"Herman Melville Crazy"

More fodder for those who feel that critics exist only to make insensitive comments. The above was the headline to a review of Herman Melville's Pierre in The New York Day News in 1852. That this affected the author considerably is evident from a letter of 1877 to which he adds a piteous postscript--"P.S.: I aint crazy."

(Information from James Wood's review of Andrew Delbanco's new biography of Melville.)