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Title: Herman Melville's Clarel - a 19th C pilgrims' progress?
Review: This is a welcome affordable version of the Northwestern U./Newberry edition of Herman Melville's one epic poem. The poem is a useful window on the views of mid-19th century American Protestants who were neither orthodox nor liberal. Science (including Darwin)(and materialism (or "Mammon")) vs. Faith and the continuing presence in Palestine of Jews, Moslems, Catholics and Greek Orthodox, and tourists (sometimes viewed almost as another sect) are among the subjects of attention for Melville's Euro-American group of pilgrims.Negatives: 1) the story-line itself is less than gripping and is largely a device to enable the characters to conduct a series of debates.2) this edition, if my copy is any indication, is poorly bound: five segments of about 20 pages each fell out of the binding. (Despite this fallout, the spine of the book remained uncreased.) Only the first three segments of the book (about 150 of the 530 or so pages) remained intact.
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