SOURCE: “Narrative Technique and Structure in Pierre,” in American Transcendental Quarterly, No. 7, Part I, Summer, 1970, pp. 5-8.

In the following essay, Bach discusses the various levels of narration in Pierre and suggests that the alternating narrative voices help to unify the work.

In late 1851 Herman Melville, weary from his struggles to see Moby-Dick through publication, had no burning ambition for his next fictional production. Pierre would be a pastoral romance with a touch of the gothic and would, he hoped, regain some of the money and reputation with publishers that he had lost by his two previous publications, Mardi and Moby-Dick. In a letter written to his publisher Bentley on April 16, 1852, he indicated his assumption that his new book would prove agreeable to public taste: “And more especially am I impelled to decline those overtures upon the ground that my new book possessing unquestionable novelty, as regards my...