Clare Spark, an independent scholar, and former programmer at KPFK-FM, the Pacifica station in Los Angeles during the 70's and 80's, has her new book out. The product of 17 years of archival research, will appeal to those of us with interests in literary politics, interpretation, Popular Front culture and the critique of populism, nationalism and Stalinism. She also has a new article on Ralph J. Bunche and Gunnar Myrdal, "Race, Caste, or Class?" The Bunche-Myrdal Dispute Over An American Dilemma," International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 14, Number 3, 465-511. Michael Pugliese
Hunting Captain Ahab: Psychological Warfare and the Melville Revival
Hunting Captain Ahab constitutes a major reassessment of Melville and his critical reception in America. Thanks to Clare Spark's in-depth archival research, the political dimensions are at last fully brought to light. The world of Melville scholarship will never be the same. (Roy Porter, author Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World)
Hunting Captain Ahab is a delicious concoction, an irresistible melange of Hannah Arendt, Kermit Vanderbilt, Kitty Kelley, Ronald Radosh-Joyce Milton, and A. S. Byatt. Usual and unusual suspects are tracked down, strip-searched, grilled and served up. FBI files, private filing cabinets, and great library archives are ransacked for our astonished delight. Who would have though that so many startling family comments on Melville remained unseen? Who would have thought those secretive, conspiratorial academics would have preserved so many incriminating papers? Anyone who writes on Melville must buy this plump plum pudding of a book, this vast long-considered trifle, this huge fruit-cake of certifiably weird fellow-travelling Melvilleans. Lord, I wish I had known some of them in the flesh. (Hershel Parker, Melville biographer and co-editor Northwestern-Newberry complete works of Herman Melville)
Clare Spark provides us with an intricate and exhaustive view of the politics of literature and of literary reputation. Without succumbing to simplistic "right-left" dichotomies, she demonstrates, through an analysis of the Melville Revival, how our literary icons are made and endlessly remade in the service of ideological, as well as esthetic, agendas. She depicts the long, struggle between the obsessions of sundry Melville scholars and the titanic obsessions of Melville himself (always, of course, at war with each other) with a singular originality of vision. "Hunting Captain Ahab", faithfully echoing Melville in its plenitude and bold intellectual counterpoint, will give contemporary Melville enthusiasts dozens, if not hundreds, of new themes to ponder and deliberate. (Norman J. Levitt, Rutgers University, author Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Science)
[e-mail to author:] <cspark at ix.netcom.com>
Salutations Clare Spark,
Erin Holman gave me your e-mail address because I wanted to tell you what a phenomenal book you have in Hunting Captain Ahab. I am the proofreader working for The Kent State University Press who is having the distinct pleasure of reading your book. As a freelancer, I see a variety of presentations. Your work offers the most readable, provocative, and informative book I have read for work or interest in many a day! An exciting addition to the world, indeed. Thank you.
Take care,
Toni Mortimer