"Jack Chase, the educated, manly friend in
White Jacket
, was an actual shipmate never to be forgotten. ... Chase stayed in the heart, forever cherished, the only unwavering, beyond the family, friendship of Melville's life. In
he is addressed: 'Wherever you may now be rolling over the blue billows, dear Jack! take my best love along with you, and God bless you, wherever you go!' The same sense of the beloved lost wanderer will forty years later illuminate the dedication to
Billy Budd
'To Jack Chase, Englishman / Wherever that great heart may now be / Here on Earth or harbored in Paradise'."
--Elizabeth Hardwick, "Melville in Love,"
The New York Review of Books
, 2000 ......... "What startled me most about
White-Jacket
, though, is how contemporary his descriptions of sea life sound. Many of the Neversink crewmen will be instantly familiar to anyone who's served in modern U.S. Navy surface ships, the passage of time and advances in technology notwithstanding. ... The contemporary feel to Melville's storytelling speaks volumes about why navies are the tradition-bound services they are. White-Jacket makes a great read, both for old salts indulging their nostalgia and for landlubbers who want to catch sight of life on the raging foam."
--James R. Holmes,
The Diplomat
, 2013 ......... Watersgreen House is an independent international book publisher with editorial staff in the UK and USA. One of our aims at Watersgreen House is to showcase same-sex affection in works by important gay and bisexual authors in ways which were not possible at the time the books were originally published. We also publish nonfiction, including textbooks, as well as contemporary fiction that is literary, unusual, and provocative. watersgreen.wixsite.com/watersgreenhouse