, largely because of this kind of critical and public reception, was forced to make his living outside of writing, and worked as a customs officer for the last half of his life.
This is an example of counter memory insofar as the public consciousness changed with regard to Melville, from having an overwhelmingly negative reaction to having now (at least among literary types of people) an overwhelmingly positive reaction. "Melville is a kind of God to me," said one of my English teachers.
There is less an empirical truth about one's opinion about Melville than there is a social truth. Social truth now is that he is a truly great writer. Thank goodness that collective, public memory has righted itself and aligned itself on the right side of Melville!
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