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  u “Where the Wild Things Are” Questioning Typee Literature was born not the day when a boy crying wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels: literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him. That the poor little fellow because he lied too often was finally eaten up by a real beast is quite incidental. But here is what is important. Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature. —Vladimir Nabokov But the wild things cried, “Oh please don’t go—we’ll eat you up—we love you so!” —Maurice Sendak T Herman Melville spent at least four weeks living among the inhabitants of the Taipi valley on Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Islands has never been questioned. Although scholars have long dismissed Melville’s elaborations and fictional extension of time in the valley, no biographer—not even Andrew Delbanco, Hershel Parker, or Laurie Robertson-Lorant—has doubted the veracity of the mere fact.1 Melville presented his time in the valley of the Taipi as the factual basis for his first work, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (). That portrayal has long been accepted as truth. Nonetheless, an examination of biographical , geographical, historical, and textual evidence suggests at least the possibility that Melville may never have strayed any farther from the beach than necessary to avoid capture and that his description of himself as the “man who lived among the cannibals” is a fiction.2 I will argue that such a consideration sheds light on our understanding of Melville as a writer. Questions concerning Melville’s route to the Taipi valley have come to the forefront with paired essays by anthropologist Robert C. Suggs and Melville scholar John Bryant in the  issue of ESQ, to be discussed below. Bryant contends ,“Melville may have been a thief, but he was no liar.”3 The relevant question is not whether Melville was either a thief or a liar, but whether he commenced his  01 Edwards ch1 10/31/08 11:21 AM Page 1 writing career as a creative artist or a journalist. His concern was always first and foremost his art. That he compromised to the extent of presentingTypee as a travelogue in order to have the book accepted by a publisher of such material in a time when he was first attempting to make a living from his writing says nothing about the reliability of any element of the text as an account of his own personal experience. There are a few incontrovertible facts and some clearly demonstrable evidence -based conclusions concerning Melville’s sojourn on Nuku Hiva. It is a happy coincidence that Max Radiguet, Secretary to Rear Admiral Abel Aubert Dupetit-Thouars, was on Nuku Hiva during the same period as Melville. His Les derniers sauvages: Souvenirs de l’occupation française aux îles Marquises, –, published after Typee, demonstrably confirms, for example, Melville’s presence in Haka‘ui Bay as a witness to incidents Radiguet reports due to the similarities in his and Melville’s accounts. And it is likely but not provable that Melville and Richard Tobias Greene did indeed head toward the interior of the island immediately after they deserted the whaleship Acushnet knowing that it would increase their chances of evading capture. Other assertions, however, remain conjecture. The discourse of cannibalism that Melville encountered aboard ship and throughout the islands of the South Pacific profoundly shaped his first book. European dread of the cannibal Other was omnipresent. As with many things, this dread was mixed with desire. Sailors both feared and longed to encounter flesheaters . When Melville slipped away from his shipmates during shore leave on Nuku Hiva, he too may have experienced such mixed feelings. At the very least he understood them. Four years later, when he came to write Typee, this tension lingered in his mind. As he did throughout his life, Melville turned to written sources when he began writing Typee. The language as well as some of the action is borrowed from David Porter’s Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean (, ), which records Porter’s encounter with Nuku Hiva thirty years before Melville arrived.4 Melville’s method of composition in Typee and the subsequent acceptance of the book as truth are significant...

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