Co-authored by spouses Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel, Dayswork introduces us to its narrator—whose voice is loosely drawn from Habel’s—in the midst of a COVID-19 lockdown-fueled fixation with Herman Melville. The patchwork series of thoughts that comprise the novel’s narration flips between appraisals of various Melville factoids and reflections on the narrator’s own life as she moves from day to day in the confines of quarantine. Her research leads her to frustrations over the lack of conclusive evidence on Melville’s height, then to revelations about the nature of his friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, and back again as she spelunks in digitized archives and oversized biographies. Her fascination is not anchored to Melville alone, but extends to the women who surrounded and supported him, and to the many fanatics and scholars—Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell, notably—who prompt recurrent reflections on truth, ambition, and marriage. In this narrator’s world, meditations on the tensions between relationships and creativity, the veracity of evidence, and how we find ourselves reflected in artists and their art are all part of the day’s work.
Jennifer Habel is the author of two poetry collections, Good Reason and The Book of Jane, and a winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize.
Chris Bachelder has written four novels and currently teaches fiction writing at the University of Cincinnati. His novel The Throwback Special was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Paris Review's Terry Southern Prize.
Dayswork speaks to all lovers of literature—Melville-mania not required—in its portrayal of a curious individual’s deep-dive into the life, work, and generational impact of one nineteenth-century literary giant. It is a novel that recognizes both the resonance of great art and the complexities of the characters behind them.