Richard Caddel asked to see this, so I'm posting it in hopes that other
Poundians might also find it of interest. Sylvester
 
>From Sunday's NY Times
>
>         <http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/obit-metcalf.html>
>
>
>
>          Paul Metcalf, Who Wrote Experimental Tales, Dies at 81
>
>
>          By DINITIA SMITH
>
>              Paul Metcalf, who made his mark as an experimental
>              writer of prose, poetry and plays, died on Jan. 21
>          near Pittsfield, Mass. He was 81 and lived in Chester,
>          Mass.
>
>          His wife, Nancy, said Metcalf had a heart attack after
>          buying apples at a farmers market not far from
>          Arrowhead, the Berkshire home of Herman Melville, his
>          great-grandfather.
>
>          "Like a medieval chronicler with the eye of a poet and
>          the heart of a taleteller, he fits together radiant
>          fragments into a wholly new kind of construct," the
>          author Guy Davenport once wrote of Metcalf. His more
>          than 20 books were often collages of first-person
>          historical narratives, science writing, newspaper clips
>          and his own words, woven together in a single fabric.
>          "It was like a symphony, with sources like old diaries
>          and botanical descriptions as the different
>          instruments," said his daughter Adrienne.
>
>          Nonetheless, the words had a cumulative effect. In his
>          1976 book "Apalache," an epic about the settlement of
>          the New World, he mixed native and settler chronicles
>          with his own musings: "The fragrance drifts seaward/we
>          smelled the land a hundred leagues, and farther when
>          they burned the cedars/before we come in sight of it
>          thirty leagues, we smell a sweet savour/we had now fair
>          sunshine weather, and so pleasant a sweet as did much
>          refresh us, and there came a smell off the shore like
>          the smell of a garden."
>
>          Metcalf came from a distinguished New England family.
>          His mother was Eleanor Thomas Metcalf, a granddaughter
>          of Herman Melville and his literary executor. His
>          father, Henry Knight Metcalf, who worked for an
>          insurance company, was a descendant of Roger Williams,
>          the founder of Rhode Island.
>
>          Metcalf was born in East Milton, Mass., and was educated
>          at private schools. He attended Harvard but disliked it
>          and left after only three months. In 1942 he married
>          Nancy Harman Blackford of Charleston, S.C., and during
>          the next 20 years the couple spent long periods in the
>          South. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a
>          brother, David, of Topsham, Me.; two daughters, Anne
>          Westmoreland of Schuyler, Va., and Adrienne, of Becket,
>          Mass., and two granddaughters.
>
>          Early in his life, Metcalf thought little about his
>          famous ancestor and his writings. His first book, "Will
>          West," published in 1956, was a short novel about murder
>          with a Cherokee as the protagonist.
>
>          But in the early 60s Metcalf returned to the Berkshires,
>          and in his 1965 book, "Genoa," acknowledged the
>          relationship to Melville. "Genoa" was one of his
>          best-known works, a blend of references to Melville,
>          other sources and his own language.
>
>          In the book, a man called Michael Mills muses about his
>          own history, and his brother, Carl, who is a monster:
>          "Herman would harangue his wife and two daughters (this
>          was after the sons were gone) on matters that had no
>          interest for them, and they would roll their eyes, and
>          sigh, and wait, or there would be outbursts of temper,
>          sarcasm."
>
>          Metcalf told his hometown newspaper, The Berkshire
>          Eagle, that the book "was a way of getting the Melville
>          monkey off my back."
>
>          William H. Gass, reviewing "Genoa" in The New York
>          Times, said that the book "invites us to pass our minds
>          down a new but ancient track, to become, ourselves, both
>          fact and fiction, and to discover something true about
>          the geography of time."
>
>          Metcalf was a tall man with a powerful physical
>          presence. In recent years, with his hair nearly shoulder
>          length and his pipe in his mouth, he was a colorful
>          figure. His home in Becket became a center for artists
>          and writers in the area. As a writer he remained a cult
>          figure, although in 1987 he was honored by the American
>          Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Beginning in
>          1996, the Coffee House Press of Minneapolis published a
>          three-volume edition of his collected works.
>
>          He also supported efforts to increase the collection of
>          Melville's papers at Arrowhead and at the Berkshire
>          Athenaeum in Pittsfield. In 1921, the manuscript of
>          Melville's novel "Billy Budd" was discovered in a tin
>          box in his family's home.
>
>          Several months ago, as Metcalf was moving out of his
>          Becket house, he found two more boxes of family papers
>          and memorabilia that he had long forgotten. He donated
>          the papers to the Melville Room of the Berkshire
>          Athenaeum.
>
>                    Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
>:
>
>
>
>Herb Levy
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