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Melville by the Day

I cannot think of another work of fiction that says more about why biographies are written and what they portend than Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel’s ‘Dayswork: A Novel.’

Via Wikimedia Commons
Portrait of Herman Melville by Joseph Oriel Eaton, 1870. Via Wikimedia Commons
CARL ROLLYSON
CARL ROLLYSON

‘Dayswork: A Novel’
By Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel
W.W. Norton & Company, 240 pages

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CARL ROLLYSON
CARL ROLLYSON

Mr. Rollyson is the author of The Life of William Faulkner and The Last Days of Sylvia Plath. He has published fourteen biographies and has written about biography for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington, Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The New Criterion, and other publications.

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