The Art of Escape
On Melville’s Bachelor Machines
- Taras Alexander Sak / 2025.2
- JPY6,000 / A5 size, softcover, 220pages
- bookdesign: Toshinobu NAGATA
…… It is this aspect of Melville’s work and life that interests me most, this moment when his Ishmael-like outcasts or orphans turn their backs on society and law and plunge into uncharted waters, so to speak. In other words, when they turn away from their societies and cross the line of the horizon, as Lawrence phrased it. And it is this moment—more precisely this movement of escape or taking flight—that will be the focus of this monograph, in which I examine the “major” texts mentioned above (Moby-Dick, Pierre and The Confidence-Man), alongside selected “minor” works to which they are variously related, in order to chart this movement, speculate as to what Melville is escaping from, and consider the contemporary relevance of Melville’s “art of escape.”
（ISBN9784861109959）
Table of contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Mad Fathers; or, Escaping the Nation
Chapter 2: Lost Sons (and Daughters); or, Escaping the Family
Chapter 3: An (Un)Holy Ghost; or, Escaping the Subject
Conclusion
Author
Taras Alexander Sak earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton, focusing upon 19th and 20th century American Literature, the work of Herman Melville, and Critical Theory. He has published widely on Melville, Poe, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Saul Bellow, and Cormac McCarthy, as well as on music (Lou Reed, Bob Dylan) and film. He is currently an Associate Professor at Yasuda Women’s University in Hiroshima, Japan.