Paul Metcalf, essayist, poet, under-appreciated experimental novelist, had some big shoes to fill as a writer. He found being the great-grandson of Herman Melville burdensome, and so wrote Genoa, his masterpiece, the novel he had to write in order to get the Melville monkey off his back. Melville figures large in this sleek, 187page novel. Though calling it a novel may be inaccurate in describing what Metcalf accomplishes here, skillfully interweaving throughout his text quotations from both the works of Melville and Christopher Columbus, the latter through letters and diaries. Metcalf employs the writings of these two iconic oceanic adventurers as critical pieces of Genoa’s storyline to advance the plot and not simply as quotations prefacing chapters. At least half the book, in fact, comprises Melville or Columbus quotations. Interspersed between Melville & Columbus (and later, toward the conclusion, Theodore Dreiser & the journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition) lies the story of one soul searching man, Michael Mills, presumably Metcalf’s alter ego, looking for answers, and Carl Mills, his brother, who suffers, we soon learn, from a progressively debilitating, unspecified mental illness.

The novel opens with Michael Mills in the attic of his home, rummaging through old copies of Melville texts, reminiscing when he and his brother, Carl, discovered old Melville artifacts in the attic of their childhood home. His reminiscing takes us back to the beginnings for not only he and his brother, but to the nautical and novelistic beginnings of Melville & Columbus. We learn of Melville’s first visits to Polynesia, the setting for his first novel, Typee, and of Columbus’ first voyage across the Atlantic. We read of ensuing voyages, and how those experiences for both affected their psychological and philosophical worldviews; and weaved between the two icons, the lives of the brothers drifting irreparably apart by madness. On some levels, the story of Carl’s demise is as tragic and inevitable a tale as that of the Pequod’s in Moby Dick, while Michael’s repeated attempts to reach across to Carl what amounted to an ocean of surging insanity, mirrored Columbus’ attempts to regain the favor, recognition, and support of the Spanish Monarchy. Melville & Columbus’ quotations throughout the text echo the experiences of one another’s up-and-down lives – and the Mills Brother’s chaotic lives also – and in so doing, somehow, strangely but effectively, echoing one another, ultimately speak as one voice, one narrator, a voice tossed often into the troughs of despair, but lifted ultimately, despite the sadness and suffering taking their indefatigable tolls, into peace. Acceptance. Each thread comprising the narrative – Melville, Columbus, Michael, Carl, Dreiser, Lewis & Clark – no matter their individual outcomes good or bad, collectively reached peace with their lives. Complex and profound work of art. ( )