Oh Billy, your only mistake was being a living sequel to one much greater than you. 
 On a more serious note I think this book does show, in Melville, at least the extent to which the American Civil War broke the optimism of the transcendentalist writers and thinkers... 
 Unless you were Emily Dickinson, in which case you spent most of your life in your house and could not be bothered by "events" in any case. 
 [update 2014: read this book recently and felt that I was way more generous than I should have been. The writing saves this book, but I cannot stand the title character because the trope he plays on is too cliche for me.]